569 Book(s) Related to read cherry blossoms after winter

I have been tormented by a strange illness for ten years, with blood draws and surgeries being commonplace.
My mother always encouraged me, saying, "Nian Nian, bear with it a little longer. The pain will be over soon. Mom and Dad are doing this to save your life."
Hoping to be cured as soon as possible, I gritted my teeth and endured ten years of painful treatments, even if it meant living like a lab subject.
That was until I accidentally overheard my parents’ cruel conversation:
“Increase the blood draw even more. It doesn’t matter if she dies—she was only picked up to save Ying Ying. As long as she has a breath left, she owes it to us.”
At that moment, I finally understood: I was never sick at all.
The decade of daily treatments were nothing but a way to use me to extend the life of their biological daughter.

Beau and I have been together for three years. I paid for the entire yacht charter out of my own pocket, and he shows up with his childhood best friend Sadie in tow, then goes around telling everyone it was his idea, his grand gesture.

Out on the water, Sadie spots a small octopus drifting near the surface and decides she has to have it. The thing pulses with glowing blue rings.

I'm a certified expert diver. I know exactly what it is the second I see it. I try to stop her.

She bursts into tears and tells Beau I'm going after her.

So Beau, ever the hero where Sadie's concerned, jumps in himself and fishes the thing out.

Sadie plays with it. It bites her. She's on the deck before she even knows what hit her.

Beau grabs me, screaming at me to suck out the venom. I refuse. He calls me a cold, heartless bitch, and in the chaos, shoves me overboard into shark-infested water.

I die out there. Nothing left of me.

They use my phone to fake a suicide note. Depression, they say. Jumped on her own. Then they take my company, my assets, everything.

They post online hinting I tried to push Sadie in and slipped.

My parents, worn down by the online harassment and the grief of losing me, both die of heart attacks.

Then I open my eyes. And I'm back. The morning of the trip.

My name is Ophelia. The day my adoptive family threw me out, I smiled and tossed their money in the trash.

No one knew I was "Dawn" — the legendary miracle healer every powerful family desperately sought. No one knew I was behind a billion-dollar fashion empire, or that I could make Wall Street tremble with a single trade. I hid everything behind an ordinary face.

My birth family turned out to be the wealthiest dynasty in the city. And my fiancé — the man I'd already met without knowing it — was Mason Smith, the man the whole city feared.

He took my hand, leaned close, and murmured: "Can you feel my heartbeat right now?"

I pressed my fingers to his chest and replied seriously: "Your heart rate is elevated, but perfectly healthy. No need to worry."

He paused — then smiled. The kind of smile that made my own heart do something I couldn't explain.

But as he kept getting closer to the truth... I wondered how much longer I could keep my last secret hidden.

Some masks were never meant to come off — but what happens when someone refuses to stop looking?

Ten years of secret service honed my Phantom Legion, a force I built that could make a small nation tremble. On the day I retired and returned to New York, I found a cardboard tent next to a garbage dump in a Bronx back alley. Curled up inside was my daughter, whom I hadn't seen in five years. She was covered in bruises, barefoot, and clutching half a moldy loaf of bread. I picked her up and dialed the phone—"I want everyone who wronged her to suffer a fate worse than death! "

A glass of drugged water left me completely naked on a hotel bed.

The task in the notebook was to accompany a stranger for three months, or else my nude photos would be exposed to everyone.

I had no choice but to agree and sacrifice my first time.

That night was extremely painful!

Because I was still a virgin, when his strong body pressed down on me, all I could do was grip the bedsheets tightly.

My inexperience made the man frown; "Emily, you slut, why are you suddenly so tight?"

He had mistaken me for someone else. Clearly, the woman named Emily was not a virgin. I couldn't reveal that it was my first time, so I bit my lip and endured the pain as best as I could. It hurt so much!

"Does it feel good, woman?" The man smirked at me, "You just moaned, you know. At least you've made some progress tonight."

Oh my God, did I really moan?

Alison felt unbearable shyness, closing her eyes tightly, desperately hoping for everything to end soon...

