Madeleine Becker's parents died when she was ten years old. Ripped from her home and everything that she has ever loved, she is forced to start all over again. The only way for her to move on is to build walls around her heart and keep everyone at a safe distance. Her logic: she can't get hurt if she doesn't fall in love.That theory is blown to pieces when she meets Reid Connely during her freshman year at college. He is gorgeous and darkly mysterious.

She ran from a past that still hasn't let her go, but her dream of becoming a lawyer is stronger than her fear of confronting that past. Embry's sole focus is to get through law school, with the help of her best friend, Morgan, and make something of the broken girl she became. Not thinking about falling in love, being in a relationship or even entertaining the idea of romance, Embry is moving forward one day at a time.

Tucked away at the base of the Rocky Mountains lived a little boy with one singular dream: leave this broken and battered home and become someone. Be somebody’s hero. That boy was me - Colby Brooks. Except I’m not that same little boy anymore. My dreams might still be the same, but my reality isn’t. I learned a long damn time ago the only way to achieve my dreams was to avoid distractions - at any cost. But all it took was one single night. One night and my entire life...changed. One night had me colliding headfirst with the biggest distraction of my life: Rory Oaks.

Am I friends with JP Cane? Ha! That's laughable. Besides the fact that he’s adopted some far-fetched notion from the movie When Harry Met Sally that says men and women can't be friends and work together, it’s safe to say we're not friends. He's annoyingly loud, obnoxiously handsome, and has made an art out of poking all my hot buttons...multiple times a day. So you can imagine how disgruntled I am when I not only have to fly to San Francisco with him for work, but stay in the same penthouse. Yup, we're sharing the same air, 24-7. We're talking full-fledged working roommates.

Reed Windsor doesn't do relationships. Though he could charm the pants off any girl he wants, he's not interested. He's always been too captivated by a special someone from his past to get serious with anyone else. Sure, she has no clue he exists, but he's willing to bide his time and convince her he's worth a shot.

When the publicity team of the new local restaurant Going in Blind begins their search for a hot, local celebrity to promote the wildly popular eatery, they couldn't have found a better person than Noely Clark. A hopeless romantic with an exceedingly demanding schedule, she found it impossible to find the man of her dreams so being set up on three very different, very attractive, and very distinctive blind dates, seemed like a great idea, but who will she choose?

Regret, she's a snarky little bitch. I've tried several times to regret the events that took place on June 5, 2008, but for the life of me, I can't. I'd never regret the pain, the suffering, or the heartache because they ultimately led me to the place I am in now. And I can't regret the place I am in now. What I still can't figure out is this: How is it possible that the single worst day of my life inadvertently became the very best day? Five years ago my life was irrevocably changed. Seventeen minutes was all it took to lose my best friend, to lose the love of my life.

The better captured me; she's who stole my heart and made me realize I couldn’t live without this woman. The worst of her took my breath away - kicked me when I was down and twisted me into a million knots. When I first met her, I thought she was someone I would never see again. The second time I ran into her, it was a random coincidence. The third? I didn’t know it at the time, but she was the girl I was going to marry. But life isn’t always perfect. You have to take the better and the worse - even if it means giving her up.

He’s my art professor. I’m his student. With an electric connection and undeniable chemistry, I know it won’t be long until one of us cracks. When the opportunity arose to pose nude for a life drawing workshop, I couldn’t help the thrill of knowing he’d be watching. While everyone else looked past me with their eyes narrowed and concentrated, drawing only the lines and angles of my body, he saw right through me down to my vulnerability. Professor Hampton looked at me like he wanted to do more than look at me. He saw more than just the physical aspects—he saw me.

It's crazy how fast the buzz comes back after you've been sober for so long. Whiskey stood there, on my doorstep, just like he had one year before. Except this time, there was no rain, no anger, no wedding invitation - it was just us. >It was just him - the old friend, the easy smile, the twisted solace wrapped in a glittering bottle. It was just me - the alcoholic, pretending like I didn't want to taste him, realizing too quickly that months of being clean didn't make me crave him any less.

Sabrina Chandler has been unlucky in love: 10 years ago, just before her high school graduation, she was shockingly betrayed by her boyfriend and her so-called best friend. That dark day, a mysterious bad boy, Tyler Anderson, came to her defense. He made her promise to leave their hometown, told her she deserved so much more — things that he could not give her. Now, Sabrina reluctantly heads to her high school reunion, hoping to confront her betrayers — and, just maybe, to meet Tyler again.

I'm the girl who doesn't let anyone in. My world was shattered and turned upside down in one night. Since then I've been trying to live, if that's what you call it, but fighting the anxiety of what happened and trusting others is hard. Each day is a struggle to reach for the unknown. I watched my father give my mother the world and the stars. She took everything from him, then left him as a broken man with nothing to live for. I told myself I'd never fall in love. I'm guarding my heart and emotions, only looking out for number one.

What do ice cream and Sadie Montgomery have in common? They're both ice cold, but one taste is never enough. I wanted to be friends - I would have even settled for her seeing me as anything but a nerd - but there was no getting through. So just like any hard-headed, red-blooded man out there, I made up my mind. I'd make my coworker fall for me.

I have known Jax my whole life, and I have loved him with every breath I've ever taken. The fact that we were born a mere month apart to mothers that are best friends has made us inseparable since birth. What we have is so rare, one would think our story would be written, our fate sealed. But, unfortunately, that's not how life works. Life offers us many choices that can turn destiny into chance.

My heart opens to Cooper Haywood the moment we meet. How can it resist? He's charming, devastatingly handsome, and sweeps me off my feet before I realize the impact he's making. And then it's too late. We fall too fast to worry about the consequences. We love so hard that we ache when we're apart. Even though I have a past that still haunts me and he has a future that could put us at risk, none of that matters when we're together. Until it does. And then everything changes.