THE LAST VACATION PACT

When their decade-long annual beach vacation ends because she’s getting engaged, he has seven days to decide whether to confess he’s been in love with her since their disastrous three-date attempt in college—or let her marry the wrong man and lose her forever.

Isla Reed’s engagement ring stays in her glove compartment. She can’t make herself wear it at Driftwood Cove—the Oregon beach town where she and Jake Callahan have spent one week every summer for ten years. According to their pact, this is the last vacation. She’s marrying Graham Prescott in eighteen months. The pact ends when either of them gets married. Except those three “terrible” dates with Jake in college? Not actually terrible. And Graham keeps calling six times a day making her feel small instead of loved.

Jake’s spent a decade burying feelings he was too scared to admit. When Isla suggested the vacation pact after their dating disaster, he thought she was letting him down easy. So he took what he could get—one week a year pretending friendship was enough. Now she’s engaged to someone else and he has seven days to be supportive and finally move on. The problem? She’s not wearing the ring. The whole town notices. And she keeps asking dangerous questions like “Why didn’t we ever try again?”

Except karaoke night happens. She blurts out she’s engaged and the whole bar goes silent. The lighthouse happens—she asks him to tell the truth about those three dates and he starts to answer before her fiancé calls demanding she come home early. Her panic attacks happen. The moment she falls asleep on his shoulder happens. And when Isla ends her engagement on their last morning and tells Jake she’s been in love with him since sophomore year, his heart soars and breaks. Because she’s not choosing him. Not yet. She’s choosing herself first. Time apart to figure out who she is when she’s not making everyone else happy.

Four months later she drives back to Driftwood Cove. Jake’s there. They’ve both done the work—therapy, boundaries, growth. And standing on the beach at sunrise, Isla says the words that change everything: “I choose you. Not because I need you. But because I choose you.” Because some loves are worth waiting for. Some loves are worth becoming your best self for. And some loves—built on ten years of friendship and seven days of courage—are worth everything.

TROPES:
• Friends to Lovers
• Second Chance Romance
• Vacation Romance
• Beach/Small Town Setting
• Forced Proximity
• Wrong Engagement
• Mutual Pining
• Emotional Slow Burn
• Right Person Wrong Time
• Found Family

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet / Closed Door