Anonymous

Cutler Ryder was everything I wasn’t. He was the hockey star. I was an outcast. He was best friends with my stepbrother, that same stepbrother who hated me. His two parents loved him. My mom was a junkie. My dad barely knew me. Years passed. I got my life together. Cut went onto NHL stardom. Then there was a text. 

They say Cyrus Reed is ruthless. That he rules the underworld with an iron fist. A criminal. A murderer. A monster. He controlled fortunes and amassed empires. Our paths should never have crossed, but one poker game intertwined our fate. I woke up stranded on his island. Trapped. Forced to play a dangerous game of hate and lust. He said he took me to protect me. That he was saving me. But who will save me from him?

Scarlett is always the sensible one: The sober driver. The planner. The one holding your hair back while you're worshiping the porcelain gods. Week-after-week, she visits Jock Row with her friends - the university's hottest party scene and a breeding ground for student athletes. And if keeping her friends out of trouble and guys out of their pants was a sport, she'd be the star athlete. Being a well known jock-blocker gets her noticed for all the wrong reasons; just like that, she's banned from Jock Row. No guy wants a girl around who keeps their jock friends from getting laid.  

Devin and Ayden were my best friends. We were practically joined at the hip since age two. When we were kids, we thought we were invincible, inseparable, that nothing or no one could come between us. But we were wrong. Everything turned to crap our senior year of high school. Devin was turning into a clone of his deadbeat lowlife father - fighting, getting wasted, and screwing his way through every girl in town. I'd been hiding a secret crush on him for years.

I had a plan to escape the friend zone. Step one: sneak into Reed’s room. Step two: sleep with him. But when the lights turned on, it wasn’t familiar blue eyes I saw. These were dark, angry, and full of demons. And they belonged to Reed’s much-older brother. Four years later, Nash Prescott is no longer the help’s angry son. I’m no longer the town’s prized princess. At 22, I’m broke, in need of a job. At 32, he’s a billionaire, in need of revenge.

When I was nineteen years old, I was faced with a choice that changed my life. Keep the safety of what I already knew or risk losing everything with the young, hotheaded soldier who stole my heart. I chose the wrong man, and for seventeen years, I paid in tears, blood, and shattered dreams for that decision. Now, there’s a man in my house, holding a gun to my head on the order of my ex-husband—given from his prison cell. That hotheaded soldier I was too afraid to choose? He’s now a six-foot-three wall of muscle who works at the country’s most premier bodyguard agency. I’ve always wanted him, but now, I’ve never needed him more. It’s the call I’m terrified to make. I’m sure he still hates me… Even though I’ve never stopped loving him.

There were always whispers about my roommate at Hillcrest Academy. The wealthiest of the wealthy sent their kids to our boarding school, and Brooke Bennett had been at the top, though I never quite knew why. She was fun and outgoing, but she kept quiet about her family. The only things she showed me were photographs of her brothers. I became fascinated with her second-oldest brother. Kai Bennett. Smoldering. Hypnotic. Alluring. Kai had eyes that pulled me in and a face that haunted my dreams.

I shouldn't have remembered him. He was just a guy who walked through a restaurant. I didn't know his name. We never made eye contact. There was no connection between us at all. But I could feel him. The tingle down my spine. The command in his presence. The snap of tension in the air around him. That was the first time I saw him, and I was captivated.

You can only keep what you can protect. That’s all I’ve ever known. It’s the way I’ve lived my life. Now, everything I never knew I needed is at risk, and I’m not letting anyone take it from me. I won’t let anyone take her from me. They say love is a battlefield, so I’m ready for war. This time, it’s the fight for forever.

"Trust only those who earn it." A sentiment I follow without direction but holds more consequence than ever before. One decision, five lives, three futures. This is what's at stake. One night, one choice, four broken Brayshaws. That is where we're headed. Unless I stop it. I have to stop it. I have to remind him of what he's chosen to forget. My town. My choice. My ending.