When grief leaves you with nothing but a bank account full of money and a crumpled list of fears written by your nineteen-year-old self, sometimes the only choice is to drive across the country and see what the hell you're made of.
Alina Hargraves has lost everything. Armed with 8.9 million dollars she never wanted and a "fear list" that seemed brave at nineteen but feels impossible at twenty-eight, she finds herself at Broken Creek Ranch. What was supposed to be a four-week stay to help a small-town bartender land her dream date becomes something else entirely when Alina meets Jeremy.
Jeremy O'Connelly is a former soldier trying to piece his life back together one day at a time. The ranch saved him once, pulled him from a ditch as a twelve-year-old, and gave him a family. Now he's home from Afghanistan, wrestling with demons that don't care if he's surrounded by people who love him. He's good with broken horses and bad with broken fences, and he definitely wasn't expecting a city girl with sad eyes and a smart mouth to turn his carefully controlled world upside down.
But Alina isn't really a city girl, and Jeremy isn't as broken as he thinks. When a woman who's forgotten how to trust meets a man who's forgotten how to hope, they might just find that some things are worth fighting for, even when fighting means learning to let someone stay.
Some fears are meant to be conquered. Others are meant to teach you that the scariest thing isn't falling, it's finally finding someone worth landing for.
A story about second chances, found family, and the kind of love that heals from the inside out.