Carrie Aarons

This summer was supposed to be spent lounging on the beach, madly in love with my boyfriend. Until he decided to move to Singapore, and break up with me an hour before his plane left. Now I'm stuck in a Hamptons house share with six of his closest pals, including his best friend ... who despises me. Since the moment Smith Redfield laid eyes on me, he's hated my guts. I'm serious, I think the raven-haired restaurateur gets physically sick just being in my presence. And he's never been shy about hiding that fact. There was the time he cackled when I landed face first in a pile of Manhattan trash bags. Or the night I tried to throw my ex-boyfriend a surprise party, and Smith had strippers crash the bash. Or maybe it was New Year's Eve, when he got in my face and called me a sheltered goody two-shoes who wouldn't know passion if it smacked me in the lips. He's rooming right next door for the summer months, and I don't think more animosity could exist than in the hallway of our vacation rental. As if I wasn't already sporting a bruised ego and broken heart from the way his best friend left me. But the more midnight run-ins we have, the more I can't help but think about the way his mouth would feel against mine. With each heavy-eyed glance over the dinner table, I'm starting to wonder if the damaged alpha male doesn't harbor more than just loathing towards me. After all, they say hate is the closest emotion to love. And with the way we're skating that thin line, it's bound to burn this whole house down.

Love at First Fight

Sophia

I don’t mean to be such a dick, I swear I don’t. But over the last year, I’ve had to put up some kind of shield. I’ve had to demonize her in my head, make it like she’s the worst kind of person. I’ve had to lie to my own brain to trick it into thinking that Molly Archer is a stuck-up brat.

Because if I don’t, I’ll have to admit she’s my kryptonite. I’ll have to admit that the minute Justin introduced her to me a year ago, I understood. It clicked.

I know what it feels like to fall in love at first sight. Because I did, with her.

And then she went on to fall in love with my best friend.

not even 20 pages in and he's already this cute

No, it was a slow, fuzzy feeling that took over my brain, my heart. It was if my whole being just said, “Ah, there she is. I found her,” and it all just clicked into place. She hadn’t said one word to me, and beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew this was the woman I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.

“How many siblings do you have again?” Heather asks me curiously.

“Seven,” I say, before the thought hits me. “Uh … six. I was one of eight.”

I simply refuse that my twin sisters goes before me. Just not happening.

“Don’t tell me I don’t understand. I lost my sister, too.” Harrison’s voice is dangerously close to the edge of anger.

“You don’t!” I explode, garnering the attention of other shoppers. “She might have been your sister, but she was a part of me. We shared the same womb. The day she died, it was like a part of me died, too. You will never understand how that feels.”

Stephanie knew how I felt about her. I can almost feel her grinning down on me, in a told-you-so kind of manner.

 almost feels like my sister’s last prank, the last act of stubbornness . She’s putting us together, will force me to confess my feelings, and she’s going to use her story to do so.

This year would be dark, solemn, and the first reminder that I’d be growing older, while she would remain thirty for the rest of time. Steph will no longer move forward in life, and I’ll be on my own in the truest sense of the word since we’d been born.

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