Dear God

Kinslee Maybank didn't leave the Outer Banks for adventure-she left to survive. After high school, she headed for the mainland with nothing but a notebook, a stubborn streak, and the need to be more than where she came from. Writing turned into reporting, and reporting turned into a job that finally felt like a way out.

Until it wasn't.

One investigation led her somewhere she was never meant to go. A cold trail. A wrong name. A murder no one wanted reopened. When the pieces finally came together, so did the threats. Anonymous calls. Footsteps behind her at night. The sick certainty that someone was watching her-and enjoying the fear she couldn't shake.

Terrified and running out of places to hide, Kinslee fled back to the only place that ever taught her how to endure. The Outer Banks. Back to salt air and old scars. Back to her brother, JJ Maybank, crashing on his couch with her old friends and trying to make a living in her old town.

But what happens when her return doesn't go unnoticed?

Word travels fast in the Outer Banks, and it doesn't take long before her name reaches the one person she never thought she'd see again. Rafe Cameron doesn't just hear that Kinslee is back-he hears why. Whispers about a murder investigation gone wrong. A stalker. A man who was still free and after her.

And that's when Rafe starts paying attention.

And once his attention locks onto Kinslee, the line between protection and possession begins to blur.

Because if someone thinks they can touch what once belonged to him, and still does Rafe takes it personally. The past doesn't stay buried when it's soaked in unfinished business, and Rafe doesn't believe in coincidence. He inserts himself into her life under the guise of protection-offering resources, connections, solutions no one else can provide.

Where love isn't soft, choices have consequences, and falling for the wrong person might cost you everything-but leaving him could cost you more.