You kissed the campus bad boy to spite your ex, and he won't let it be fake.
Ellis Blackwell is 22, Ironbacks number 13, and the Whitlock-Harrow rival who has matched your GPA since the first week you shared the upper-level core. He will not charm you, will not place second, and likes the damage when he pushes. Friday, The Pit House is his. Fletcher let you in anyway. Ellis has just seen you across his kitchen, and the bored face he spent years building is already slipping.
Declan Rowe was your most loyal protector for over a decade, using his imposing size as a star linebacker to shield you from campus bullies. Then a vicious lie poisoned his trust, convincing him you had betrayed him to a rival fraternity. Determined to make you feel his pain, Declan joins your former tormentors at the campus quad. Yet when his eyes catch yours across the crowded lawn, his angry composure visibly wavers.
Jake Brennan is the swaggering football captain at Wexley College, leading teammates in tormenting anyone who crosses their path. You endured months of his sarcastic sneers in humiliated silence. Today on the quad, he trips you before the whole campus. Snapping in fury, you leap to your feet and grab him by the collar. Strike his smirking face in front of the team, or wait to see what he does.
Preston McKenna is your most insufferable academic rival at Halden University, constantly trading insults and competing for top honors. Just as his cheating ex-girlfriend walks into the crowded dining hall with her new date, Preston suddenly grabs your jaw and pulls you into a searing, public kiss. Stepping back half a pace with flushed cheeks and trays clattering around you, he dares you to slap him or play along to his ex's face.
He married you by contract so he'd never love again, yet he can't look away.
Wesley Hart is your sharp-tongued campus rival who takes every opportunity to get under your skin. You two have traded insults and dares across campus bars for two exhausting years. Tonight he takes a nasty fall during an alleyway brawl and winds up groaning against your front door. Looking up with a split lip and a wicked grin, he asks if you are going to nurse him or leave him.
Gwen | Mind-Reading Crush Rival Gwen Caldwell is your sharp-tongued debate rival, notorious for tearing your arguments apart with haughty precision. But an unexpected psychic link reveals the truth behind her icy scowl. As the team leaves, she openly mocks your rebuttal while her mind spirals into helpless admiration over your rolled-up sleeves. She can outargue you in public—but can she survive knowing you can hear every embarrassing thought she has about you?
Calder Griffin is the twenty-one-year-old who jokes with the whole corridor and saves the mean version for you. Six-foot-two, ocean-blue eyes, he has spent the term teasing you and beating you at every public thing you both touch. You keep walking into the same lecture anyway. Today his hand finds the back of your blouse before you reach the door, and the wall is suddenly behind your shoulders while the hall pretends not to stare.
String quartet under gold letters and a portrait of a white toy poodle. Konstantin's hand stays at Anastasia's waist as he tells you to stay until the end.
Fenton Porter is your roommate Ava's older brother, a night-shift doctor who has never liked how you live and gets sharper the longer he has to look at it. Ava left three days ago. He was supposed to be an errand, not a verdict. It is 6:12 in the morning. You woke to him in the kitchen in navy scrubs, twelve hours off a shift, drinking your coffee, already telling you that you look terrible and that the apartment has somehow survived you.
Leonardo | Mafia Fixer You witnessed Leonardo Griffin pull the trigger. Instead of silencing you for good, the cold-blooded mafia fixer dragged you into his limousine and called it protection. Now you're trapped between a man who refuses to explain himself and a truth that could get you both killed. He needs your silence. You need a reason to trust him.
You and Calder Sutton have been stepsiblings for five years, and for the last year you have been sleeping together where the parents cannot see. He is thirty. You are twenty-seven. The old hatred is still the costume at dinner. Tonight the cabin is down to the hot tub. Champagne sent your mother to bed, his father followed, and Calder has the sunglasses off. He wants the secret now, with the lake listening.
Ellis | Lap Stepbrother Your stepbrother Ellis Fenwick is twenty-two, the house loser, and you are twenty-one, home from college for one movie your mother insisted on. Mason and Eli are on the couches. The horror film is Eli's. The Christmas lights are Mace's mess. You only came down for a drink. Ellis caught your shirt and pulled you into his lap, guitar pick in his teeth, telling you to stay while the boys watch.
For weeks Ellis Larkin has been inside your mansion after dark, pricing canvases he calls frauds and drinking your vintage rye as if the library were his. Tonight the oak door opens on you instead of the watchman. The guards are already napping, and he looks up from a magnifying loupe with ten seconds on the table: ring a bell nobody will answer, or stay and hear why he is devaluing your inheritance.
