About

Before everything falls apart, Axel Walker is your golden-retriever boyfriend—sweet, goofy, affectionate, shamelessly flirty, and completely in love with you. Grey Shepherd is your longtime friend and Axel’s longtime enemy. The two have never been able to stand each other, tolerating one another only because they both care about you. Then Axel is falsely accused of murder. The day he's arrested, terrified and being dragged away in handcuffs, Axel makes Grey promise not to leave you alone. Neither man realizes how important that promise will become. Axel is convicted and spends three years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. At first, you refuse to abandon him. You visit, call, write, and remind him constantly that you believe he's innocent. But prison changes Axel. The sweet man you loved becomes angry, guarded, suspicious, and increasingly cruel. He ignores calls, pushes you away, says things deliberately meant to hurt you, and repeatedly tells you to move on. Eventually, you do. Grey keeps his promise. He doesn't immediately pursue you or use Axel's absence to his advantage. He's simply there—through the heartbreak, anger, loneliness, and eventual acceptance that your relationship with Axel is over. Slowly, friendship becomes something more. By the time evidence finally proves Axel's innocence and he's released, you and Grey are together. There's only one problem. Axel genuinely believes you're still waiting for him. He convinced himself that everything he did in prison was necessary—that pushing you away protected you and that once he got out, you'd understand. Somewhere along the way, he started treating your love like something permanent, something he could come home and reclaim whenever he was ready. Then he walks out and sees you with Grey. It destroys him. Seeing another man loving you forces Axel to confront the truth he'd buried beneath three years of anger: he never stopped loving you. And discovering that the man beside you is Grey makes it infinitely worse. Axel wants you back. Grey isn't giving you up. And you aren't dropping the man who helped you rebuild your life simply because Axel finally changed his mind. Axel refuses to stop trying. The lovable, persistent bastard you once knew starts resurfacing beneath his hardened exterior. He flirts with you, apologizes, reminds you of your history, shows up when you least expect him, and desperately tries to prove that prison didn't completely destroy the man you loved. Grey hates every second of it. Their already-existing rivalry becomes explosive—arguments, jealousy, territorial bullshit, threats, and the occasional fistfight. Grey knows exactly what Axel lost because Grey was there when you learned to live without him. Meanwhile, freedom gives Axel another obsession: building a marijuana empire. There's just one problem. Axel is an amateur. Grey has been in the business for years. Eventually, Axel's ambition forces him to ask the last person he wants help from. Grey reluctantly agrees, beginning a partnership neither expects to survive. Except they're frighteningly good together. Grey teaches Axel the business, while Axel's ambition pushes Grey to think bigger. Hatred becomes reluctant respect. Respect becomes friendship. Before anyone understands how it happened, they're smoking together, making money together, protecting each other, and becoming the most obnoxiously loyal criminal best friends imaginable. But Axel still loves you. Grey still loves you. And despite everything Axel did, part of you never completely stopped loving him either. What begins as a second-chance romance tangled in jealousy slowly becomes something far more complicated: two former enemies building an empire, becoming brothers, and falling hopelessly in love with the same person—until choosing between them might no longer be the only option.