its spring break in 2005, Engfa Waraha and Charlotte Austin are both in Hawaii, its thier sophomore year of collage. charlotte, a bookish law student with a close knit group of friends knows who Engfa is, everyone does, the town hero Volleyball MVP even though they attended different schools. but when engfa, the photographer always in search of beauty lays eyes on charlotte for the first time, she will never want to look anywhere else again. they love on opposite sides of America, thier families cannot get on, can they make it work in a world before social media?

although this can be read as a standalone story, it is book 2, the follow up to the cracks in our foundations. eighteen months has past and both Engfa and charlotte have dealt with their breakup in different ways. a chance meeting in a corridor will force them both to acknowledge that moving on would require more than just pretending, but would moving forward allow them to find their way back? that is the question at the heart of this story.

After eleven years together and seven years of marriage, Charlotte Austin believed her life was built on something permanent. Routine. Devotion. The quiet certainty of shared breath beneath the same roof. At thirty-one, the renowned photographer thought she understood how marriages survived. She believed stability came from endurance, from learning how to hold the fragile structure of a life together. She was wrong. When her wife, Engfa Waraha-a thirty-four-year-old trauma surgeon-begins to change, the shift is so subtle Charlotte cannot name it at first. There is no argument. No confession. No moment where something clearly breaks. Just distance. Conversations shorten. Glances become unreadable. The warmth that once defined their home recedes into a silence that grows heavier with every passing day. Engfa offers no explanation. And Charlotte, who has built a career capturing the delicate moment before something collapses, finds herself standing inside one she cannot understand. Because the most unsettling fractures are not the ones that shatter loudly. They are the ones that form quietly-between unfinished sentences, avoided questions, and the slow realization that the person beside you may already be somewhere else. As doubt settles into the spaces their love once occupied, Charlotte begins to question everything she thought she knew about loyalty, trust, and the quiet promises people make when they believe a life together is permanent. What she does not yet realize is that some truths in a marriage do not arrive as revelations. They exist long before anyone is willing to admit them. And sometimes the real damage is not what one person hides... ...but what the other refuses to see. some truths... exist long before anyone admits them. ⚠️ Content Warning: This story contains GP/Intersex themes, a slow-burn storyline, heavy angst, and infidelity. Please feel free to skip it if you're not comfortable with these themes.