Ten years ago, Wren Calloway left Sawmill Creek — and Beckett Hale — without a word. She told herself it was for good reasons. She's spent a decade making sure she never has to explain them.

Now her mother's failing health has pulled her back to the one-stoplight town she swore she'd never see again, and the contractor standing in her childhood kitchen, invoice in hand, is the last person on earth she wanted to face first.

Beckett Hale built something out of nothing after she left — a business, a reputation, a life that doesn't need her in it. He's not interested in reopening old wounds. He's interested in finishing the renovation, collecting his check, and staying as far from Wren Calloway as Sawmill Creek's twelve square miles will allow.

Neither of them accounted for the roof.

When a spring storm rips through the valley and strands them together in the half-renovated house — no power, no cell signal, no way out until the roads clear — ten years of distance collapses into one impossibly small space. The truce doesn't last the first night.

Beckett has never stopped being possessive of what he considers his, and some part of him never stopped considering Wren exactly that. Wren has never stopped running from the one thing she couldn't control — how badly she wants to stay found this time. As the storm outside gets worse and the one inside gets harder to survive, they'll have to decide whether ten years of walls are worth more than the truth neither of them ever said out loud.

He said he'd never let her walk away twice.

She's starting to believe he means it.

Heat Level: Explicit / Very High Heat Content Note: 18+ Only. Intended for mature audiences.

Tropes: Forced Proximity • Second Chance Romance • Small-Town Romance • Opposites Attract • Possessive Hero • One Bed (Storm-Bound)