AJ has always trusted books more than relationships. After another breakup, the freelance writer retreats into the familiar comfort of old novels and the suburban hometown she thought she had outgrown. Then Quinn is suddenly impossible to ignore. Once the guarded girl on the other side of the neighborhood fence, Quinn has become a woman AJ cannot stop watching, arguing with, remembering, and wanting. Their connection is complicated by the past they remember differently and by a story that seems to have turned pieces of their lives into something public. As AJ gets pulled into a writing group, a school community, and an unexpected professional opportunity, she begins to rediscover a creative life that belongs to her instead of the people she is always trying to help. Quinn, meanwhile, has her own reasons for guarding what is private and for refusing to let anyone rewrite her history. Attraction breaks through their defenses quickly, but intimacy is harder when every memory feels like evidence and every story has more than one author. Between family loyalties, career pressure, public attention, and the dangerous temptation to turn real pain into material, AJ must decide what she is willing to put on the page and what deserves to remain between two people. Some stories survive because they are published. Others survive because someone finally tells the truth.
AJ has always trusted books more than relationships. After another breakup, the freelance writer retreats into the familiar comfort of old novels and the suburban hometown she thought she had outgrown. Then Quinn is suddenly impossible to ignore. Once the guarded girl on the other side of the nei...