Close to Home

Some people become so intertwined with your life that losing them feels like losing a part of yourself.

For Sofía Carter, Joe Keery was never just her best friend's older brother.

He was summers spent at the Keery house when her own home felt too quiet. Late-night drives, shared secrets, almost-kisses, and years of feelings buried beneath friendship and bad timing. The boy she loved without ever really admitting it. The one person who always felt a little too much like home.

For years, Sofía convinced herself whatever existed between them had faded into history.

Until Joe comes home.

Suddenly, old feelings begin surfacing with terrifying ease, pulling them back into the kind of intimacy that once ruined them both. What begins as lingering looks and stolen touches quickly spirals into a secret neither of them can seem to stop choosing.

But falling for Joe again means risking far more than heartbreak.

Because their lives have always been deeply entangled, threaded through shared friends, family dinners, inside jokes, and years of history too complicated to untangle cleanly.

And this time, losing each other might cost them everything that ever felt like home.