Sawyer Rivers doesn’t believe in second chances. Not in love. Not after the fire that took his wife and nearly hollowed him out for good.
His world is simple now—his daughter, his duty, and the quiet ache he keeps buried beneath control.
Then Tessa rear-ends his truck on a chaotic Devil’s Peak morning.
She’s flustered. Apologetic. Too young. Too warm. Too alive. Tessa only planned to stay for the summer. Fresh out of college and running from her own doubts, she needs the job.
What she doesn’t need is a brooding, devastatingly intense single dad whose dark eyes linger a little too long and whose touch feels like it could undo her.
Sawyer tells himself he’s protecting her by holding back. Tessa refuses to be someone’s almost.
And when a fire call drags Sawyer back into the trauma he’s been hiding from, he’s forced to face the one question he’s avoided for almost a decade: can he risk loving without losing everything all over again?
