Balcony Conversations Novels & Stories

Ava Reyes has spent four years doing what she does best — keeping her feelings exactly where they cannot do any damage. She is twenty-nine, co-owner of a thriving bakery, and hopelessly in love with the one man she has absolutely no business wanting. Marcus Calloway is her best friend's older brother — steady, brilliant, and infuriatingly easy to be near. When he left for London six years ago, Ava buried her feelings and moved on. Or did a convincing enough impression of it. Then Marcus comes home. Permanently. And he is engaged. His fiancée, Isabelle Ferreira, is a sharp London solicitor who is warm, intelligent, and impossible to resent. She has done nothing wrong. She deserves everything she has. Which makes what Ava is beginning to want all the more dangerous. Because the more Ava finds herself near Marcus — at family dinners, in stolen conversations, in the small accidental moments that keep finding them together — the more she notices things she shouldn't. The way he watches her. The way the air shifts between them when no one else is paying attention. She is not a woman who chases unavailable men. She has a conscience, and it is loud. But she is also a woman who is tired of being careful. What begins as a private war with herself slowly becomes something more deliberate. Ava doesn't set out to destroy anything. She simply sets out to make Marcus Calloway finally see her. What she doesn't account for is how much it will cost — and how deeply she will fall before she understands the difference between wanting someone and deserving them. Some fires don't care how carefully you've been living.

She’d built two years of walls and he dismantled them in one evening. He didn’t announce himself. He never had to. The last person she expected walked in like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. Halle hadn’t seen Adrian Vale in two years. Two years of carefully avoiding his name in conversations, his face on screens, and the memory of waking up in his bed, fully dressed, completely alone, and somehow disturbed by that, than if anything had actually happened. Then he showed up to her best friend’s wedding like he owned the place. He reached over her shoulder, lifted the glass of champagne from her hand without spilling a single drop, brought it slowly to his lips, held her gaze the entire time and had the absolute nerve to look good doing it. Adrian Vale didn’t do anything halfway. He never needed to raise his voice because the room already belonged to him. He never reached for things…things simply found their way into his hands. Including, apparently, her. On a moonlit dance floor, his hand slid warm and certain up her spine, his forehead dropped to hers in the dark, and he said the thing that short-circuits every rational thought in her head. “You’re the only thing I’d let ruin me.” He pulled her in for a kiss, close enough to feel his breath, close enough to lose her mind completely, and then he pulled away. Leaving her wanting. He calls her starlight like it’s a secret only he gets to keep. And Halle is so embarrassingly, helplessly gone for him. The ones who make you forget your own name? Those are the ones worth ruining yourself for.

After a brutal breakup and one too many whiskies, Arielle Lawson makes the mistake she swore she’d never repeat—she calls her ex. She never saved his number; she memorized it. Heart memory. Muscle memory. Bad-decision memory. But the man who answers isn’t Daniel. He’s calm. Controlled. Amused by the drunken stranger ranting about betrayal, wasted years, and ruined wedding plans. Arielle hangs up, mortified, convinced the mistake ends there. It doesn’t. Because the number she dialed belongs to Kael Virelli, the elusive leader of a multi-million-dollar anti-government underground syndicate known as The Black Ledger—a man feared by politicians, hunted by intelligence agencies, and obeyed without question. Kael should forget the call. He should erase the number. Instead, he calls back. What begins as anonymous late-night conversations becomes a dangerous ritual neither of them can break. Arielle finds comfort in the mysterious stranger who listens without judgment and understands her in ways no one ever has. Kael becomes addicted to the only person who speaks to him like he’s human—not a weapon, not a myth. Then fate intervenes. When Arielle unknowingly witnesses a violent operation tied to The Black Ledger, the voice she trusts becomes the name everyone fears. Overnight, she transforms from a stranger into a liability—a loose end that Kael’s world would normally erase without hesitation. But Arielle isn’t just anyone. She’s the woman who called him at his most human… and made him answer. Now Kael must choose between protecting the empire he built in shadows or protecting the girl who accidentally dialed her way into his life. Because in a world of secrets, betrayal, and blood money, the most dangerous mistake he ever made wasn’t answering the call. It was falling for the girl who made it.

Jessiah is a make-up artist aspiring to break into the modeling and beauty industry. She moves to LA when she lands a job at one of the biggest production companies in Hollywood. On her first week on the job, she meets Jenson Ross, a big-deal actor with a murky past and a dark secret only a privileged few know about. × Genres: Romance, Werewolf, Crime EXCERPT [BOOK I of CALI ALPHAS ] _ _ _ "Dollface," he murmured with a little smirk. He snickered and caressed the back of her head, pulling her closer to his chest. "You're like an antidepressant, in human form." Her breath caught.  Her heart sped up when his hug tightened. His warm face pressed onto her neck, his strong hands lightly squeezing her hips. Moments like this only worsened her attraction to him.  The flirty jokes, the easy conversations, the small smiles, his furtive glances, and his unusually sweet gestures lately... She was in deep trouble. Was he kissing her neck?  Shit. He was no longer thinking straight.  About this. About her. About the consequences. He drew her closer when she tried to pull away. As if he didn't want her out of his sight. While his beard scraped her skin, his thighs touched hers. Her throat ached as he stared into her eyes. "Dammit," he sighed, his thumb tracing the curve of her neck, his touch both gentle and eager.  "Why are you so f-cking beautiful?"  "Joss, I need to g—" "Why now?" he murmured, stroking her cheek. He wasn't acting drunk or playing with her.  Not like this. He wouldn't. Not with her real feelings barely held together by some unspoken truths. Otherwise he wouldn't dare let it get this far.  But why wouldn't he let go? "Just stay. Please. Stay here with me." _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _