Guarded Hearts

Maya Chen has spent her life building walls. Escaping her chaotic family in Michigan for a prestigious marketing job in New York, she's determined to keep her professional life pristine and her personal life nonexistent. The last thing she needs is to fall for her patient, perceptive boss Alex Rivera-especially when their undeniable chemistry threatens everything she's worked to protect.

Alex sees through Maya's carefully constructed defenses to the brilliant, wounded woman beneath. But Maya has learned the hard way that love means losing yourself, that caring about someone gives them the power to destroy you. When their professional collaboration becomes personal, Maya sets strict boundaries: physical only, no emotions, no complications.

But as family crises pull Maya back into the dysfunction she escaped, Alex becomes her lifeline-the steady presence who holds her together when she's falling apart. For the first time, Maya discovers what it feels like to be cherished rather than needed, protected rather than used.
When a dream job opportunity forces Maya to choose between the career she's built and the man she's falling for, her deepest fears surface. Convinced that love is just another form of control, Maya uses the cruelest weapon she has: Alex's feelings for her.

Now Maya must decide what she's really running from-her traumatic past or her chance at happiness. Because sometimes the greatest risk isn't opening your heart, but keeping it closed.
A story about breaking cycles, building trust, and learning that the strongest people aren't those who never fall apart-they're the ones who find someone worth staying together for.