検索キーワード： 著者 "Melissa Toppen" すべてのカテゴリー

At twenty-six, I thought I knew exactly what my life would look like. Marry my fiancé, Blake. Buy a big house on the California coast and have a couple of kids. Everything was so clear, until my mom got sick, and then suddenly it wasn’t anymore. In the span of one year, my entire life was different. My mom was gone. I had abruptly ended my engagement. And I found myself three thousand miles away from home, trying to reassemble the pieces of my life when none of them seemed to fit together anymore.

Arrogant. Egotistical. Playboy. Three words that perfectly describe Atlas Keaton. My twin brother’s best friend. The absolute bane of my existence. And my new college roommate. It wasn’t by choice of course. The last thing I wanted was to be forced to endure a full semester living under the same roof as him and my brother. But when a housing mix-up leaves me 3,000 miles away from home with nowhere else to turn, I don’t really have another option. It’s only four months, how hard could it be, right? Wrong...

Eight years ago I ran. I ran from my parents. I ran from my pain. I ran from him, and I never wanted to go back. If not for my best friend’s wedding, I likely never would have. The plan was simple. Get in, get out. Easy as that. Only I should have known nothing is ever that simple. Especially when Westin Carver is involved. He broke my heart once. Or rather, he completely annihilated it. And I have no doubt that if given the chance, he’d do it all over again. But even knowing that, it doesn’t change the way I crave him

Time heals all wounds. That’s what they say anyway. But I believe some wounds never actually heal. Like the hole left in my heart where Jake used to be. The pain a permanent reminder of what I had, and what I lost. A piece of me died with him that day. A part of myself I thought I’d never get back. But then he happened. Zayne. Unexpected and exciting, he’s everything I shouldn’t want and yet somehow, exactly what I need. He challenges me in a way I’ve never been challenged. He makes me see the person I used to be—the happy carefree girl with her whole life ahead of her.

Fabrication. The one word that describes my entire life. They didn’t want me to know my true identity. Now, I know why.... Abducted. Held against my will. I’ve become a bargaining chip in a blood feud that spans decades. Mateo Rivera is the one calling the shots. His father’s death put him in charge. Now he holds all the power. I should have known that he would ruin me the moment I laid eyes on him. And he did. He introduced me to a whole new world. One filled with danger and desire. I wasn’t just his prisoner. I was his prize.

Paxton Stewart.... The boy I spent my entire childhood pining after. He never saw me of course. To him I was just a child. His best friend’s baby sister. A silly little girl. Until I wasn’t anymore.... I thought I could be the one to change him. The one to tame him. Instead, I became one of the many broken hearts he left in his path. 

Gavin Porter...Now that’s a name I wish I never had to hear again. In just one night, he managed to turn my entire world upside down. I’m determined to move past it. But life doesn’t always cooperate, especially when my roommate is now shacking up with his best friend. If he thinks his boyish charm and crooked smile are enough to make me forget, he has another thing coming. The heart is a fragile thing. I have no intention of putting mine back in the hands of a man hell-bent on seeing how far it will bend before it finally breaks.

I want him. Unlike I have ever wanted anything before in my entire life. I knew it from the very moment his eyes met mine; the way my skin burned under his dark gaze. I knew nothing would ever be the same again. Decklan Taylor isn’t just tempting; he’s dangerous - a storm who destroys everything in his wake. But even as I stand in the path of his force, I can’t turn away. While he may be the very thing that breaks me, he’s also the only thing that has ever made me feel alive. Sometimes falling in love is more than just crazy, it's downright stupid.

Sham. Fraud. Hoax. All words that describe my relationship with Callum Hanson. It didn’t start out that way. We used to be friends. That is until high school, when Callum decided he was too cool to be seen with his less than popular next-door neighbor. 