After sleeping for a thousand years, I returned to the ancestral castle that was supposed to be mine.
Only to find my throne torn down and turned into an auction block for the black market, my territory carved up clean by traitors.
And my only pureblood descendant in this world was actually being auctioned off like livestock—covered in blood, chained up with a cheap dog collar around his neck.
The entire room of nobles and elites mistook me for the lowest kind of half-blood trash, mocking me as a rat too stupid to know when he was dead.
The usurper, eager to curry favor with the Abyss, shouted that he would drain me dry and offer my blood as a tribute to the three pureblood princes deep within the Abyss.
Then the void split open, and those three supreme princes—the untouchable monsters the world worshiped—truly descended.
Under the horrified gaze of more than a thousand nobles and elites, those three ancient monsters threw themselves at my feet, scrambling and crawling, wailing in terror without even daring to raise their heads:
"Your unworthy descendants... welcome the Ancestor's return!!!"

In my past life, I threw myself in front of the black panther alpha when his rut drove him into a frenzy—only to have him toss me into a pack of beasts and watch me get torn to pieces.
After being reborn, the first thing I did was rip off the royal crest pinned to my chest and swallow a suppressant, cutting off his control over me for good.
Everyone waited for me to come crawling back and beg for peace.
Instead, I turned and walked straight into the frozen Northlands, where the death rate was eighty percent.
There, through a severed arm, a ruined face, and the thin line between life and death, I awakened as the Platinum Lion King.
He dropped to his knees in the snow, crying and begging for forgiveness.
I only had one question for him: "What makes you think you're anything to me?"

She never saw it coming. After five years of marriage, it took a DNA test to blow everything up.

The son she raised from birth? Her husband's kid with his ex. And somehow, both of them knew the whole time and said nothing.

It gets worse. She overheard her husband's actual plan: wait for the ex to come back, then push her out of the company "nicely" and hand her five million as a goodbye gift.

Five million? She single-handedly kept that company alive, pouring in her own money and connections to clean up his messes. And that's all she's worth?

She was done. She wanted everything back that was hers.

The ungrateful kid? She's over it. The husband chasing his first love? Good riddance.

But the moment she walked away for real, both of them came running back.

"Baby, please. Just give me one more chance."

She didn't even look up.

I was frozen for 100 years due to illness.
One hundred years later, the whole world was ravaged by strange phenomena, and humanity was huddled together in a few small places to survive.
I was awakened from my slumber by the investigation team. I thought I would be killed by the monster as soon as I woke up, but I found that the monster here was my good brother from college.
Besides him, the eerie owner of the barbecue restaurant, the matchmaking ghost who likes to harm people through blind dates, the S-class monstrous ghost in the cemetery... they are all my old friends...
The world a hundred years from now feels strangely familiar...

To save my cousin from a car accident, my mother, a medical luminary, used me as a "human guinea pig" for twelve years.
When I was twelve, she made me inject myself with three injections of unproven new drugs every week;
when I was fourteen, she directly shoved toxic compounds into my mouth.
When my organs were irreversibly failing and I was vomiting blood in the ICU, she coldly tossed me a payment order:
"Stop pretending to be dead. Immediately kowtow and apologize to your brother, or no hospital will admit you."
As she wished, I was forced to leave the hospital and died at her glamorous new drug launch.
Later, that high-and-mighty mother, obsessed with fame and fortune, knelt for an entire night in a snow-covered fir forest, holding my crudely made urn.
Sadly, I will never forgive her.

On my son's seventh birthday, he hid behind my husband's first love and shouted at me, "You're a bad woman! She's my real mom!"
My husband was even crueler. He threw me out of the house without a second thought.
"To me, you were nothing but a surrogate."
Heartbroken, I walked away—and later adopted an abandoned little boy.
Years passed, when my husband finally learned the truth about the woman he had always protected, he came to me with our biological son, both of them kneeling before me in tears, begging for forgiveness.
Holding my adopted son's hand, I smiled calmly.
"Sorry. I only have one son."

My wife is upstairs with another man—her first love.
But I don't want to fight about it.
I'm not staying here because of her.
Her father once saved my father's life. I'm here to repay that debt.
So they pushed even further.
She wants me to give way to her first love.
Give up my seat at dinner, my trust fund eligibility, my position as family consigliere, even our couple's travel tickets.
Fine. Have it your way.
I'm leaving to go back to being the Don I was meant to be.
Hope your family can survive the mafia wars without me.

Ten years of secret love, and what did I get? Watching him fall for another woman at MY art exhibition.

