I don’t need a boyfriend. I have a plan.
A responsible, emotionally risk-free plan.

Step one: teach teenagers why Romantic poets ruined love forever.
Step two: never repeat my mother’s long history of spectacular romantic failures.
Step three: marry a man who fits my carefully constructed Future Husband List.

Dean Cooper has never been on that list.

He’s my best friend. My safe place. The boy who sat with me on the worst night of my life and never asked for anything in return. He knows how I take my coffee, when to give me space, and how to steady me when my world tilts sideways.

The problem isn’t that he doesn’t check the boxes.
It’s that he checks too many of them.

And I don’t fall for men I can’t afford to lose.

Then my mother, who should not be trusted with wine or microphones, announces at a wedding that Dean and I made a marriage pact when we were kids.

Now the entire town thinks we’re inevitable.

Dean is suddenly everywhere. In my space. In my thoughts. In my pulse. He looks at me like he wants to kiss me, and worse, like he knows I want him too.

One conference. One hotel room. One very bad decision later, I convince myself it was just a fling.

Then I meet a man who fits my list perfectly. Successful. Confident. Intentional. He wants me loudly, publicly, without hesitation.

This is what choosing looks like.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.

But some mistakes don’t disappear just because you ignore them.

And some loves don’t survive being treated like an almost.

I’ve loved Everly Bennett for most of my life.

I’ve just never said it, because keeping her in my life mattered more than risking losing her altogether.

I’ve waited. I’ve stayed. I’ve been steady when everything else in her world fell apart. I never asked her to choose me, because I thought loving her quietly was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

Until one night changed everything, and she still chose someone else.

I won’t spend my life proving I’m worth a place on her list. I won’t be her secret, her fallback, or her safe mistake.

I love her.
And loving her like this is breaking me.

If she wants me, really wants me, she’ll have to choose me without a plan.

Because loving someone isn’t the same as being chosen.
And this time, I’m done waiting.

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