Her: Zariah Ellis 24. 5'1". Dark brown skin, curly brown hair, glasses, dimples. The shy, innocent English teacher with the legendary candy drawer. Every kid at Millbrook High knows: if you're bleeding, broken, or just hungry, you go to Miss E. She's the sweetest soul in the building... and the one everyone overlooks. Youngest of three, she grew up in the shadow of her gorgeous, popular sisters. High school taught her she was the "ugly shy one." She believed it. Him: Callan Wolfe 31. 6'3". Brown hair, whiskey eyes, beard, tattoos. The new PE teacher. Hard. Cold. Built like sin. Except he's not a teacher. He's Rook - black-ops assassin, undercover to dismantle a trafficking ring using the school's charity drives. The target is faculty. His orders: Don't get attached. Don't break cover. Don't feel. The Problem: He was supposed to watch everyone. Instead, he can't stop watching her. The shy teacher who stays late grading papers. Who kneels to a kid's level instead of talking down. Who thinks she's invisible but lights up every room she walks into. She's innocent. He's violence. She's candy and cardigans. He's blood and silencers. She's the mission liability he can't afford... and the one person he'd burn the whole operation down for. When the ring puts her in their crosshairs, his mission changes. It's no longer find the target. It's touch her and die.

Imani Brooks is 25, 5'1", plus-size, glasses, dimples, and done. After two years with a cheating, abusive boyfriend, she cashes out, packs up her pit mix Max, and drives 3,000 miles to the small rainy town she's always dreamed of: Astoria, Oregon.She buys the little blue house with the big porch on Maple Street. She buys Rose's Diner on Commercial Street, closed since 2018. She has a business plan, a recipe binder, and absolutely no idea how to swing a hammer. Enter Rhys Callahan.35. 6'6". Long brown hair, brown beard, green eyes, tattoos everywhere. Ex-Army. Rides a Harley. Owns Callahan Construction - the company his dad built, the company this whole town trusts. He was supposed to give her a quote. Instead he catches her every time she trips over a drop cloth, brings her soup when Oregon rain gives her a cold, and sits in his truck outside her house during a storm just so she won't be alone. He's ten years older. He's never left Astoria. She's never felt safe before. He looks at her like she hung the moon. She's never been looked at like that in her life. With the help of his interior-designer little sister June, Imani's loud Atlanta family watching on FaceTime, her new Astoria girl gang - Aaliyah the flower shop mom, Jo the gay bar owner, and Nia the salon queen - and Rhys's lifelong porch crew of a fisherman, a sheriff, and a mechanic, Imani learns how to stay. Cozy, slow-burn, and healing. Fall leaves, Christmas lights, porch swings in the rain, and a big man who builds her a home with his bare hands. He falls first. He falls hardest. He's not letting her go.

black oc x mason thames 𝖂HEN mason drifts back into àmerei's life through mutual friends five months after their breakup, she's forced to confront the hurt she thought she'd buried. to her, mason is the boy who loved her and then walked away before she could understand why, to him, àmerei is the one person he never stopped loving.

james, cortis x black oc

black oc x malachi barton after a breakup neither of them saw coming, kaiyah lewis and malachi barton have to learn what it means to love each other from a distance. as they grow separately they're forced to question whether they were the right people at the wrong time, or if love that hurts this much is still worth finding its way back to.