The most ridiculous part? He turned to me and said, "Harper, you have to help me win her over."

I orchestrated their romantic encounters, taught him how to charm women, even told him what flowers she liked. I was the perfect wingman, watching them fall in love while I licked my wounds in the dark.

Until Dr. Avery confronted me with one devastating question: "Do you really think he doesn't know you love him?"

When I finally screamed "I've loved you for ten years!" at Mason, his response froze my blood:

"I know. I've always known."

Turns out, my ten years of devotion were nothing more than a free emotional dumping ground to him—the convenient girl who would never leave. He enjoyed my care while pretending not to see my love, because that was safest, easiest.

Pathetic, right?

A woman wastes ten years loving a man, only to end up pushing him into someone else's arms.

Until Blake appeared.......

Seven years ago, my wife and son committed perjury in court, conspiring to send me to a high-security prison, all so they could elope with that fraudster.
Seven years later, I was released.
My ex-wife, with her son, arrogantly tossed a business card onto my faded work clothes:
"Go kowtow to my new husband and apologize, and I'll give you a waiter's job."
Little did she know that just hours later, at a top-tier financial summit across America, her seemingly untouchable new husband was kneeling at my feet like a dog.
And her proud multi-billion dollar empire was nothing more than garbage I could crush with a flick of my finger.

After ten years of being a "consumable," I performed my final maintenance on the very day Vivian handed my life's work over to someone else. I didn’t argue or resist; I just signed the paperwork with a smile. When the Thorne Tower began to collapse floor by floor due to my final permission error, she finally realized that all the brilliance she boasted of was nothing more than the residual warmth I had fed her. Now, she kneels in the ruins, begging me to turn back time. I only find her voice… annoying.

The apocalypse arrives, rain stops worldwide, outdoor temperatures soar to 60 degrees Celsius, and everyone fights and loses their humanity over a single drop of water.
But I gave away dozens of cases of bottled water that I had stockpiled at home to my neighbors downstairs for free.
People laughed at my overflowing compassion; my wicked ex even hoarded two tons of water, waiting to see me thirsty and begging her on my knees like a dog.
But what they didn't know was that I didn't need water at all.
Because I'm not human.

Her daughter lay dying—her only chance at survival resting in a bone marrow transplant from her biological father.
That man, the one Stella Johnson had once loved with all her heart, was nowhere to be found.
While Stella made call after call, hands trembling with desperation, Charles Hart was busy building a crystal castle for the daughter of his beloved white moonlight—lighting up the entire city with fireworks in her honor.
All Stella got in return was a cold, clipped response:
"I'm busy."
And then… silence.
She waited.
And waited.
Until the warmth left her daughter's tiny hand.
He never came.
Cradling the small urn, Stella stepped into the streets—only to be greeted by a cruel spectacle.
Every digital screen on the bustling boulevard played the same scene:
Charles, his white moonlight, and their daughter, smiling under the fireworks as they sang "Happy Birthday," basking in a future built on someone else's grave.
The love Stella once held for Charles didn't just die that night—it was burned to ash.
And from those ashes, something far stronger rose:
Hatred. Cold. Sharp. Unforgiving.

My fiancé overnight accumulated a massive gambling debt, and to save his life, he sent me, still a virgin, to the creditor's bed.
"Please... no... don't... please... let me go!"
My first time was incredibly painful, and I bit down hard on this stranger's shoulder.
Despite my pleas, he didn't stop; instead, it only excited him more as he teased my sensitive spots and ravaged me relentlessly...
To my shame, after the pain subsided, I found myself falling in love with the frequent waves of pleasure he brought me...

When Aria stumbles across Kael while trespassing into Nightclaw territory to gather rare herbs, the pull between them is instant—and undeniable. But their packs are enemies. Her Alpha would never allow it. And Kael has sworn off the bond that fate once used to destroy someone he loved.

Yet every moon draws them closer.

And when a dark force threatens to wipe out both packs, Aria and Kael may have no choice but to either fight fate—or surrender to it.

