Book 2 of In The Margins Series! Claire Whitman doesn't do attachments. She doesn't stay, doesn't fall, doesn't let anyone matter long enough to leave a mark. Until one night - six years ago - when she did. It was supposed to be nothing. A mistake, something easy to forget. Except she never did. Because no matter how many people came after, no one ever felt like her. ❁ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ˋˏ༻❁༺ˎˊ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ❁ Mae Rivera has spent years pretending that night never happened. She built the life she was supposed to want - her art, her boyfriend, her carefully controlled world where everything makes sense and nothing crosses the line. Because what happened with Claire did. It crossed every line Mae was raised to never even look at. And worse... it felt right. ❁ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ˋˏ༻❁༺ˎˊ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ❁ Now Claire's back, and six years of denial begins to crack. Because no matter how hard Mae tries to bury it, her body remembers. The way Claire touched her. The way she wanted her. The way she still does. But some things aren't just complicated - they're dangerous. Because wanting Claire doesn't just mean risking her relationship, or her reputation. It means unraveling everything Mae thought she knew about herself. And Claire? Claire has nothing left to lose, except the one person she's never been able to forget. Some mistakes are meant to be buried. Others are the kind that ruin you... or set you free.

When a scandal forces hockey star Amelia Bennett into a fake relationship with guarded photographer Harper Lane, neither expects the headlines, or the feelings, that follow. What starts as a PR stunt begins to spark into something real, threatening to expose more than just their hearts. *** She's the world's best hockey player. She's a heartbroken photographer with nowhere else to go. And they were never supposed to fall in love. At 24, Amelia Bennett is the most talented hockey player on the planet-chaotic, impulsive, and the last Bennett standing without a ring on her finger. After a very public scandal threatens her sponsorships and reputation, the team's PR crisis plan is simple: clean up her image fast. Step one? A fake relationship. Something that should be easy, right? Harper Lane has no interest in fame, or falling for another golden boy-or girl-with a spotlight stitched into their skin. After catching her long-term boyfriend cheating, she's sworn off chaos and charm. But when her best friend Audrey begs her to stay with Millie temporarily, Harper finds herself in the middle of a media storm-and somehow agreeing to pretend to be Millie Bennett's girlfriend. It's only for the cameras. Just long enough to fix Millie's image. Just enough to keep Harper's ex boyfriend off her back. But fake smiles turn into real moments. Cold shoulders warm under shared blankets. And the girl Harper was warned about-the reckless, beautiful mess, is nothing like the one who makes her tea when she's anxious and kisses her like she means it. In a house built on secrets, one accidental love story is about to make

'Solitude' Philosopher Philip Koch defined it as "A stretch of experience disengaged from other people in perception, thought, emotion, and action" Solitude is an experience that can exist regardless of physical location, defined by the "absence" of other people, internally otherlessness, a spiritual/philosophical concept regarding the dissolution of self and a literary/existential term for extreme isolation. At forty-five, Professor Loredana Dove has built her life on control. Keeping her colleagues at arm's length and her students at a distance. At home, her marriage to an absent, quarrelsome wife is crumbling, leaving her to raise their five year old daughter in quiet isolation. She has convinced herself she needs nothing more until Romina Maple crashes into her classroom. Nineteen smart, and reckless, Romina is the youngest in her year. To her classmates she's the loud, infuriating party girl; to herself, she's struggling with mental health, taking care of her three year old brother and the only responsible adult in a house run by aging grandparents, her defiance masks hunger, her insolence disguises fear. Their lives should never touch. Yet hunger recognizes hunger. What begins as irritation morphs into fascination, into a closeness neither woman knows how to resist. Boundaries blur. Rules splinter. And both must face the truth: some desires do not starve quietly, and some silences can undo a lifetime of control. Our Shared Solitude is a story of two women who should have walked away yet found themselves consumed by the one thing they were never meant to want.