In the aftermath of tragedy, it’s strange the things you remember.
The deafening boom as the house exploded.
The paralyzing fear as I searched for my wife.
The blinding smoke burning my eyes as I carried her out.

But carved into my soul for the rest of my days would be the earth-shattering realization that the woman in my arms wasn’t my wife.

Bree and I were the only survivors—not that either of us were truly living after that night. As a single dad with nowhere else to go, I moved into her guest house. And somehow, through the guilt and grief, we forged an unlikely team.

It took years, but I watched the gradual return of her smile—slow and life-altering.
The two of us could sit outside for hours, talking about nothing, and it filled the massive hole in my chest with new life.

I may have carried her out of that fire, but the truth was, Bree saved me.

As we healed, the secrets and lies of the past smoldered in the ashes, threatening to ignite again.

Our love was born from the embers, and together we would go up in flames.

In the aftermath of tragedy, it’s strange the things you remember.
The deafening boom as the house exploded.
The paralyzing fear as I searched for my wife.
The blinding smoke burning my eyes as I carried her out.

But carved into my soul for the rest of my days would be the earth-shattering realization that the woman in my arms wasn’t my wife.

Bree and I were the only survivors—not that either of us were truly living after that night. As a single dad with nowhere else to go, I moved into her guest house. And somehow, through the guilt and grief, we forged an unlikely team.

It took years, but I watched the gradual return of her smile—slow and life-altering.
The two of us could sit outside for hours, talking about nothing, and it filled the massive hole in my chest with new life.

I may have carried her out of that fire, but the truth was, Bree saved me.

As we healed, the secrets and lies of the past smoldered in the ashes, threatening to ignite again.

Our love was born from the embers, and together we would go up in flames.

Truth: From over a thousand miles away, I watched on the screen of my phone as two men murdered my wife. Consumed by hate and rage, I spent four years running from my memories - until a shattered woman gave me a reason to stop.

Cora lived in a nightmare, but through sheer force of will, she’d turned it into something beautiful. She had a smile that could pierce the darkest soul. And with one glance, she shredded mine.

Lie: I was only there for a fresh start.
Lie: I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Lie: There was nothing I could do to save her.

But that’s the thing about lies - you never know who to believe.

Truth: Penn Walker entered my life like a summer storm—dark, ominous, and filled with thunder.

After witnessing my husband’s murder, I didn’t have much of a heart left to offer a man.
But Penn took it all.
Every jagged shard.
Every broken bit.
Even the dirty and twisted pieces that I wish never existed.

Lie: I didn’t need him to save me.
Lie: I knew exactly who he was.
Lie: Losing him wouldn’t destroy me.

But that’s the thing about lies - you never know who to believe.

“Aly Martinez is one of the best in the business. You have to read her books.” --Meghan March New York Times bestselling author

Originally from Savannah, Georgia, USA Today bestselling author Aly Martinez now lives in South Carolina with her husband and four young children.
Never one to take herself too seriously, she enjoys cheap wine, mystery leggings, and olives. It should be known, however, that she hates pizza and ice cream, almost as much as writing her bio in the third person.
She passes what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can get her hands on, preferably with a super-sized tumbler of wine by her side.

Choices. Everyone makes them. From mundane to unimaginable, one choice can change the trajectory of your entire life.

My mother’s choice was to abandon us with our abusive father.
My brother’s choice was to go to prison for killing the boy who assaulted his soulmate.
Camden Cole’s choice was to fall in love with a shattered girl who had absolutely nothing to offer him but heartbreak.

It was one summer beneath the trees, but with Camden, I had a place where I belonged.
A friend who was always waiting for me.
A boy who I caught staring at me more often than not.

He was mine, but when the world closed in and secrets exploded all around us, it was my choice to let him go.

Choices. Everyone makes them.
But mine would ruin us all.

He wedged his large body beside me in the bed. On his side, he draped one arm across my middle, curling his other under his head. 

I watched him out of the corner of my eye, completely unsure if I was supposed to cuddle into him or what the hell we were doing. 

“This okay?” he asked. “You comfortable?” 

I was a lot of things. Confused. Lost. Overwhelmed by guilt.  

But because it was Camden, comfortable was one of those things too.  

As an answer, I rolled toward him and buried my face in his broad chest.  