Everyone said I’d traded five years of my youth and my unwavering devotion for an engagement that every woman envied.
My fiancé, Felix Smith, seemed to believe it, too. He gave me pearls, promised me a bright future, and wrapped me up in a web of tenderness, layer after layer.
Until that afternoon, when he held me close, yet used a language he thought I didn’t understand to weave the perfect "wedding" con over the phone.
That was the moment I finally realized: over these five years, who had he really been looking at through me? And every pearl he ever gave me, whose tastes was he remembering?
When the elevator failed and darkness crashed down, the person he protected on instinct wasn’t me.
When the wind howled across the empty outskirts, the person he chose to abandon was me.
I’d been learning how to love him, how to become a proper bride. In the end, what I learned was how to exit quietly, out of his world with Serena.
Only when I slipped off that pearl ring did I understand—
Some love stories, from the very beginning, are nothing but long letters written to someone else.

What is fate? Waking up three days after you rejected your fated mates in front of the entire school, with the memories of your husband's betrayal still burning in your chest? Or finding out that the only way to save your empire is to compete for love on national television—against the man who murdered you?

Make your pick.

Odessa Montgomery died at thirty—cheated on, poisoned, and blown to pieces by the husband she trusted. Then she opened her eyes at twenty-one, three days after the mating gala where she publicly rejected the De Luca triplets. The rejection is still fresh. The whole school is still talking. And Damien Gracias, her charming hockey-star boyfriend, has no idea she remembers every lie he ever told her.

She dumps him. Publicly. Brutally. But freedom comes at a cost. Her grandfather's will is clear: find a mate or lose the Montgomery empire. With Damien out and the De Luca triplets—her humiliated fated mates—lurking in her past, her options are nothing.

Then comes Moonlit Bonds, a televised competition where unmated shifters compete for love and a life-changing prize. Win, and her inheritance is hers. Lose, and lose everything.

There's just one problem. Damien and his true mate, Sarah, have joined the show, hoping to legitimize their bond on camera. And the De Luca triplets are also contestants—three alphas she rejected, two who bullied her, and one who has never stopped watching.

Now Odessa is trapped in a villa with cameras in every corner, a public audience that votes on her fate, and enemies who want her dead.

She came to win.

She might just find revenge.

But falling for the enemy? That was never part of the plan.

My wife, the most ruthless godmother in New York's underworld, wants a divorce.
The reason? Her male subordinate's old wound has flared up, and he only has three months to live. She wants to accompany him on his final journey as his wife.
To make room for her new lover, she not only doesn't go home, but even allows him to frame me for a fabricated death sentence.
In the dimly lit underground interrogation room, the backlash from deviating from the proper procedures caused my organs to rapidly fail, and I developed a persistent high fever.
Through the iron bars, she looked at my disfigured body, not recognizing me, but coldly raising her gun and giving the order to execute me herself.
She proudly believed that by clearing the way, she could go back and have a grand wedding with the man who was feigning illness.
Until the last shot, when my breathing stopped completely, she saw the old scar on the back of my left hand—the scar from the severed finger I had left for her.
That once arrogant godmother instantly broke down in tears beside my corpse.

“Aren't you a hooker that anyone could on top of you with money?”
When they met, he became her guest in room...

Everyone thought the disfigured obsessive fan was stalking actress Sophia Brown.

No one believed I was the real Sophia.

My twin sister, Lily, slept beside my husband, Don Jason. She used my face to star in my movies. She even took over my social media accounts and posted under my name.

I wanted an explanation. But Jason only looked at my scarred face with cold disgust and said he had always thought Lily was me. He said he had fallen for her and couldn’t let her go.

Lily told me becoming an actress had been her dream since childhood. Now that my face was ruined and I could no longer act, why shouldn’t I let her have it?

The only person who stood by me was my agent, Nancy. And because of me, even she was dragged into hell.

This time, I stopped trying to prove who I was. I chose another way.

At fifteen, my parents died on their way of volunteer teaching in underprivileged areas. I was adopted by the Miller family’s Don, Vincent and was brought up by himself. For ten years, he hauled me out of the mud, gave me a home, gave me favor no one else got and taught me what a “family” was supposed to mean.
On my eighteenth birthday, I climbed onto his bed and kissed him.
He called me disgusting with a face like ice. Later, he brought Isabella home, forced me to be her bridesmaid, and made me go with her to pick out wedding dresses and jewelry.
One shove from her was all it took for him to lock me in a pitch-black confinement room and he even had the light removed.
That was when I finally understood: everything I had could be taken back from me at any moment.

