Chapter 1

I didn't arrive at the Yorks' Christmas dinner with my wife, Camille York. By the time I finished at the office and rushed over, everyone was watching me with the same tight, uncomfortable expression.

"Mr. Fuller, what took you so long?"

I followed the voice and looked up. Camille's assistant, Shane Mercer, stood at the second-floor railing, smirking down at me.

His shirt hung half-open, red scratch marks across his chest on full display. His arms were wrapped around Camille from behind, possessive and deliberate.

Camille leaned into him lazily, hickeys scattered across her neck. She was perfectly content to let her side piece parade himself through her family's home.

Before heading over, I'd been hopeful. I thought tonight might be the night I patched things up with Camille. But seeing Shane standing there like he owned the place, whatever warmth I'd been carrying died, snuffed out like a flame hit with ice water.

When I didn't rise to Shane's bait, the relatives shifted in their seats. Their eyes darted awkwardly between the three of us.

"It's Christmas, for heaven's sake. Look at the state of things." Camille's grandmother sat at the head of the table and struck her cane against the floor with a sharp thud.

The aunts and cousins jumped in immediately. They crowded around me with reassurances, terrified I'd blow up and ruin the holiday for everyone. Only Camille stayed where she was on the second floor, glancing down at me coldly.

"Don't worry, Grandma. He's crazy about me."

I knew what she was looking at. She was staring at the love score floating above my head, which was permanently locked at 100%. What I never told her was that she was only seeing the peak, the highest it had ever been. Right now, I felt nothing at all.

I wasn't originally from this world. A system had brought me here, and the moment I arrived, it told me my mission was to win over Camille York.

But at the time, I had a sick mother, a deadbeat father, a disabled grandmother, and a home that was falling apart. Everything landed on my shoulders. Between classes and part-time jobs eating up more than 12 hours a day, I didn't have the energy for any mission.

The system didn't care. It kept pushing, nudging things into place, until I stumbled into Camille's life, whether I wanted to or not. After she bailed me out of trouble with local punks for what felt like the hundredth time, we made it official.

I didn't think anyone could turn away from a light like that, not when everything else was dark.

The story was nothing new, but what I felt for her was real. The system told me I was the match it had chosen for her, and it turned out to be right.

We saw the world the same way and understood each other on a level most people never reach. Through four years of college, we weren't just a couple but each other's closest confidant.

A year after graduation, we decided to get married.

By then, I'd completed the mission, and the system gave me two choices. The first was to forget this world and Camille, accept ten million dollars, and return to my old life. The second was to give up the money, stay here with her, but without a script.

Everything after that point would be unpredictable.

I chose the second without hesitating, and then I put the decision in Camille's hands. I told her the truth about who I really was.

She didn't believe me at first. She thought I was messing with her again. But I kept insisting, and to prove it, I told her things about her family she'd never shared with me.

After that, the way she looked at me changed. I understood why. My intentions hadn't been pure from the start, and she had every right to resent me for it, to keep her guard up. So I asked the system to spend every last point I had to let Camille see my love score.

"Are you sure? Love changes in an instant."

After all the time we'd worked together, even the system hesitated before asking.

"Maybe. But right now, what we have is enough to get through anything."

The system went quiet for a moment, then told me I didn't have enough points for a live reading. The best it could do was lock Camille's view to the highest my love score had ever reached.

I thought it over. I figured my love for her would only keep growing, so I agreed. And just as I expected, once Camille saw the score, she finally let her walls down and took me back.

But standing here now, looking back on all of it, I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Love could get through anything, sure. But every hardship chipped away at it little by little. Once there was nothing left to keep it alive, sooner or later it would burn out completely.