The Distance We Keep: A Slow-Burn Emotional Secrets Second-Chance Romance
Nico has spent years learning which surfaces hold and which ones don't. She curates an art gallery. She reads rooms before she enters them. She keeps her past somewhere she doesn't have to look at it directly.
She's good at distance. It's the closeness she struggles with.
Julien keeps the caf open late for the same reason. Fewer people. Fewer questions. A routine that holds the shape of a life without demanding that he examine what's inside it. He lost someone. He still carries it. And he's learned, slowly, that some kinds of grief are easier to manage when you don't let the walls breathe.
Then Nico walks in after midnight.
She says she just needs coffee. Somewhere quiet. And she's clearly deciding, even as she sits down, whether she intends to stay.
She keeps coming back.
What grows between them grows the way the most significant things do - sideways, almost accidentally, in the space between careful conversations that were never supposed to mean this much. Not in confessions. Not in declarations. In the way he notices how she reads a painting. In the way she notices he's still here when he could have closed an hour ago.
Both of them know how badly this could go. Both of them understand what they're risking. That's not the problem.
The problem is that it's already too late to make a different decision.
A deeply atmospheric slow burn about guarded hearts, quiet grief, and the terrifying intimacy of being seen by someone who was never supposed to get that close.
Perfect for readers who love:
The Tempest Hearts series: interconnected standalones set in one neighborhood where love arrives without announcement and changes everything.
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