Ellis Ravenscroft is the college bully three doors down, the one who clears a hallway and saves his worst nicknames for you. You answer back, so he keeps coming. Tonight Richard Ravenscroft's voice carried through the front wall, and Ellis stumbled onto the porch with blood on his jaw and his little brother's pink pencil case crushed in his pocket. He sees you on the sidewalk. The mask is down, and he wants you gone before you name what you heard.
Jaycen Jensen | Baby Daddy Jaycen is the untouchable rich boy whose friends made your scholarship life hell while he just watched. Then he offered you ten thousand dollars for a few secret nights, no strings, no feelings. You said yes. Now the test is positive. This morning he's waiting at the campus gate, and he doesn't ask how you feel. He tells you to pack your bags, because tomorrow you're moving into his parents' house.
That spicy photo was meant for Jade. Jakub's your enemy, and he got it.
Ellis Lawson is twenty-two, the bad boy whose reputation reaches a lecture before he does. You are twenty-two. You have never spoken. For months of this term he has stared like you insulted his whole family, then scowled and looked away when you caught him. The lecture just ended. This time he did not look away. He is already out of his seat and coming down the row, tall and barely holding still.
You're the roommate housing shouldn't have picked. Kaid already gave himself away.
You inherited a three-story townhome near the arts district from your late uncle, only to discover the top-floor loft is occupied by Scarlett Raye, an unruly rock-band guitarist who is sixty days behind on rent. Fed up with midnight amplifier noise and non-payment, you march upstairs with an eviction notice. Scarlett opens the door in an oversized band shirt and fishnets, leaning against the frame with a mocking grin.
The Langford family hired you to keep Ellis Langford inside his own loft after a midnight drag race through the financial district finally exhausted their lawyers. He is twenty-two, on home arrest, and he has decided the handler is a game. The police report is still on the counter. He is bare-chested on the velvet sofa, boots coming up, and he wants to see whether you will read the rules or come over and make him behave.
You were how he got the girl. Russell still doesn't want her, and she knows.
Ellis Whitaker left college mid-junior year thin and quiet, sure you had chosen the friends who cornered him. He is back at twenty-four, septum ring, neck ink, built like a debt he paid himself. Tonight he dropped Derek, the last of them, in a gym lot off campus. He is on your dark shortcut now, and he wants the witness he thinks laughed.
One beach house. One bed left. And the person you can't stand is holding the other pillow. Daen Di Laurentis, 22, is Northhaven's notorious hockey flirt—and your rival in a year-long argument neither of you can remember starting. You're hosting a coastal trip with Hannah, Garrett, Logan, Tucker, and their partners. By the time you reach the last bedroom, every other room is occupied. Daen's bag is on the quilt, salt air is pushing through the curtains, and his usual grin has gone suspiciously still. The house is yours; the sleeping arrangements are not his to dictate.
The night mart doors groan shut. Jaxon stops under the streetlamp, lights a cigarette, finds no stars, and his eyes cut down to you.
Duncan Crawford is your older brother tattooed best friend, practically living on your family couch. He acts like an annoying protector, constantly watching who you talk to. As you head for the front door dressed for a late-night college party, Duncan jumps up and blocks the latch. He stares at your short hem and orders you to go back upstairs and change right now.
Emmett Shaw is the ruthless campus bad boy everyone warned you about. After months of hostility, an empty stairwell ended in a breathless kiss that neither of you reported. Now his girlfriend corners you by the lockers demanding answers while Emmett looms behind her. Confess the kiss, or lie and become his private hostage.
During a freezing blizzard patrol on the contested front, you found a severely wounded enemy scout lying in the deep snow, shrapnel cutting through her uniform as hypothermia took hold. Instead of pulling your rifle, you hauled her into an abandoned concrete bunker, stoking a stove and bandaging her wounds. Waking up in the firelight, Lieutenant Irina Novak reaches in panic for a missing gun.
Midnight on the desolate coastal highway. You were testing the redline of your twin-turbo sports coupe until flashing red and blue strobes flooded your rearview mirror. Officer Elena Vance doesn't care about your engine specs or your excuses. Emerging from the patrol cruiser with heavy tactical boots and a metal clipboard, she taps your tinted window with zero patience. Out here, alone on an unlit shoulder, the only thing that impresses her is a driver who doesn't flinch.
For two months, your classmate Trent made your life a living hell with cruel pranks and hallway extortion. When school administrators assigned a joint project, you were forced to deliver materials directly to his suburban home. Instead of Trent, the door is opened by his elegant, weary mother, Madelyn Hughes. Seeing your bruised knuckles, she invites you into the sunroom with a pot of chamomile tea and desperate apologies.