Married for seven years, I lived my life like an absolute joke.
For the sake of my brother, my wife personally uprooted the roses I had so painstakingly cultivated. To please her uncle, my daughter pointed at my nose and called me a "bad daddy."
The entire family even held a vote to force me to donate my bone marrow. My wife, Elena, raised her hand without a second thought: "You'll just lose a little bone marrow. Liam will die without you."
In that moment, my heart died.
The surgery was a success.
As the anesthesia wore off, Elena was holding my hand tightly. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her voice trembled with remorse: "Aaron, I was a jerk before. As long as you were willing to save Liam, I will love only you for the rest of my life."
She thought I would be as pathetically grateful as a dog, begging for her affection and humbly forgiving her.
But I merely frowned in disgust and pulled my hand back as if shaking off garbage.
In the dead silence, I looked at this tearful woman before me and asked, politely yet confused:
"Excuse me, ma'am... who are you?"

My squadmates falsely accused me of being a vampire. They poured scalding water over me claiming it was "holy water," spiked my meals with garlic extract, and even splashed me with stinking goat blood. In the end, their madness drove them to plunge a sharpened cross straight into my heart...

To annul the engagement, the aloof heiress of a wealthy family spent three years planning thirteen accidents to try and kill me.
Car accident, falling object, poisoning... I survived covered in blood, only to be met with her disgusted question: "How come you're still alive?"
She let her scheming childhood sweetheart crush my father's ashes, and even personally drained my last remaining blood to save me, all for her sweetheart's self-inflicted injury.
She thought I would be like a dog, clinging to her side forever without any boundaries.
Until that day, I calmly handed over the annulment agreement, clutching the diagnosis of late-stage brain cancer, and completely disappeared from her world.
Later, when she finally found out the truth, she searched the world frantically, only to find my emaciated, cold corpse.
That arrogant and haughty young lady has completely collapsed.
She personally sent her childhood sweetheart to hell, knelt before my body wearing a veil, and desperately raised a gun:
“Ivan, walk slowly on your way to the underworld... I’m giving my life for you.”

His lips were on hers, hard, demanding and devastating. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her flush against him, making her feel every inch of his dominance.
She moaned against his lips, her fingers threading into his dark hair, pulling him closer.
The energy in the chamber shifted. The symbols on the walls glowed, reacting to their unbreakable seething bond.
Damian pulled back just enough to meet her gaze. His silver eyes burned with something she had never seen before, something ancient, something dangerous.
"This bond," he murmured, brushing his thumb over her lips, swollen from his kiss. "It’s more than just fate, Isla. It’s something that was written in the stars long before we ever met."


To repay her father's debt, Isla steps into the world of Damian Wolff, an enigmatic and dangerous Alpha of a powerful werewolf pack. What begins as servitude quickly becomes something more, as an undeniable pull binds them together.
But Isla is no ordinary human. Strange visions, violent dreams, and a power she can't explain begin to awaken, catching the attention of ancient forces determined to control or destroy her.
As Isla's connection with Damian deepens, truths about her bloodline unravel and a long-lost prophecy connected to their legacy threaten with reshaping their world.
Allies fall, enemies rise and forbidden bonds emerge as the future is in Isla’s hands.
Torn between love, duty and destiny, Isla must make an impossible choice: protect those she loves by surrendering herself or rise as the force she was born to be, even if it means tearing everything apart.
Passion, prophecy and betrayal weave a story where one woman’s fate could change everything.

“I gave my virginity to the wrong brother… and to him, it meant absolutely nothing. I was just another girl he fucked…”


Three years ago, a mysterious boy pulled me from drowning. He saved my life but I never got to learn his name or where he came from before he disappeared.

Yet, I have been unable to forget him till this day. For him, I decided to get my dream body and grow my confidence.

So I changed myself as well as the dreams I had before him and even vowed to keep myself for him alone and no one else.

But when the day finally came, I mistook his identity. I gave myself to his twin brother instead– a reckless playboy who no longer wants anything to do with me.

Now, I’m trapped between two powerful heirs of the House of Thorne, fighting a war that could make them lose everything.

One twin wants to ruin me.

The other wants to own me.

And my greatest fear is that in the end, both might destroy me.

