He hides behind his sketchbook. She hides behind perfection. And they're both carrying wounds that run deeper than either of them suspects. Dacus Michaelson is keeping his head down. With 250 hours of community service for a mistake that really wasn't his and a father whose unchecked combat PTSD is quietly unraveling his family, life feels more about survival than ambition. Charleigh Hawkins has a plan for everything-AP classes, philanthropic extracurriculars, and a prestigious fellowship to launch her future. The only thing she can't seem to manage is her father's impossible expectations. Thrown together volunteering at a nursing home, the clash comes before the connection. But when Charleigh's fellowship project becomes an investigation into the generational trauma of combat PTSD, Dacus reluctantly becomes a research partner... and then more. But the closer they get, the harder it becomes to keep the darkness at bay, and when it finally breaks through, it touches them both in ways they never saw coming. Now Charleigh must decide what she's fighting for-a carefully constructed future that's cracking at the seams or the boy who showed her that real life begins in the messy truths of who we really are. For Now explores the war after the war and the casualties that rarely make the headlines-quiet wounds passed down through the generations and the courage it takes to finally set them down.