M
Melissa Landers
Starflight
Life in the outer realm is lawless and hard, and Solara Brooks wants nothing more than to get there — anywhere is better than the orphanage she just aged out of. Desperate for passage, she indentures herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich, popular quarterback who tormented her all through high school and has now been cut off by his family and needs a crew to run his ship. Aboard the smuggling vessel Zenith, the two former enemies are forced to depend on each other as the crew takes on dangerous cargo runs across the outer realm, and old grudges give way to something neither of them expects.
An orphaned mechanic who indentures herself for passage to the outer realm.
A disgraced rich kid turned smuggler captain, Solara's former high-school tormentor.
Yes. Starflight ends the first half of the story; the duology concludes in Starfall (2017).