My Summer with CJ
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Natalie swore she would never come back to Blackwood Ridge.
Not after the memories. Not after the abandonment. And definitely not after the mother who chose ambition over her own daughter.
But when her estranged mother—now the powerful CFO of Sterling Crest Bank—asks her to return home for the summer, Natalie reluctantly agrees. Years ago, after her parents divorced, Natalie left town with her father and never looked back. While her mother built a new life with a wealthy husband and a stepson Natalie has never met, Natalie spent years trying to bury the hurt that small town left behind.
From the moment she arrives, Blackwood Ridge feels suffocating. The whispers, the memories, the people who still remember her family’s scandal—it all makes Natalie desperate to escape. So when an old acquaintance drags her to a local frat party on her very first night back, she throws caution aside and drinks far too much.
The night should’ve ended in disaster.
Instead, a mysterious stranger pulls her out before things spiral completely out of control. He had striking heterochromia—one eye a vivid emerald green, the other an icy ocean blue. The contrast was sharp and almost hypnotic. He takes care of her when no one else does. But when Natalie wakes up the next morning tangled in his sheets with almost no memory of the night before, panic sets in. Certain she made a terrible mistake, she prepares for the worst.
What she doesn’t expect is him.
Cold, guarded, and hiding secrets of his own, the last thing he wants is Natalie disrupting the carefully controlled life he’s built. Yet the more they collide, the more impossible it becomes to stay away from each other.
Not after the memories. Not after the abandonment. And definitely not after the mother who chose ambition over her own daughter.
But when her estranged mother—now the powerful CFO of Sterling Crest Bank—asks her to return home for the summer, Natalie reluctantly agrees. Years ago, after her parents divorced, Natalie left town with her father and never looked back. While her mother built a new life with a wealthy husband and a stepson Natalie has never met, Natalie spent years trying to bury the hurt that small town left behind.
From the moment she arrives, Blackwood Ridge feels suffocating. The whispers, the memories, the people who still remember her family’s scandal—it all makes Natalie desperate to escape. So when an old acquaintance drags her to a local frat party on her very first night back, she throws caution aside and drinks far too much.
The night should’ve ended in disaster.
Instead, a mysterious stranger pulls her out before things spiral completely out of control. He had striking heterochromia—one eye a vivid emerald green, the other an icy ocean blue. The contrast was sharp and almost hypnotic. He takes care of her when no one else does. But when Natalie wakes up the next morning tangled in his sheets with almost no memory of the night before, panic sets in. Certain she made a terrible mistake, she prepares for the worst.
What she doesn’t expect is him.
Cold, guarded, and hiding secrets of his own, the last thing he wants is Natalie disrupting the carefully controlled life he’s built. Yet the more they collide, the more impossible it becomes to stay away from each other.