His whole body sagged as he began stroking the back of my hair. “Nora. Nora. Nora.”  

In a way, Camden and I were strangers, but as his heart played in my ear, I felt two puzzle pieces clicking into place. A calm washed over me. The dark cloud of my betrayals still existed outside of Camden’s embrace; it just didn’t seem so ominous anymore. He knew all the dirty and broken parts of me and still came back, holding me as though he could keep me together.  

Sliding an arm around his back, I curled in close, shifting to tangle my legs with his. “I’m tired, Cam.”  

“I know,” he whispered, hugging me tight.  

“No, you don’t. Nobody understands. I’m a disease who infects everyone who gets close to me.” My breathing shuddered. “It hurts. Everything hurts.” 

“Do you remember our first summer together when a grasshopper got into the container where we held the extra worms? You screamed so loud when you opened that thing and it came flying out like a bat out of hell. It got on your shirt and then hung on for dear life. With all the racket you were making, the damn thing had to have been terrified, but he never jumped off. I had to peel it off your shirt, one leg at a time.”  

I gagged at the memory. “Thanks for reminding me of that. Awesome timing.”  

He chuckled and pressed his lips to the top of my head. “I’m the grasshopper clinging to your shirt, Nora.”  

Now, if that wasn’t some good old classic Camden Cole rambling, I had no idea what was. 

I tilted my head back, resting my chin on his pec, and peered up at him. “You do realize I have no idea what you’re talking about, right?” 

My cold, hollow chest filled with a warmth I hadn’t felt in years when he grinned down at me.  

“I genuinely thought you’d find your way back to me. A phone call. A visit. Anything. But as time passed and I got older, I realized I fell in love with a girl who had no idea how to be loved.” 

My stomach wrenched, and emotion made my vision swim. “Camden, I—”  

“No, just let me talk. Hear me out.” He tucked a stray hair behind my ear and let his thumb linger at my cheek, sweeping back and forth. “I know you love me, Nora. It’s flashed in your eyes every time you’ve seen me since we were kids. It’s like every light in the house suddenly comes on, but it terrifies you, so you spend the whole time we’re together running around, turning them all off, convincing yourself that you don’t deserve for people to love you back. But we still do it. Joe loves you. Thea loves you. Ramsey loves you. I’ll always love you.” 

Choices. Everyone makes them. From mundane to unimaginable, one choice can change the trajectory of your entire life.

My mother’s choice was to abandon us with our abusive father.
My brother’s choice was to go to prison for killing the boy who assaulted his soulmate.
Camden Cole’s choice was to fall in love with a shattered girl who had absolutely nothing to offer him but heartbreak.

It was one summer beneath the trees, but with Camden, I had a place where I belonged.
A friend who was always waiting for me.
A boy who I caught staring at me more often than not.

He was mine, but when the world closed in and secrets exploded all around us, it was my choice to let him go.

Choices. Everyone makes them.
But mine would ruin us all.

Prologue
Nora

Choices.   

Everyone makes them.   

From mundane and monotonous to life-changing and unimaginable.   

But regardless what that choice may be, life is lived in the consequences.  

People want to believe that decisions are weighted. In theory, “What should I have for dinner?” should fall on the opposite end of the spectrum as “Should I swallow this bottle of pills?” But in reality, even the smallest decision can change the trajectory of your entire life.   

 “Oh God!” Ramsey yelled, scrambling across the dirt road on all fours. I watched in the rearview mirror as he paused, hovering over the bloody and lifeless body, not sure which broken part to touch first. “No. No. No.”   

I wanted to care. I wanted to be flooded with guilt and regret. I just wanted to fucking feel something again. Anything.  

Instead, I sat there, stunned and utterly numb.  

My brother’s mouth moved, fast and sharp, but I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. With shaky hands, I tried to open the car door twice before I was successful. My chest vibrated as a barrage of emotions ricocheted inside me, none of them able to escape. All of them slicing me to the core of my soul.   

Or maybe it was only the remnants of my soul, because the rest of it had been destroyed long before that starry night. 

I swung my legs out, my head swirling with the high of adrenaline, and I struggled to find even one breath of oxygen.  

My brother was seventeen, but he looked like a man as he started chest compressions and rescue breathing. Curiously, I wondered where he’d learned that. Then I immediately wished he hadn’t.  

