Half Girlfriend: An Emotional Friends-to-Lovers Romance of Unspoken Love and Second Chances

She had spent her whole life wishing people would forget where she belonged.

Rian Dacre arrives at one of the country’s most prestigious universities carrying an athletics scholarship, an old basketball, a blue notebook, and a private insecurity he refuses to let define him. He can read and write English with confidence, but when important people are waiting for him to speak, every pause suddenly feels like evidence that he does not belong.

Mirelle Arden has never had to fight to enter a room.

Born into wealth, influence, and a family name powerful enough to open doors before she reaches them, Mirelle appears to have everything Rian does not. But behind the elegant clothes, private cars, and carefully managed future is a young woman carrying grief, family expectations, and a growing determination to make at least one part of her life truly her own.

Their worlds collide after dark on an overlooked basketball court.

Five shots become a challenge.

The challenge becomes a bargain.

Rian will push Mirelle to rediscover the basketball player she abandoned years ago. Mirelle will help Rian find the confidence to let people wait for his words instead of apologizing for them.

Neither of them plans to fall in love.

But late-night practices become conversations. Conversations become trust. And when the university begins calling Mirelle his “Half Girlfriend,” the joke exposes a question neither of them is ready to answer:

How much of someone can you love before half is no longer enough?

As Rian fights for his scholarship, his Open Court dream, and the right to stand confidently in rooms that once intimidated him, Mirelle must decide how much control she is willing to surrender to a powerful family determined to shape her future.

Between basketball, class differences, unspoken attraction, family pressure, and a relationship the world names before they do, Rian and Mirelle are about to discover that falling for each other may be the easiest part.

Half Girlfriend is Book One of the Love We Never Named Series, a deeply emotional new-adult friends-to-lovers sports romance about ambition, privilege, vulnerability, first love, and the courage to choose a future no one else has written for you.

Their story continues in Book Two.