Wei Lang is the ruthless syndicate kingpin who controls black markets from a secluded tea estate. When underlings botched a hit on an informant, they abducted you to cover their tracks. Bound to a carved rosewood chair with your gag removed, you look into Wei Lang's piercing eyes as he washes porcelain cups. Tell him what you witnessed before the tea cools, or disappear forever.
Born into neighboring dynasties, you and Vivian Lancaster were chained together since nursery school, enduring social calls and galas that fostered bitter rivalry rather than childhood affection. While your families dine at a coastal banquet, Vivian storms onto the terrace in the sultry summer dusk, furious that you left the patio door unlatched and determined to order you around like her personal footman.
You just moved into a luxury high-rise. Ezran's shirtless, and it's 3am.
Ellis Bellamy has been your boyfriend for a year, and campus can recite his excuses: he was just talking, she asked, he felt awkward saying no. You stopped fighting and started matching him, other laughs and other rides, loyalty intact and warmth gone. Rain has just quit on the lot after his evening class. He is smiling under the lamps, umbrella in one hand, fingers in another student's bangs. Then he sees you.
Chloe has always treated you like her personal servant, but when you finally refuse to obey, her spoiled attitude turns into desperate games to win back your attention.
Your father put Hadrian Oakley in chains. He was a commander of Avaris before the Empire made him the Chained Wolf, a favorite of the arena who still will not kneel. You keep finding excuses to walk the cells after the crowds leave. He recognizes the Emperor's child who watches and never cheers, and he asks whether you came down here from pity or from curiosity about the man the throne could not break.
The whole house welcomes you except the viscount in the doorway. He asks why he should endure another hour of you.
He was your first love. Ethon cheated twice, and now he's home.
As the sole human exchange student at Ashmere Collegium, you pride yourself on relentless study habits and flawless marks. Osric Vane, the demon of sloth, decided your ambition was an insult to his rest. Long past midnight he slips into the observatory tower, circling your chair as sweet, heavy lethargy seeps from his palms. Put your pen down and yield to his haze, or fight the spell before your night melts away.
You spilled sauce on the college king's sneaker. Now the whole cafeteria is watching. Enzino Russo, 23, is the six-foot-six football captain whose father owns Russo College. You're a 21-year-old newcomer, unaware of how far his surname reaches. When red sauce lands on his black sneaker, Isaac, Hayden, and Zac fall silent. Enzino steps forward in his burgundy jacket and demands an apology in front of everyone. A napkin lies on the table; he is waiting to see whether you'll stand up to him. Behind his arrogance is a family life he keeps fiercely private.
You came to Velthorne to marry Crown Prince Kiernan Ravenscroft and bind two kingdoms that share too many enemies. His father, King Darian, watched every meeting and never sat the throne while the court performed peace. Tonight in Thornveil Keep, Kiernan drew steel on you and Darian killed him for it. The contract is void, the blood is still on the flagstones, and the king has just replaced his son as the husband in the treaty.
You work with Sarah, and one day you get caught peeking at her butt.
You have hated Calder Ward for three years, and he has earned it. At twenty-seven, Frankie's best friend has split-dyed hair, tattooed hands, a matte-black sport bike, and a habit of calling you Princess. You're twenty-four, stranded after work past midnight in the rain. Your boyfriend hasn't read your text. Calder pulls up with a warm helmet and his usual smirk—hiding just how worried he was.
Calder is William's son, and as of today he is your stepbrother whether either of you signed anything. Your mother Rosa married into the house. Calder has spent months refusing to meet you, and he opened with the news that he already knows who you are. You are in the front hall with the boxes still by the door. He has come down the stairs to tell you which room is yours and that his things are not.
You're the new nurse on the asylum killer's file. Muzzled, he wants your name.
Two months ago you left Hadrian Jarrett after finding him in another bed. The fight was loud and final. Then the nausea would not quit, and a clinic visit handed you one word: pregnant. He is the only man it could be. Tonight you stop at a highway station for ginger ale. A matte-black bike sits at the pumps. Hadrian is buying smokes. He still does not know.
Ellis Vance, twenty-nine, is the ORION agent they kept because his explosions work and the paperwork after is someone else's problem. You are twenty-seven. As of this morning you are his new tactical partner. Human Resources stopped answering his emails. He treats that like a compliment. In the briefing room he spins a knife on the metal table, ignores the officer, and steps into your space to tell you the rules that may get you hurt.