It was pointless though. He was dead. I didn’t have to be up close and personal to know that. 

“Come on, come on, come on,” Ramsey chanted, never giving up, just like the hero I knew him to be. “Breathe.” 

That asshole didn’t deserve to breathe. He didn’t deserve anything. He’d already stolen it all from me. 

“Stop,” I forced out.

Ramsey’s panicked gaze swung my way. “What the fuck happened?”

How much time did he have?

Wood splintering into my back.

Blink. 

His fingers digging into my flesh.

Blink. 

The welcomed darkness that swallowed me as my only way to survive. 

Blink. 

Thea. 

Thea. 

Thea. 

“Let him die!” I roared so loudly that it scorched my throat. 

But at least I felt that.

The sound of people talking in the distance interrupted my echo, and my brother’s panic skyrocketed. Ramsey quickly abandoned his attempts to revive him and raced in my direction, but just seeing him lying there, alone and lifeless the way I would always feel, gave me a sick sense of pleasure. 

I should have been crying.

Why wasn’t I crying? 

I’d spent two years living in fear—nightmares, sobbing until I physically passed out, hiding behind a smile for fear people could see the filth behind it. 

Maybe there was nothing left of me to give. Not even tears. 

The voices got closer, and Ramsey stepped into my line of sight, blocking out that monster the way I would never be able to do. 

“You gotta go,” he barked. “I’ll take care of this, but you gotta go before someone sees you here.”

“I’m not leaving.” 

He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a hard shake. “Listen to me. You have to leave. I’ll get the car and meet you back at the house. If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me. Tell them I’ve been with Thea all night.” 

I could hear the words coming from his mouth, but I was struggling to process what he was saying. It was like an optical illusion: I could see the picture in front of me, but none of it felt real. 

I glanced around and his car was still running, the front end smashed and covered in blood. “What if they see your car?”

“I’ll…I’ll… I’ll tell ’em I hit a deer or something.” He looked over his shoulder as three silhouettes appeared at the end of the Johnsons’ driveway. “Please, Nora,” he hissed. “I promise you this is going to be okay. But you can’t be here. If they find out what he did to you, they’ll know this wasn’t an accident. I can’t risk that. Okay? You weren’t here. Nothing happened. It was a terrible, terrible accident. End of story.” He palmed each side of my face and pressed a shaky kiss to my forehead. 

That might have been more jarring for me than running over a man. 

Ramsey wasn’t the most affectionate brother. We hugged on occasion, and when I was little, he’d always ruffled my hair or pinched me playfully on the side. 

But he wasn’t a forehead kisser. 

“Ramsey,” I choked out, the adrenaline starting to ebb from my system, a hurricane of emotions moving in.

“Please,” he whispered, his desperate and pleading brown eyes sparkling with unshed tears in the moonlight. “Just run home and get in bed. I’ll meet you there. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Okay. That was a word I recognized all too well. Not good. Or great. Or even fine. Just simply okay was a state of being for us. 

Besides, Ramsey had never steered me wrong before. 

So I squeezed his hand, and like a coward, I ran. 

Choices. Everyone makes them. 

But mine would ruin us all.

Choices. Everyone makes them. From mundane to unimaginable, one choice can change the trajectory of your entire life.

My mother’s choice was to abandon us with our abusive father.
My brother’s choice was to go to prison for killing the boy who assaulted his soulmate.
Camden Cole’s choice was to fall in love with a shattered girl who had absolutely nothing to offer him but heartbreak.

It was one summer beneath the trees, but with Camden, I had a place where I belonged.
A friend who was always waiting for me.
A boy who I caught staring at me more often than not.

He was mine, but when the world closed in and secrets exploded all around us, it was my choice to let him go.

Choices. Everyone makes them.
But mine would ruin us all.

Fate doesn’t always happen overnight.

Hudson Bradley is the cockiest, most stubborn, hard-headed man I’ve ever known. And for fifteen years, he’s been my brother's best friend.

But lately, what I’m feeling for him isn’t friendship at all.

Why is my heart racing every time his blue eyes lock on mine? Why does every word he rumbles in my ear make my body come alive? And worst of all, why did I bet him that I could find a woman he and his son would both love?

If I hadn’t given up on love altogether, Hudson would have been perfect for me. After all, he was there the day my world fell apart. He’s spent the last six years piecing me back together.

