Donovan Knight is everything a private-prep school expects: rich, reckless, and frighteningly good at shooting—both on the range and at life. Eli Dumont is everything Donovan despises: immaculate, aloof, student-council-first, and prone to logging the smallest infractions. They’ve been neighbors since childhood, enemies by habit, and—somewhere along the way—family by convenience. On Donovan’s seventeenth birthday an app appears on his phone: WishingWell. It promises small miracles in exchange for chores, favors, and humiliating tasks. When the app refuses his biggest wish—“make Eli stop meddling”—and instead suggests he modify it to “make Eli my boyfriend,” Donovan’s world tips. Pranks work. Small wishes come true. Tasks force him into Eli’s orbit. What starts as a stunt to get even turns into a complicated grind of favors, secrets, and grudges. Donovan wants leverage; Eli wants control. The system is not magic — it’s software with a designer, a stubborn moral clause, and a bad habit of teaching lessons in the most inconvenient ways possible. When the app’s origin is revealed, Donovan must choose whether to punish the boy who’s been policing him for years—or to learn that saving someone sometimes means letting them in. Wishes for a Rival is a fast-moving, tender YA BL about two boys who’ve been practicing a war of attrition since childhood and discover that the hardest wish is the one you have to make with your eyes open.

18 Chapters