There’s a special kind of hell in falling for your best friend’s said sister. Lucky for Carson Hayes, he never believed in heaven anyway. Hell had always been his destination. It always was for the rich, and especially for a sinner like him.

Some sins didn’t look like sins at all—some looked like her And Carson had been starving ever since last summer.

Carson Hayes was born with everything men killed for—money, power, a last name that opened doors before he even learned how to knock. He never worked. Never had to. Carson handled pleasure.

Women liked him for all the wrong reasons, and Carson liked being the wrong reason. He didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He didn’t mean to be the guy parents warned their daughters about. But he was.

The only loyalty he ever cared about was the one he had with Aaron Lockwood, his best friend since birth. Aaron was the golden boy—smart, good, everything Carson wasn’t. Everyone wondered how the two of them could be so close, but Carson figured it was simple: Aaron never judged, and Carson never pretended to be anything but himself.

Their bond was unshakable. Until last summer.

His said sister, she has been an exchange student for a while now, and Lockwood family treated her as a daughter— she had always been untouchable to Carson. She was like Aaron’s little sister. A line he’d never thought about crossing—until the night he found her crying in the shared garden between their vacation homes. He should’ve walked away. Instead, he sat down beside her, cracked a joke that wasn’t funny, and tried to make her smile.

“Come on,” he’d said finally. “Let’s go out. You’ll feel better when you let loose.”

That night, Carson ignored Aaron’s calls for the first time. He took her to a party, let her drive his motorcycle, danced with her, gave her his jacket when she was cold. When she got tired of the noise, he took her out to the balcony where the lake glimmered black behind them. She said his name like it was a challenge, and he realized he never wanted to hear it from anyone else.

And that was the problem.

He wasn’t supposed to care about her laugh, or the way her eyes softened when she trusted him with something she wouldn’t tell anyone else. She wasn’t even his type, and yet she was the only person who made him want to be more than the shallow guy everyone thought he was.

But Carson did know one thing: if he had a sister, he wouldn’t want someone like himself anywhere near her.

And yet, despite everything, he couldn’t stay away.