kayelisse8
Cordelia came home for a fresh start, not a reckoning.
After three years away, she's back in her hometown, unpacking boxes, rebuilding a life, and trying not to fall apart before noon. She can handle the move. She can handle seeing her best friend Jade again. She can even handle her brother James barging back into her space like no time has passed.
What she cannot handle is Levi.
James's best friend was never supposed to show up at her door, let alone help her move in like he still belongs in the shape of her life. But one knock later, there he is: older, sharper, impossible to ignore, and attached to a past Cordelia has spent years trying to outrun.
Now, stuck in a too-small townhome with too much history and nowhere to hide, Cordelia is forced to face the one person she never really got over... while pretending she's perfectly fine.
She isn't. And Levi can tell.
He was James's best friend. Older. Watchful. Untouchable. The kind of man who notices everything and says almost nothing.
But some loves don't begin all at once. They build over years. In glances. In silence. In almosts. In the quiet certainty of being seen too clearly by the wrong person at the worst possible time.
By the time Cordelia and Levi finally belong to each other, their love is already bigger than either of them knows what to do with.
Then life comes for them.
This is a story about Black love that refuses to stay pretty and shallow. It is tender, sexy, devastating, funny, faithful, and full of the kind of intimacy that only comes when two people have seen each other at their absolute worst and still say stay.