Summer Rental

My name is Dylan Reed. I’m a senior college student on the track-and-field team.

“Three hundred dollars for rent just went through. Thanks, Claire.” A text popped up on Claire’s phone from a contact saved as “Mark.” I grabbed the phone before she could react and froze. “Rent?” I asked. “You’ve been telling me every month that money was from your side job.” Her face went stiff. She reached for the phone, trying to take it back. “He was my sister Emily’s husband,” Claire said quickly. “After Emily died, he was left with two kids. I was only trying to help.” My hand brushed against the anniversary gift in my pocket, and something inside me went cold. “Which apartment is he paying rent for?” Her lips parted, but it took her a long time to answer. When she finally did, she gave me the name of a neighborhood. My ears rang. It was the downtown apartment my parents had left me. A spacious unit that could rent for ten thousand a month at market rate. And she had leased it to her widowed brother-in-law for the absurdly low price of three hundred dollars.

"Don't move!" Coming home late from work, I was sneaking a shower in the shared bathroom of my rental when a warm body suddenly pressed up against me. His rough palm clamped over my mouth, pinning me against the cold tile. He held me there against the damp wall, his skin burning hot against my back as he let out a low, gravelly threat. "My guys are right outside. Just try and scream." Instead of panicking, I leaned back into him, shifting slightly. I tilted my head back and breathed softly into his ear. “So… you want everyone hear? I don't mind… we can give it a try.”

Adonis Elsher is the charming basketball captain of Cyprus Boys High with the record for dating the most number of girls in a year. However, now he seems to be genuinely in love with an artistic girl named Andrea from the neighbouring high school, whom he follows on a summer art camp to the national park. But, at the camp, he happens to meet another girl, Elena, who he soon finds out is not a girl. He is just about to reveal the impostor, Theodore Reigns to everyone, when he notices the boy's enchanting green eyes behind blue lenses. From that moment on, things started to change for Adonis.

Ever since he was a kid, Sieghal was convinced that something terrifying was lurking under the sea, waiting for him with its jaws wide open. But he had no clue what kind of creature it could be. His fear only grew worse when his dad fell into the ocean, forcing him to return to his hometown—Shira, to face the terror he'd never been able to overcome for years. Returning to Shira after all these years was no cakewalk for Sieghal, who despised the sea. While most folks would say the ocean is a super romantic place, not for Sieghal, it was just a gateway ready to drag his soul into death. Unlike him, the people of Shira believed that the ocean, which had sustained them for decades, was protected by a guardian—a wonderful entity with shimmering silver scales. And it was this entity that had saved his dad when he fell into the sea during a massive storm that night. "Is seventy million dollars is enough to buy your dignity, Alfreeda Sieghal?" "Sir Dylan, I'm not to try sell my soul just to get money for my dad's medical bills."

When fiercely independent Aiden Matthews makes a spontaneous decision to visit home after a long absence, what she intended to be a day-long trip turns into an entire summer filled with old friends, new acquaintances... and a rekindled old flame. But after stumbling upon a seventy year old secret and the ghosts it stirs up, Aiden must navigate the sudden challenges to everything she thought she knew about her family history while confronting her deepest fears in order to chase her most fervently held dreams.