By Your Side by Nora Everly

Two childhood friends. One long-forgotten pact. And the almost kiss that changed everything.

I never planned on falling for Hunter Cassidy.
He’d been my best friend forever—the steady, loyal guy who fixed everything that broke in my life. My bar. My car. My heart, even when I swore I’d never let anyone near it again.

After my divorce, love was the last thing on my list. I had kids to raise, a business to save, and a thousand pieces of myself to put back together. But then Hunter reminded me of the pact we had made in high school—the one where we promised that if we were still single at forty, we would marry each other—and suddenly nothing felt safe anymore.

Because the man I once called safe was now the one who made my pulse race.
The one who waited for me outside my bar at closing time to make sure I was okay.
The one who looked at me like I had already been his all along…

Losing him as a friend would break me.
But risking my heart on him? That might finally make me whole.