Chapters
74 total- 1 Chapter 1: I Wasn’t Ready for Her
- 2 Chapter 2: Grocery Store of Doom
- 3 Chapter 3: The Great Rice Krispie Disaster
- 4 Chapter 4: The Closet of Emotional Trauma (and Dust)
- 5 Chapter 5: The Avoidance Olympics
- 6 Chapter 6: The Dinner Where Everyone Pretended Everything Was Fine (And No One Believed It)
- 7 Chapter 7: The Kitchen at 2AM Was Not Neutral Ground
- 8 Chapter 8: My Best Friend Met My Stepmom and Now Nothing Is Safe
- 9 Chapter 9: There’s No Such Thing as an Innocent Movie Night
- 10 Chapter 10: I Dreamed About Her and Woke Up Stupid
- 11 Chapter 11: I Didn’t Mean to Confess to Milo, But Here We Are
- 12 Chapter 12: My Dad Found the Wrong Thing and Got the Right Idea
- 13 Chapter 13: I Can’t Keep Pretending He Doesn’t See Me
- 14 Chapter 14: Dinner Is Served (and So Is Emotional Damage)
- 15 Chapter 15: This Never Should’ve Happened (But It Did)
- 16 Chapter 16: Morning After / Guilt’s Whisper
- 17 Chapter 17: Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Feel It Too
- 18 Chapter 18: Guilt Is a Weight You Can’t Hide from (Elena’s POV)
- 19 Chapter 19: If You’re Not Going to Tell the Truth, I Might
- 20 Chapter 20: The Line I Said I Wouldn’t Cross (But Did)
- 21 Chapter 21: Almost Caught, Almost Honest
- 22 Chapter 22: The Secret I Shouldn’t Be Holding
- 23 Chapter 23: The Edge of the Lie
- 24 Chapter 24: Before the Fall
Showing 1–24 of 74 chapters
Start from Chapter 1About this novel
I came home from college expecting to deal with my emotionally unavailable father, an empty fridge, and a summer full of boredom.
What I didn’t expect was to walk into the kitchen and find a barefoot, stunning woman in my dad’s shirt stirring eggs like she owned the place.
Spoiler: She does.
Her name is Elena, and apparently, she’s my brand-new stepmother—seven years older than me, way too cheerful, and totally off-limits.
But try telling that to my brain when she’s bending over to grab orange juice or accidentally falling on top of me in the laundry room. Try telling that to my heart when she’s laughing at my jokes, defending me at dinner, or wearing my hoodie because “it smells like comfort.”
My dad doesn’t see her. Not really.
But I do.
And that’s the problem.
Now I’m stuck in a house full of tension, sarcasm, and slow-burn chaos.
She’s married to my father.
I’m supposed to be focusing on my future.
But somehow, I’m falling for the one woman I absolutely, definitely, 100% should not be falling for.
Oops.
What I didn’t expect was to walk into the kitchen and find a barefoot, stunning woman in my dad’s shirt stirring eggs like she owned the place.
Spoiler: She does.
Her name is Elena, and apparently, she’s my brand-new stepmother—seven years older than me, way too cheerful, and totally off-limits.
But try telling that to my brain when she’s bending over to grab orange juice or accidentally falling on top of me in the laundry room. Try telling that to my heart when she’s laughing at my jokes, defending me at dinner, or wearing my hoodie because “it smells like comfort.”
My dad doesn’t see her. Not really.
But I do.
And that’s the problem.
Now I’m stuck in a house full of tension, sarcasm, and slow-burn chaos.
She’s married to my father.
I’m supposed to be focusing on my future.
But somehow, I’m falling for the one woman I absolutely, definitely, 100% should not be falling for.
Oops.