The Hollywood Jackpot

My best friend and I survived a war together.
Falling in love might be what finally gets us killed.

Gary Garrison has been my person for five years.

My partner in combat.
My safest place.
The one man who knows exactly how dangerous I am-and exactly when I'm lying about being fine.

We had one rule.

Never ruin the friendship.

Then twelve dollars, one desperate job interview, and one reckless word changed everything.

Engaged.

Now Hollywood's most secretive luxury hotel thinks we're getting married.

The problem?

The hotel is buried forty feet underground, built to hide the scandals of billionaires, celebrities, and people rich enough to make evidence disappear.

And Gary and I have been given adjoining rooms.

A shared bathroom.

Paper-thin walls.

And absolutely nowhere to run from five years of buried hunger.

Every fake touch starts feeling real.

Every argument gets hotter.

Every kiss makes the old rules harder to remember.

Then we discover the hotel isn't only protecting secrets.

It's manufacturing them.

Someone is rewriting records, locking down exits, and building a case that could bury me long after I escape the concrete.

Gary's answer is the same one he's always had:

Put himself between me and the threat.

Mine is just as dangerous:

Never let anybody fight my battles for me.

But when the blast doors come down and the man hunting us controls the entire fortress, surviving will require something neither of us has ever been good at.

Trusting each other while we're terrified.

Because somewhere between the bunker, the blood, the lies, and one impossible night in Las Vegas, my best friend stopped feeling like the safest man in my life.

He became the man I want with a desperation that could destroy us both.

And if we make it out alive, there may be one final gamble waiting.

The kind that changes everything.

In Hollywood, everybody wants the jackpot.
Gary and I are about to find out what happens when you hit it twice.