Event planner Kelsea Hodges is taking a boyfriend break. A hookup hiatus. A romance recess. Innumerable dating disasters have her convinced that love is best enjoyed vicariously, so she’s sticking to the sidelines, thankyouverymuch. With amazing (if meddlesome) friends, a cat that... tolerates her, and wedding season kicking into high gear, she has all the “Happily Ever After” vibes she could want. Until an estranged childhood friend reappears and shatters her resolve with three weeks of fantasy, feuding, and unanticipated feelings that blow the dust off treasured memories and dreams long forgotten.

Derrick “Husky” Gamble’s yearly trip to Austin, TX is off to a bad start. First, he runs into Kelsea, his best friend’s little sister, who he’s been avoiding for… reasons. Then their D&D group loses a player, jeopardizing the promoted streaming contract they’re competing to win at GamesCon—the PAX of tabletop gaming. The final nail? His friends ask Kelsea to fill in—and she agrees. Now he’s roleplaying both in and out of the game, desperate to hide the feelings that caused him to ghost her in the first place.

Things go from complicated to catastrophic when their live stream goes viral, and fans start shipping their characters and them. The group goads them into playing it up for publicity, and despite a flaming dumpster-worth of emotional baggage, Kelsea and Husky agree. Except that off-the-charts chemistry isn’t only felt by the audience, forcing them to choose between protecting the life-long friendship keeping Husky afloat and giving in to the white-hot attraction pulling them together.

It takes a convention member targeting Kelsea with nefarious intentions to remind them the one safe place they’ve always counted on was each other—and it’s never too late to redefine forever.

Jessie Newton needs a reboot. Between losing her father to cancer, and her mental health to a gaslighting jerk, she’s out to prove to the Universe (and herself) that she’s A-OK going it alone. The solution: A two-month sabbatical from her stressful tech job for a Texas-bound road trip and some serious girl-time. She’ll never be at the mercy of a man again. Never. Again.

Of course, the Universe (brazen hussy she is) ignores the memo, and Jessie finds herself stranded outside her friend’s hometown in rural Oklahoma with a seized engine and limited options. Fortunately, her friend sends help. Unfortunately, it’s in the form of her sexy grump of a brother. Suddenly, being at the mercy of a man has regained some appeal. Very…at the… Lord have mercy.

The last thing Jake Hodges needs is a distraction. At eighteen, when a deadly accident took everything but the land under his feet, he’d sworn to keep the family legacy alive. Then a few rookie missteps nearly cost him that, too. Now, at thirty-seven, he’s a government contract away from fixing his mess and nothing is getting in the way. Not even the red-headed natural disaster who stumbles into his life and turns it upside-down—one freckle at a time.

Six months after kicking her ex to the curb, Jessie’s still keeping big emotions at bay—but some off-the-charts chemistry has her and Jake considering indulging a few smaller ones. As they say, save a horse… Jake’s certainly not arguing. He’s already learned that anything more than one and done is a recipe for disaster, because the more you care, the worse it hurts when they leave. And they always leave—one way or another.

When a plague of mysterious delays stretches her car repairs into weeks instead of days, Jessie should feel robbed of half her vacation. Instead, she wonders if Fate hasn’t delivered exactly what she’s been needing—a sense of belonging somewhere again. Until a startling discovery shatters her fragile trust and Jake’s left holding the bag as the natural disaster storms out, taking her freckles, and his heart, with her.

Bull-headed self-sufficiency has always prevented Jake from enlisting the help of family and friends, but in this small town where no one is a stranger, it might be the only way to convince Jessie that her trust wasn’t misplaced and the home she’s been looking for is with him.