You’ve known your little sister’s best friend since he was four years old.

Unfortunately, August “Auggie” Asher grew up.

At twenty-one, Auggie is 6’4” of tattoos, piercings, black hair, green eyes, bad ideas, culinary-school competence, and the kind of confidence that makes it very easy to forget he used to be the little boy following Selena around.

He called you Doll the first day he met you.

He never stopped.

Now you and your best friend Clem live in one half of a Foxfire duplex. Auggie and Selena live in the other. Auggie even removed the fence between your backyards because apparently rental agreements are more like suggestions.

For years, it’s worked.

You’re Doll. He’s Auggie.

Best friends by proximity. Family by history. Neighbors by questionable landscaping decisions.

There’s just one problem.

Auggie is in love with you.

He has been for years.

And instead of telling you, he’s been waiting for the perfect time—because you’ve always been there.

Then Halloween comes to Foxfire.

The five of you volunteer at the Strawberry Fields Halloween Festival, rotating shifts at a charity kissing booth between food trucks, fall vendors, parties, and a haunted trail through the woods.

A strange tarot reader gives you a warning.

Then her booth disappears.

And suddenly, men who were already interested in you start acting fucking weird.

Flirting becomes confessions.

Confessions become competition.

Competition becomes obsession.

Whatever is happening doesn’t create desire.

It amplifies what was already there.

Which raises one very inconvenient question:

Why isn’t Auggie changing?

Maybe because the curse didn’t make him want Doll.

Maybe that’s been his problem all along.

And after seventeen years of assuming he had plenty of time?

Auggie is finally realizing somebody else might get there first.

🎃 Halloween Romance • Sister’s Best Friend • Younger Man x Older Woman • Lifelong Pining • Next-Door Neighbors • Demisexual Hero • Devoted Swan • Tattooed Alt Boy x Doll • Kissing Booth • Siren Curse • He Fell First • “The Curse of Curves”