Prologue

'Meet me.'

The words said as they flashed across her phone. Juliet sat in her bed with the comforter tucked in and around her as she gently drifted off. The buzzing from the phone had startled her, and she quickly grabbed it with excitement, impatient to see his message.

Butterflies filled her stomach as she read those two words. They had been messaging for months back and forth, calling each other every day they could. It was a love formed through words and stories.

They had never met. She had never seen the man she was falling for, but she knew the sound of his voice from their phone calls. She knew the deep rumble that came from him when he laughed, the one that sent goosebumps down her spine.

For months, she had been online, talking to men and going on awful dates. Each time, she came home to her apartment alone and rinsed off the memory of the few hours prior that she had wasted sitting in a restaurant or at the movies. It was a tedious effort, and for a while, she wasn't sure it was worth it.

That was until she found him.

He was sweet and kind, unlike the other visitors to her profile. When others went to her page, they left vile messages that made her cringe and question whether she should cancel her account altogether.

For long spans of time, she even stopped checking her inbox. She knew what disturbing pictures and almost violent descriptions of sexual acts waited for her there.

It was months of politely declining requests and, in turn, getting threatened before she stopped responding altogether. No matter how she worded it, there was no way nice enough to say no.

Even on messages where she didn't respond to their greeting, telling her how beautiful they thought she was, she would receive an angry follow-up message a few days later.

Each time,, it contradicted the first message, and Juliet could not help but laugh as the messages would go from telling her exactly what the sender wanted to do to her to informing her of just how repulsive she was and suggesting ways for her to kill herself.

Rejection was hard, but the reactions she received in response were extreme.

Sitting down after work one day, she logged into her account. She was fed up with all of the threats after one young gentleman decided to take it a step too far. He had threatened to find her and kill her himself.

She scrolled through the messages and, one by one, reported each person for their foul words and images before she blocked each one of them. There were dozens that she had never even read from the intermittent periods of avoiding the site. Most of which she reported with the rest, but a few were short and simple hellos, and she scrolled past them with the intention to go back and look at those men later.

It was several pages back that she saw his message. He stared with hello, but his message was long and sweet as he talked about reading through the biography she had written on her profile.

He spoke about how he related to her based on the information she put down and how they shared the same interests. The only time he mentioned her appearance from the profile pictures she posted was a sweet message at the end.

He said she was beautiful and loved reading about the girl on her page. He wanted to know more about her.

She didn't have to look at his pictures to know she wanted to message him back, but as anyone would, she looked anyway. He was a handsome man, far more attractive than she thought would show interest in her.

He was tall, with dark brown hair that stood out against the white kitchen cabinets behind him. The sun lit up his beautiful hazel eyes and enhanced the green that swirled within them as it reflected in through the sliding glass door leading from his kitchen to his backyard.

The gentle kiss of freckles that ran over his tan nose would not have been noticeable if it weren't for the bright light that illuminated him.

Short stubble ran over his jawline, the same color as the hair on his head, and Juliet briefly wondered what it would feel like to run her lips across it. It excited her to know that not only did he like to do the same things as her, but he was also taller than her.

She stared at his picture with a smile as she thought about the message she had just read. She did not think it would be possible for a man like that to exist in the world of online dating, but there he sat.

She read through his profile carefully and learned about his likes and dislikes. She went back to his message and responded.

Later that day, he messaged her again and a beautiful love started to grow.