Out of Bounds

For twenty-one years, Easton Brooks has known exactly where he belongs, on his family's wheat farm in the tiny town of Pine Ridge, Montana. A basketball scholarship to Redmont University was never supposed to change that. It was simply an opportunity, one he's worked his entire life for and one he refuses to waste.

But between the expectations of being Redmont's biggest transfer, a campus that feels impossibly large, and the pressure to prove he deserves every minute on the court, the confidence everyone else sees begins to crack. Behind closed doors, panic attacks become harder to hide and the future he's always dreamed of starts to feel terrifying instead.

Bree Watson knows better than anyone what basketball can take away. As the daughter of Redmont's head coach, she's spent years building a life that exists everywhere except inside the college basketball program. But some memories refuse to stay in the past and some wounds never truly heal.

When she stumbles across a hopelessly lost transfer student during orientation week, helping him find his way seems like nothing more than an act of kindness. Bree has no idea that the quiet farm boy with freckles, an easy smile and a terrible sense of direction is Redmont's newest basketball star, and Easton has no idea the girl who helped him find his first class is the one person every player has been warned to stay away from.

As chance encounters become shared electives, late-night study sessions and afternoons coaching Bree's young basketball team, she discovers there's far more to Easton than the player the crowd chants for every game. Behind the spotlight is someone who misses home, carries the weight of impossible expectations and is quietly fighting battles no one else can see.

Sometimes home isn't a place. Sometimes it's the person who reminds you who you were before the world told you who you had to become.

*Redmont University Novel #1*