She can manage billion-dollar companies. She can't manage her own heart.

Alyssa Vaughn has built an empire by staying in control. Problems are solved. Crises disappear. Feelings are kept at a safe distance.

Then comes one unforgettable night.

The morning after her best friend's bachelorette party, Alyssa wakes with fragments of memory, a pair of black lace panties that aren't hers, and questions she has no desire to answer. By afternoon, she'll be sitting in the front row of a wedding she quietly made possible. By evening, she'll be face-to-face with Evan?the one man who has always seen through her carefully constructed armor.

And then there's Veronica.

Confident. Unapologetic. Impossible to ignore.

As old loyalties, private desires, and carefully guarded emotions collide, Alyssa discovers that the hardest person to understand may be herself.

The Way We Are is the first entry in a contemporary romance series about power, vulnerability, and the complicated rules people make when love refuses to fit inside a box.