Ember Creek

She left Portland because it had the shape of someone in every room. She moved to a small Colorado mountain town on nothing but a name she'd held onto at her worst moment and the fragile hope that 8,200 feet of distance might be enough to learn how to breathe again.

He moved to Ember Creek to take care of his grandmother and told himself that fine was enough — and it was, right up until the afternoon he walked into a bookshop to pick up her book order, glanced across the room on his way out, and spent the whole drive home thinking about someone he'd never spoken to.

Neither of them was looking. The bell above the green door rang twice, and the whole town of Ember Creek — which had been watching since December — already knew what came next.

A warm, quietly devastating small-town romance about grief, new beginnings, and finding room in a heart you thought was already full.