Almost Us

Gray was my best friend.

Then he became the one man I could not have.

So I disappeared before sunrise and stayed gone for ten years.

Now a contract that could put my tea in forty-two stores has put Gray back in front of me—and he has no intention of letting me disappear again.

He is no longer the boy I left behind. He is calm, unyielding, and so controlled he makes the boy I knew seem like a stranger.

One greenhouse trial becomes an overnight trip. One kiss becomes the night neither of us is willing to name.

So we make rules.

No labels. No promises. No asking what this makes us.

Just heat. Just need. Just enough of each other to pretend our bodies are the only thing that changed.

But Gray does not touch me like a friend.

He does not let me walk away and call it a mistake.

And every time he chooses me, it gets harder to believe this is only physical.

I spent ten years protecting our friendship from the truth.

Now the truth is in my bed.

Almost Us is a spicy childhood-friends-to-lovers second-chance romance about forced proximity, a no-strings arrangement that gets too real to survive its own rules, and a hero who refuses to let her disappear twice. Complete standalone. No cliffhanger. Guaranteed HEA.