🏆 Firebird Book Award Winner – "e;Most Likely to Make You Cry"e;She hasn't felt safe in years.Not since the night everything fell apart—when grief, debt, and survival became the only things Kathleen Quinn could count on.She learned how to work.How to endure.How to survive.But not how to stay.And definitely not how to be loved.So when there's nothing left to hold her where she is, she goes back to the one place she's spent years trying not to miss—Ashby Lake.Back to quiet roads.To familiar faces.To a life that once felt like hers.She tells herself it's temporary. Just long enough to get back on her feet. Long enough to rebuild something that looks like control.Then she meets Bennett Rhodes.He's controlled, composed, and completely out of place in a town like this—and for reasons she can't quite explain, he sees right through her. Past the sharp edges. Past the silence. Past everything she's learned to hide.Bennett isn't the kind of man who chases.But Kathleen Quinn is unlike anyone he's ever met.And the more she tries to keep her distance, the more impossible it becomes for him to look away.Because for the first time in years, someone isn't asking her to prove her worth.He's just… staying.And Kathleen doesn't know what to do with that.Small town. Slow burn. A woman learning how to stop surviving—and start living again.

🏆 Firebird Book Award Winner – "e;Most Likely to Make You Cry"e;She hasn't felt safe in years.Not since the night everything fell apart—when grief, debt, and survival became the only things Kathleen Quinn could count on.She learned how to work.How to endure.How to survive.But not how to stay.And definitely not how to be loved.So when there's nothing left to hold her where she is, she goes back to the one place she's spent years trying not to miss—Ashby Lake.Back to quiet roads.To familiar faces.To a life that once felt like hers.She tells herself it's temporary. Just long enough to get back on her feet. Long enough to rebuild something that looks like control.Then she meets Bennett Rhodes.He's controlled, composed, and completely out of place in a town like this—and for reasons she can't quite explain, he sees right through her. Past the sharp edges. Past the silence. Past everything she's learned to hide.Bennett isn't the kind of man who chases.But Kathleen Quinn is unlike anyone he's ever met.And the more she tries to keep her distance, the more impossible it becomes for him to look away.Because for the first time in years, someone isn't asking her to prove her worth.He's just… staying.And Kathleen doesn't know what to do with that.Small town. Slow burn. A woman learning how to stop surviving—and start living again.

🏆 Firebird Book Award Winner – "e;Most Likely to Make You Cry"e;She hasn't felt safe in years.Not since the night everything fell apart—when grief, debt, and survival became the only things Kathleen Quinn could count on.She learned how to work.How to endure.How to survive.But not how to stay.And definitely not how to be loved.So when there's nothing left to hold her where she is, she goes back to the one place she's spent years trying not to miss—Ashby Lake.Back to quiet roads.To familiar faces.To a life that once felt like hers.She tells herself it's temporary. Just long enough to get back on her feet. Long enough to rebuild something that looks like control.Then she meets Bennett Rhodes.He's controlled, composed, and completely out of place in a town like this—and for reasons she can't quite explain, he sees right through her. Past the sharp edges. Past the silence. Past everything she's learned to hide.Bennett isn't the kind of man who chases.But Kathleen Quinn is unlike anyone he's ever met.And the more she tries to keep her distance, the more impossible it becomes for him to look away.Because for the first time in years, someone isn't asking her to prove her worth.He's just… staying.And Kathleen doesn't know what to do with that.Small town. Slow burn. A woman learning how to stop surviving—and start living again.