A Place To Stay

Skye MacKinnon has left the quiet Highland town of Gairloch behind for the crowded streets of Edinburgh, determined to make something of herself.

Eighteen, fiercely intelligent and painfully shy, Skye has always been more comfortable with books than people. Between studying Medicine, working late shifts at a pub and looking after her Labrador puppy, Finlay, and her grey cat, Pebble, she has little time-or desire-for anything complicated.

Then she meets Amelia Campbell.

Amelia is everything Skye isn't: confident, warm, effortlessly sociable and impossible not to notice. But Amelia comes with Callum Henderson, her boyfriend of several years. To everyone else, Callum is charming, thoughtful and almost impossibly kind.

Skye sees the same thing at first.

Until she starts noticing the cracks.

The things Amelia doesn't say.

The way she checks her phone.

The apologies that don't make sense.

The moments when Callum's smile disappears the second nobody else is watching.

And slowly, Skye begins to realise that the girl she's falling for is trapped inside a life that looks perfect from the outside.

But Callum doesn't intend to let Amelia go.

And Skye doesn't yet know how far he will go to keep control.

Because some people spend years hiding who they really are.

And sometimes, the person who helps you escape is the one you never expected to fall in love with.

This is a story about the difference between being loved and being controlled, about finding courage in the quietest places, and about two girls who were never supposed to become each other's home.