J.L. Seegars

Sloane Dominic Alexander is my late husband's best friend and the last man on Earth that I should want. He's arrogant, dismissive, and up until recently has only ever used those dark eyes of his to look right through me. For the last twelve years, he's taken a sick pleasure in making me feel paper thin, like my entire existence is of no consequence to him at all. But now, things are different. After one drunken night, and a surprisingly sexy act of heroism, he's started to be...nice. Treating me like something other than the physical embodiment of his annoyance, which would be nice if it didn't make me feel all the things I swore to never feel for another man after my husband died. Dominic Sloane Kent is going to be my undoing. What's worse: I think I'm going to enjoy being unravelled by the gold flecks in her hazel eyes and the adorable little way she scrunches her nose up when we're arguing, which we've done a lot of over the past decade. She thinks it's because I hate her, and I've always let her think that because the alternative is...untenable. But something is changing between us, and I don't know how to stop myself from breaking every promise I've ever made to myself regarding my best friend's wife. Promises that include never telling her that there's a long list of things I feel about her, but hate isn't one of them.

Jaxon Daniels was supposed to be my forever. I've loved him since I was thirteen years old, and like a foolish little girl, I believed that our love would carry us through everything. Every challenge. Every obstacle. Every heartbreak. But that was before I knew anything about pain and the challenge of overcoming crushing disappointment. Before I knew that loving someone doesn't always mean you get to have them, sometimes it means you have to let them go. Now, thanks to my sister marrying his brother at a romantic resort in Mexico, he's back in my orbit. Making me question the choice I made all those years ago, reminding me of our history every time he looks me in the eye, touching me like I still belong to him, and demanding that I give him another chance. In my life. In my bed. In my heart. And as tempted as I am to say yes, there's still a part of me that can't forget what it was like to let him go, to live with our broken forever haunting me. I survived losing him once, but I'm not so sure I can do it again.

Mallory Hope is a dangerous thing. It holds you close like a lover, whispering promises it never intends to keep, and just as soon as you relax into its arms, it lets you go. Sending you spinning into an abyss of nothingness. When I sent him away four years ago, he promised he would come back to me, and even as I asked him not to, I hoped that he would. Hope. I tucked it deep inside of me, underneath the scars of our before, beside the dreams of our after. Hidden like contraband. Guarded like a treasure. Broken like every promise that ever fell from his lips and hit my ears. Eventually, I got tired of hoping, of waiting for him, and I plunged my hands inside my own heart, ripping past scar tissue and muscle, veins and arteries to root it out. Hope. He conspired with it to make a fool of me, and when I freed myself from it, exorcised that pointless dream, I promised myself that no one would get the chance to do that to me again. Then, and only then, did he appear. My promise, a spell that conjured him. My determination, a challenge. My heart, the only prize he hopes to win. Christopher Life without Mallory Kent has taught me that time doesn’t heal wounds. It turns them into scars. Jagged tissue that grows around your pain, covering it with raised skin that will never again be smooth to the touch. My first scar formed when I was just a child. Too young to fully understand what my mother’s loss would mean for my life but old enough to remember the echo of the pain inside my empty chest. It was a unique agony. One I never expected to feel again. But that was before I loved her. Before I let things that had nothing to do with us cost me everything. It’s been four years since I decided to honor her request to stay away. To move on with my life and give her a chance to move on with hers. And she might not agree, but it was more than enough time for us to try and do the impossible. The only thing our time apart has done is remind me that wherever she is, is where I’m supposed to be. Now I just have to make her believe it.

Mallory The day Christopher Johnson decided to kill me, I already knew what it was like to die. I had already experienced it once. Having the life leeched from my body, blood stolen from my veins, oxygen pulled from my lungs. When he decided to walk back into my life, I was in the middle of my third resurrection, healing from the loss of my brother when I was still raw from losing him. It wasn’t going well. I guess the human heart can only stop so many times, can only take so much damage before it questions whether it’s worth it to be revived. My heart is on its last leg, but even that can’t stop me from seizing the chance to have him again. Even if it's just for a little while. Chris Walking away from Mallory Kent is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The devastation that marred her features that night still haunts me. Refusing to let me forget that the knife I plunged into her heart to protect her had pierced mine as well. Dogging my steps as I walked through my miserable life without her. Coming back had always been a part of the plan. Even as I gave in to the forces hellbent on tearing us apart, I knew we weren’t done. I just didn’t know we’d come back together like this: under a cloud of unexpected grief with the pain of our stolen future lingering just beneath the surface. This time together was never supposed to happen. I hadn’t accounted for it when I started working to clear a path back to her, but I’m thankful for it. For the opportunity to comfort her in a way no one else can. For the chance to hold her until the demons in my life force me to walk away again.

Mallory The first time I kissed Christopher Johnson, I knew he would be my biggest mistake. It didn’t stop me from wanting him though, and when the ghosts from my past came barging into the present, it didn’t stop me from agreeing to let him help. It was supposed to be a simple business arrangement, a few months of playing a role that came far too easily to the both of us, but it wasn’t long before it became more. Love. Devotion. Heartbreak in its truest form. Some people say life is for the living, but I say life is for the prepared. For the planners who know that controlling every piece on the board is the only way to get the result you want. To avoid unfortunate complications like having your heart broken by a man past experiences taught you, you never should have trusted in the first place. Christopher There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for Mallory Kent. I think I knew it the first time I laid eyes on her, and it’s remained one of my unspoken truths for the two years that I’ve known her. But I never thought I’d get the opportunity to do anything about it because Mallory is one of those people who doesn’t need anyone. She’s strong, serious, and always in control of every situation around her, which is why the second I see her looking panicked and uncertain in the arms of a figure from her past, I don’t think. I just act. I had no idea that one small decision would lead to this. A fake relationship—designed to solve her problems and mine—turned real. An earth shattering love torn apart by the very forces that led to its conception. Forces that turned me into the source of our destruction. There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for Mallory Kent, including break her heart to save her soul.

NadiaI expect nothing.From life, from God, from men.I don’t hope or want or pray. Those are luxuries I can’t afford when I’m doing the desperate math of survival while walking the tight rope of life on the run in a strange city. New Haven wasn’t supposed to be a fresh start. That would be asking too much from a life that took my parents from me and left me vulnerable to monsters. To be used but not loved. To be kept but not cherished. I’d accepted my fate, settled in it like sore feet in a pair of ill fitted heels, but then he walked into my life and released me from the prison of my past, leaving me free to hope, to want, to love. SebastianI didn’t know I was looking for anything until I was looking at her. And since the moment she came into my view, I haven’t been able to look away. There’s something sad behind her eyes. Something desperate in the way she moves through the world. Like the devil is on her heels and she doesn’t know whether to run or stay and fight. Other people’s problems aren’t usually something I have time for, but for her I’ll make time. For her, I’ll stand and fight. I’ll make her battles my battles, her dreams my dreams, and her safety my top priority.