After I retired, I was willing to do the dirtiest work at a small auto repair shop—just to give my sick daughter an ordinary childhood.
I endured my mother’s insults, my eldest brother’s wage cuts, my younger brother’s extortion.
But they actually joined forces to steal my daughter’s life-saving money for gambling, then sold me into an illegal mine to pay off their debts.
When the iron chain locked around my wrist, when my daughter cried in despair, the killing intent that had slept in my blood for three years finally woke up completely.
They had no idea I was once the iron-blooded God of War—commander of a million troops, the name that made enemy nations tremble.

"Take your hand off my thigh, Elliot."
"You’ll have to make me."
His fingers slide higher beneath the table.
He’s nineteen. She’s thirty-five.
He’s her student. She’s the teacher he wants to fuck.
And her husband is sitting right across from them.
“I think you two are quite… entertained,” Elliot says, pulling his damp hand back. “Why don’t I give Mrs. Ellis a tour of the house?”
She hesitates. But one look from her husband, and she follows.
He shoves her against the wall —just steps away from the dining room. From her husband. From Elliot’s mother.
He lifts her dress, yanks down her panties, presses his hard cock between her ass cheeks and growls:
“Want to remind your husband how loud you can moan? Want to give them a little show?”
“Elliot… please.”
“Please what? You’re grinding against me already. You want this. You want me. I’m going to fuck you right here, right now… and I don’t know what I’ll enjoy more: watching you fall apart, or watching you struggle to keep quiet.”
And then he’s inside her in one brutal thrust.
She gasps, burning from the inside out.
“Fuck, Mrs. Ellis… why the hell are you this hot?”
He’s her obsession.
She’s his.
But Katherine Ellis is married. Wounded. Lost.
And Elliot? He’ll destroy anyone who stands between them.
Even her husband.
Because when you take what you shouldn’t…
You never give it back.

Both of them closed in on me at once.
Ezequiel gripped my waist, his rough voice burning against my neck, while Emmanuel pushed my legs open with a confidence that made my breath break.
Their hands, their mouths, their hungry breaths claimed every inch of my skin as if I already belonged to them.
—You’re ours, —one growled.
—All of you, —the other finished, their tongues meeting between my thighs.
My moan was swallowed by the vampire’s fangs as he caught my jaw and forced me to face him.
—You’re not escaping us, little Omega, —he promised.
—Tonight… the three of us devour you.

Clare Voss has spent five years loving her stepbrother Zane in silence, cooking his breakfast, cheering at every match, and dreaming of the day he would finally see her.

But on his birthday, everything falls apart when his girlfriend exposes Clare's most humiliating secret in front of the entire team.

Just when Clare is ready to disappear, Rhys Calloway, her worst enemy and the team's arrogant captain, pulls her into his arms and tells everyone she is his girlfriend.

She should have pushed him away, but she kissed him back instead.

Now Clare is locked into a two-month fake relationship with the most infuriating man she has ever met, trying to get over a stepbrother who never cared and survive a captain who makes her forget why she was supposed to hate him.

The problem is that Rhys kisses like he means every single second of it, and just when Clare starts to move on, Zane decides he wants her back.

One girl, two hockey players, and a heart that was never supposed to feel this much. Will she choose the stepbrother who broke her or the enemy who caught her when she fell?

Within the luxurious embrace of The Grand Palazzo, Sarah discovers a love she never expected—with her magnetic boss, William. Their connection is a hidden flame, burning brightly away from prying eyes. But the entrance of the enigmatic Berky casts shadows over their affection, challenging Sarah's grasp on the love she's grown to cherish. In the midst of this turmoil, a devastating health revelation alters Sarah's perspective. She embarks on a journey to rewrite her story, leading her to an unexpected visit to William's home.
As tensions escalate, a tragic accident leaves William's life hanging by a thread. Amid the chaos, secrets unfurl, and James, William's estranged brother, emerges as the linchpin in this intricate tale. In a story of love, betrayal, and redemption, Sarah and William must confront life's unexpected twists.
Will they defy the odds, or will destiny's hand pull them apart?

The daughter of the Lycan, she is destined to be an omega in her current life, forced to be mated with the Alpha she once rejected.

After rejecting him a long time ago, she managed to find her way back to the Alpha she once turned away from. Now, she has a daring mission to seduce and thaw the icy heart of the Alpha, which grew cold after her previous rejection.

Will they have a second chance to begin anew, or will she be the one facing rejection this time?