

Anne Cooke is about to get married when she discovers her fiance has been cheating. With her mother gravely ill and five years of love too heavy to just drop, she swallows it, until the sleeplessness becomes unbearable and she wanders into a traditional medicine clinic. There she meets James Young,and something shifts. On impulse she propositions him. Just one night. What she doesn't know is that James already knows exactly who she is, and has quietly decided to help her find her way back to herself. Through carefully prescribed remedies and steadier conversations, he walks beside her as she slowly remembers she has a spine. On her wedding day, she exposes her fiance in front of everyone and walks away with her head up. By then the feelings between Anne and James have long stopped being subtle, and the revelation that he comes from money and that his mother once knew hers feels less like a plot twist and more like something that was always going to happen. He proposes in the same clinic where they first met.

On my sweet sixteen, my three brothers came home with a girl named Sylvie. They said I have to treat her like my family. I didn’t think much would change. But years later, everything did. Jace, my youngest brother, shoved me down the stairs for her. Asher—the oldest, who once promised he'd protect me forever—told me to get out. So I left. Quietly. They thought I was just acting out. So they took Sylvie to France, didn't even bothering to check in What they didn’t know was that I’d signed my name on a contract—one that aligned me with our family’s biggest rival by becoming their youngest chemist. Written in black and white, I could never go home again. The night they found out I was really gone for good? They broke. Every last one of them.