There are a million reasons why we could never work, but after a single kiss, I can’t remember any of them.

Now that the time is right, I have to make him mine—before I lose him forever.

I did everything I could to not make eye contact.
Actually, my MO for the past week had been no contact period, but that was a little hard to do when the guy you’re dodging knows things about you. Specifically, the lock code on your front door.
“You can go home, Hudson. I’m fine.” Out of my periphery, I watched him perch his hands on his hips.
“No,” he argued. “Not until we figure this out.”
So he had noticed my ghosting. I hoped he wasn’t as good at calling my bluff.
“There is no this.”
“What about what you said at the—”
“Yeah, I must have had a cold or something. Whatever it was, I’m over it.”
Lies. Lies. Lies. Hopefully, I’d start believing them.
“Over it?”
“Yep. Hey, how was your date?” My topic-swapping skills were on point. When he stopped, only an arm's length away, I finally seized what scrap of pride I had and looked up into his blue eyes. “Are you seeing her again?”
He huffed. “Well, that’s kind of up to you.”
“Me?” I dropped the spoon into the sink and put the ice cream down so I could cross my arms over my chest. “What do I have to do with it?”
His lids fell shut, and he tipped his head at the ceiling, stretched his neck from side to side, and then brought his gaze back to mine. “Kate seems to think that, maybe, I have a thing…for you.”
My face flushed hot, and I wondered if maybe I’d fallen down trying to get out of my leather skirt earlier and I was dreaming, passed out on my bedroom floor. The issue with that theory was I could smell him, feel the warmth from his body in front of me, and see his heartbeat thumping in the vein in his neck.
This was real, but I still wasn’t sure I could handle it.
“Well, that’s just, uh, dumb,” I contended weakly. Shaking my head to rattle myself back to sanity, I asked, “W-why did she say that?” I tried to laugh, but it was as fake as my gusto.
“Because, apparently, I talked about you the whole night.”
Okay, I was wrong. I’d thought riding in a car with him and seeing him shirtless and watching him play with Jack and seeing how much he loved my family and having him touch me and avoiding him all week had been torture.
This moment was a whole new level of torment.
“So?” I said childishly.
It didn’t matter how I felt or what I wanted. I couldn’t just leap into his arms and expect everything to turn out the way it was supposed to. That’s not how my life worked.
“So I need to find out if this, whatever’s been building between us, is something.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? Up until that very second, it had all been one-sided. I’d racked my brain all week to understand why I’d felt the crazy things I did about him.
“How you gonna do that?”
“We’re going to kiss,” he stated very matter-of-factly, and then he closed the distance between our bodies.
“We are?” I whispered. My voice had all but left the building. “Unless you stop me right now.”
I wanted to.
I didn’t want to.
I was scared.
I was excited.
But mostly, I wasn’t stopping him.

Fate doesn’t always happen overnight.

Hudson Bradley is the cockiest, most stubborn, hard-headed man I’ve ever known. And for fifteen years, he’s been my brother's best friend.

But lately, what I’m feeling for him isn’t friendship at all. Why is my heart racing every time his blue eyes lock on mine?

Why does every word he rumbles in my ear make my body come alive? And worst of all, why did I bet him that I could find a woman he and his son would both love?

If I hadn’t given up on love altogether, Hudson would have been perfect for me. After all, he was there the day my world fell apart. He’s spent the last six years piecing me back together.

There are a million reasons why we could never work, but after a single kiss, I can’t remember any of them.

Now that the time is right, I have to make him mine—before I lose him forever.

Did you ever hear the joke about the guy whose wife cheated on him with his best friend? So he quit his job, moved into his parents’ basement, and gained fifty pounds?

No? Because that wasn’t a joke. It was my life.

Four years later, I'm back with a dream job, a killer apartment, and a set of abs that are better than ever.

So, when Maggie Light, a stunning, snarky blonde moves in next door, and we spend the hottest weekend of our lives together, I think this could be the greatest comeback story ever.

That is until I realize Maggie has moved to town to do one thing—steal my job.

Maybe this isn't a comeback story after all. Maybe this is war—one I intend to win.

What I never anticipated was that maybe I’d rather win her.

Perhaps, if I’m lucky, the universe has finally run out of jokes and I can somehow win both.

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