Chase Sterling always felt like furniture. The kind you don't notice, the kind that's easy to shove in a corner and forget. He was used to it: people looked right through him, brushed him off like lint. But it only takes one phone call to erase a lifetime of being overlooked. When his estranged family meets a tragic end, Chase suddenly finds himself in charge of the sprawling Sterling fortune. Turns out, riches aren't the only thing the family left him. There's a curse running through his blood, warping love into something hungry and dangerous, impossible to escape.

Vivian Ashford never set out to blow Chase's life to smithereens. Just one decision (a sharp, ruthless move at graduation) was all it took to set their worlds spinning out of control. While Vivian soaks up the Hollywood limelight and collects red-carpet headlines, Chase slips into his new role as Manhattan's most intimidating heir. But no matter how far they run, something keeps yanking them back together, like a stitch in an old wound that refuses to heal.

Chase is kissing me in my doorway at 2 AM two days before his wedding to someone else, and every rational part of my brain screams this is terrible idea while every irrational part melts into the familiar taste of him, the familiar way his hands find my waist like they never forgot where they belong.


I should push him away. Should remind him he's drunk and engaged and this solves nothing. Instead, I kiss him back, years of wanting and fighting and resisting collapsing into this single moment of terrible honesty.


He walks me backward into my apartment, kicks the door closed behind us, never breaking contact. The kiss deepens, becomes desperate, becomes everything we've been denying ourselves for months while pretending we can be apart.


"This is a mistake," I manage between kisses.


"Probably." He lifts me, my legs wrapping around him automatically, muscle memory from before everything went wrong. "Don't care."


Chapter 124 - The Almost