Is Since You'Ve Been Gone A Standalone Novel?

Everyone in Sparrowville said that Margaret Chapman was the happiest woman in town. Gavin Hartley showered her with gifts—a sapphire ring, an asteroid after her name—treating her like she was the center of his universe. Margaret had always believed it, too. Until the day she accidentally discovered the woman he had been hiding in his villa. For ten years, he had kept her there—his childhood sweetheart. After she lost herself to schizophrenia, she had said, "Margaret is me." And so, for nearly seven years, Gavin had courted Margaret and cherished her, playing out a love story that had never truly been hers. Margaret's heart crumbled to ash after she found out the truth. She left without looking back, moving to a country thousands of miles away. But she never imagined that Gavin would lose himself to rage, his eyes burning red as he nearly tore Sparrowville apart. "Where the hell is Margaret?!"

When Maya walks away from Alvarez, she thinks she’s freeing herself from a toxic love. But love doesn’t die easily. Alvarez refuses to let go, torn between rage and longing, while a new man steps into Maya’s life — calm, patient, everything Alvarez never was. Caught between memory and possibility, Maya must face the truth: can broken love be fixed, or is it better left behind?

His songs were better when he had a broken heart. That sentence would change my life after my dream job was dished to me on a shiny, silver platter. All I had to do? Hurt Nash Pierce enough to get him writing good music again. The pop icon’s songs were no longer the phenomena they used to be. His team needed another breakthrough album—like the first he’d penned, using his heartbreak as fuel. The plan was simple: I’d go on tour with him as a backup dancer…and make him fall in love with me. I was hired to inspire—to become embedded into every lyric he wrote. Then, I was to set fire to it all—to destroy every feeling we hoped he’d develop for me. It seemed simple enough. Easy, even. I didn’t expect to be consumed myself—to see so much in the man displayed in the tabloids. I didn’t foresee falling for him. It didn’t occur to me that, while attempting to break his heart, I might just shatter my own. Most of all, I never thought I’d fight so hard to hold on to a relationship that had always been founded on goodbye.

THIS STORY CONTAINS EXPLICIT SEX SCENES. READER DISCRETION ADVISED. I Was Never Yours is an emotional romance story about love, power, and emotional survival in a world where affection can feel like control. Amara once believed in love with her whole heart. She believed in promises made under soft lights, in quiet conversations that felt like forever, and in a future she thought was guaranteed by a man who made her feel deeply chosen, until he didn’t. Julian is a man shaped by control, success, and emotional distance. To him, vulnerability is weakness, and love is something he can manage rather than surrender to. Years ago, Amara and Julian shared something intense but undefined, a relationship built on emotional closeness without public labels or clear promises. It was passionate, quiet, and dangerously addictive in its secrecy. Then Julian walked away without explanation. Not with betrayal. Not with arguments. Just silence. Years later, fate forces them back into each other’s world when Amara becomes an employee in his powerful company. But time has changed everything. The girl who once waited quietly is gone. In her place stands a woman who understands emotional survival, boundaries, and self-worth. Now the power has shifted. Julian wants her back, not just as a lover, but as someone he can emotionally possess again. He begins careful, strategic moves to stay close to her, protect her, and slowly pull her back into his emotional orbit. But Amara has learned something dangerous from heartbreak. She can love him… but she refuses to belong to him. As emotions resurface, both must confront healing, obsession, pride, and the question of whether love is about holding on or choosing each other again every day.

Melissa Jones, the so-called 'fake' heiress, lost her memory trying to save me. Her memory was stuck at the time she was 18, back when our lives had not yet been set right. Everyone told me to be the bigger person. In the new family portrait, I was the only one missing. My biological mother tried to comfort me, "Shirley, be reasonable. It's just a photo. We will make it up to you later." I applied for the vice president position year after year, only to be rejected five times in a row. Then, when Melissa said she wanted to learn the business, my brother, Maverick Jones, approved it immediately. Afterward, he turned to me and said, "You should give way to Melissa. You're the reason she lost her memory. I'm helping you make up for it." When I went into labor and needed my husband, Charles Smith, to sign the consent for a C-section, he was one floor above me, accompanying Melissa to a follow-up appointment. I called him seven times. He declined every call. In the end, my seven-month-old baby suffocated. Even in a wheelchair, I went to demand an explanation. However, outside the hospital room, I heard Melissa crying. "Back then, you all agreed I should pretend to have amnesia. I'll never randomly decline calls for Charles again. I just want to stay by your side for three more months." There was a moment of silence. Then, Charles and the others agreed. At that moment, I was not angry. I just felt something inside me turn completely empty. I turned around and accepted my adoptive parents' request to return to Nebula City. This time, I would give these people what they wanted.

My mom and dad died heroically in a fire rescue, trying to protect an orphan. Afterward, my brother brought the orphan, Audrey, home. To make her smile, he'd throw away photos of me and our parents. He even kicked me out in front of everyone. For Audrey's coming-of-age celebration, he took her to Cranburn—the place I'd always dreamed of going. In his eyes, I had nowhere else to go. He believed that once I realized I was wrong, I'd come back on my own. But what he didn't know was—I had joined an overseas rescue team. This might be the last time we ever see each other.