Micah Harding has always been known to cause heartache.

He didn't know it, but he broke my heart the summer I turned eleven.

Humiliated and embarrassed, I didn't speak to him again after he claimed to have rescued me.

Now, ten years later, I find myself on his doorstep, heartbroken yet again.

Only this time, I'm an unemployed model, running from the life I've tried so hard to create, about to be thrust back into the one I escaped.

Although he's the same billionaire I knew all those years ago, Micah's changed.

I see the pain he holds in his blue-gray eyes, desperate to forget his reality and the secrets he holds within them.

My childhood feelings for him were kept under lock and key—they had to be—but now that we're older and living together, the feelings I once had for him are no longer reduced to a meaningless crush. They're real. And the more time we spend together, the more difficult they are to dismiss.

But as temptation consumes us, we realize our pasts aren't the only facts we're running from.

I'm twenty-one.

He's thirty-three.

And my older brother's best friend.

I never believed there was beauty in heartache… until I fell for him.

Lennon Harding, heir to his father's billionaire law firm, could have had anyone.

But he chose me.

Well. . . not quite.

On my nineteenth birthday, he whispered sweet nothings into my ear.

Six years later, while his family tried to screw over mine, he'd looked at me as if we'd never met.

Now, at his father's funeral, Lennon learns inheriting the Harding legacy won't come without a price.

So, when he proposes the idea of me becoming his wife, I'm quick to turn him down.

I'm no stranger to being used, and Lennon's proposal is no different, but when tragic news hits my family, I'm suddenly sprinting to meet him at the altar.

Because I desperately need him now, almost as much as he needs me.

But the more we settle into our roles of husband and wife, the harder I find it to ignore the feelings of our past reigniting.

The way his lips feel against mine.

The way his hands easily wander without thought.

And before long, I'm starting to wonder if his whispers of sweet nothings have always meant as much to him as they have to me.

But with a heart as dark as his, that isn't possible . . . is it?