Nobody at Northridge University really knows Y/N. They know the rumors. The tattoos. The bruised knuckles. The smell of smoke clinging to hoodies. But when a group project forces Y/N into Jules Carter’s loud, chaotic football friend group, assumptions slowly start breaking apart — and something much softer begins growing underneath all the noise.
A quiet, overworked art student struggles to hold her broken family together while barely surviving college life. When she crosses paths with a guarded, trouble-marked “bad boy” hiding his own past, their lives slowly intertwine—forcing them both to confront pain they’ve buried and decide whether they’re willing to be each other’s escape… or undoing.
At Alderwick University, reputation is everything — and once someone becomes a target, nobody steps in to help. Y/N Love is used to surviving quietly. Between an unstable home life and relentless bullying at university, she’s learned how to keep her head down, hide bruises beneath oversized hoodies, and endure humiliation without giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing her break. To most students, Y/N is just the strange, quiet scholarship girl people whisper about between classes. Cassian Vale barely notices her. Popular, wealthy, and surrounded by friends, Cassian moves comfortably through Alderwick’s brutal social hierarchy without questioning it. Like everyone else, he’s grown used to ignoring the cruelty happening around him — until he’s forced to witness just how far it’s gone. What begins between them is slow, complicated, and emotionally messy. Y/N doesn’t trust easily, and Cassian isn’t some perfect savior suddenly determined to rescue her. Instead, their relationship develops gradually through tension, repeated encounters, shifting loyalties, and the uncomfortable realization that neither of them can keep pretending nothing is wrong anymore. Bruises Under Blazers is a dark slow-burn college romance exploring bullying, violence, trauma, power, emotional repression, and the difference between being noticed and being truly seen.
Y/N is twenty-two, works at a Wetherspoons in Wythenshawe and spends most of her time keeping her head down, getting through shifts and returning to her small apartment at the end of the day. Mason Ashcroft is a mechanic from the same area. He spends his time between work, football, nights out and his family, rarely thinking beyond the next weekend. They move through the same streets, pubs, corner shops and social circles without paying much attention to each other. Through mutual acquaintances, chance encounters and ordinary life, their paths begin crossing more often than either of them realises. Set in Manchester, M22 is an extreme slow-burn slice-of-life romance focused on everyday life, family, friendship, banter and the gradual development of a relationship that neither of them sees coming.