It’s funny how differently we view life when we’re young. Everything feels possible- limitless. If only things could stay that way forever. Then maybe life wouldn’t be so complicated. Maybe Jace would still be the same ten-year-old boy I fell in love with. Maybe I’d still be that same girl too. The girl who believed that there wasn’t anything we couldn’t overcome. But I’m not that girl anymore. Time has beaten me down, broken me, taken everything from me. And it’s taken even more from Jace. I naively believed that I could save him...From his dad. From his anger.

For years, I’ve been planning my escape. Preparing for the day when I could leave home and never look back. But when the moment came, it didn’t happen like I had planned. I didn’t pack up my car and drive away, watching my old life disappear in the rearview mirror like I had always envisioned I would. Instead, I ran — quite literally — as fast and far as my feet would take me. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I had to get away. And that’s when he found me.... 

You never get over your first love. It’s something I’ve heard countless times. Like someone has to point out that your pain will never go away. That your shattered heart will never mend. Because that’s exactly what my heart did the day I watched Asher Evans board that train - it shattered, splintering into a million tiny fragments that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to piece back together. He was the boy I had loved since I understood what loving someone mean.

Alec Murray. He was the one. From the first moment I saw him, I knew. I had never been more certain of anything in my 16 years on this Earth. But Alec didn’t notice me. At least not in the way that I wanted him to. He noticed my best friend instead. I stood by and watched their relationship blossom. An outsider looking in, wishing things were different. Torn between my loyalty to my best friend and the boy who had unknowingly stolen my heart. 

Life is full of many things. Love. Loss. Heartbreak. Laughter. No matter how small, each moment has value. Then there are the big moments. The moments that define us. And the people who shape our very existence. Abel Collins is that person for me. From the very first time our eyes locked, I knew there was something about him. That he was the person that would change everything. And he did. But Abel isn’t just any man...His past is his prison. His guilt keeps him chained. His grief defines him. And now it’s up to me to set him free.

They say everything happens for a reason - that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. For the longest time, I didn’t think that was true. I had stumbled around in the dark for so many years that I didn’t think I would ever find my way out. But when I finally did, it came in the most unexpected way. Miles Hollins had been my brother’s best friend for as long as I could remember. We didn’t like each other much growing up. Or rather, we couldn’t stand each other. 

Roses are red. Violets are blue. Forget everything good you’ve been told about love. Because, none of it’s true. You don’t agree? Spend a day in my shoes and you’d curse love, too. My name’s Blue. Yes, you read that right. Blue Daniels. And I hate love. I despise every single thing about it. In my 32 years on this Earth, it has brought me nothing but heartbreak and disappointment. Love is a void.

Ryland Thorpe taught me the hard way that good doesn’t always win and sometimes the people we trust the most are the ones that can hurt us the deepest. At 15, my world began and ended with him. He was my older brother’s best friend. He was my protector. He was the boy I had loved since I was old enough to understand what loving someone meant. And he was a liar.... It’s been five years since I’ve seen him. Five long years and the memory of him still haunts me like it was yesterday.

Ten hours… That’s how much time we spent together. How much time I got with the man whose bright eyes and sultry smile almost made me forget that I was sick. Six hundred minutes… That’s how long it took me to fall in love. Thirty-six thousand seconds... And then it was over. And all I wanted was more. More seconds. More minutes. More hours. More him. Ten hours… Such a small, insignificant amount of time. Yet those ten hours changed everything.

I met Thad Mitchell for the first time when I was just a child. I didn’t remember much about him - except that he pushed me off a swing set when I was four years old and broke my arm. Not the best thing to remember about a person, but there it is. He moved away a couple years later and soon became a distant memory. That is until I walked into my parents' house after being gone for four years to find him sitting at the kitchen table with my family like he’d been there all along.

It was destiny - the night I met Hudson Demasi. We spent one incredible night together under a haze of tequila - a perfect night. And when I woke the next day, he was gone.... I never expected to see him again - especially not five years later standing on a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans as none other than hot new country artist Hudson James.