Never Just Friends

Maya Sutton has a rule: don't fall in love with your best friend. She's followed it for three years — through late-night talks, shared groceries, and a hundred almost-moments she's trained herself not to notice. Theo Reyes is her roommate, her person, the one constant in a life built around careful boundaries. Falling for him isn't an option. It never was. Until the night she finds an old photo, and sees the way he was looking at her when he thought no one was watching. "I almost kissed you," he admits. "That night. I wanted to." One almost-kiss becomes a real one. One rule, broken, becomes a relationship neither of them is ready to lose — and neither expected to find. But love this long in the making doesn't come without a cost. Old habits. Old fears. A secret that threatens to undo everything just as it's finally beginning. Maya and Theo will have to learn that loving someone means more than finally saying it out loud — it means choosing each other again, every day, even when it's hard. Even when it's scary. Even when the truth might cost them everything they almost didn't get to have. Never Just Friends is a slow-burn romance about the people who've been there all along — and the courage it takes to stop pretending otherwise.