His Last Chance, My First

Elise Whitman thought she'd have her life figured out by twenty-five. Instead, she's driving home from the breakup she should've seen coming, crying to her roommate over the phone. Stuck in the same Virginia town she grew up in, she's watching the life she planned crumble while everyone else, including her old friends, moved on.

When a girls' trip to New York is proposed, it's a desperate grab for a distraction. Elise expects awkward small talk, cheap drinks, and maybe a brief escape from her own thoughts.

She does not expect to see Julian Vaughn's face staring back from a Manhattan billboard.

The unserious class clown, the funny one everyone loved but no one expected to leave town, is gone. The boy who lacked all ambition is now a sharp-suited, successful lawyer with a reputation that precedes him.
And when they meet again, he remembers everything-especially the fact that she's finally single. But the warm, funny boy she knew is buried under layers of cool indifference and sharp edges. He invites her into his glittering world of rooftop bars and lavish parties, but it feels less like a reunion and more like a test. He's trying to prove the girl who never saw him as anything more than a joke is now firmly within his reach. But as the lines between revenge and attraction blur, Elise is left wondering: is she just a prize to be won, or is the boy she once laughed with still somewhere beneath the billionaire lawyer's icy exterior?