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Prologue

Emery

Hartwell

Present day

The nutty, s pastI liked the scent It made me feel content, in control, and safe Because it usually meant I was in my favorite place

My bookstore café

Standing at h-perfor so content I tried to focus onmy customer’s cappuccino and not on my immature behavior earlier

Bailey wanted to invite Ivy Green into our friendship circle

And because I wasn’t coirls had decided not to

Like ere in middle school

I groaned undermy cheeks heat As I handed over the coffee, took the money for it, and moved on to the next customer, only half of me was in the store The other half was locked inbotherso time Even when I would finally o, because it would come back to annoy me months later, just for the hell of it

Ivy Green was Iris’s daughter Iris was one of my favorite people She’d been the only person I was close to until Jessica Huntington—noson—vacationed in Hartwell and ended up staying There was so about Jessica I instinctively trusted, and trust was difficult for me

I’d trusted Iris too

And this was how I repaid her friendship? By using hter out of a pretty fantastic group of woh an arduous time?

By arduous, I meant that Ivy used to live in Hollywood as a screenwriter and was engaged to a big-ti overdose Ivy returned to Hartwell a counpoint to extort money out of her, all after he ood friend, Dahlia McGuire, took a bullet trying to protect Ivy Ivy then cracked Freddie Jackson over the head with an Oscar statuette to protect Dahlia froain

Welcome to Hartwell, folks!

We’ve had a lot going on these last few years

Iris had worried about her daughter before Oliver died, especially after Ivy broke contact with her parents during the relationship I’d counseled Iris about it, continually prodding her to reach out to Ivy But the woretted that stubbornness

Iris would want Ivy to have support She needed excellent friends I couldn’t stand in the way of that, even if I was afraid soroup that had becoirls

That was no reason to shut someone out

I sighed The girls wouldn’tto let things work out naturally Perhaps Ivy needed more effort than that

It would be up toher into the fold

The thought made my stomach knot

I wasn’t good with giving people any kind of power over me, and what if Ivy rejected my offer of friendsh

ip?

And yet, I’d let Jess, Bailey, and Dahlia in, and it had been my best decision ever