One December Before You Left

What happens when the life you ran from becomes the only place you can finally breathe?

Nora Bennett swore she'd never return to Crescent Bay. For seven years, she built her dream career as an architect in Seattle, creating perfect spaces for everyone but herself. When her mother dies and leaves behind a crumbling house and a lifetime of secrets, Nora has thirty days to settle the estate and disappear again. Thirty days to avoid the whispers, the memories, and most of all, him.

Caleb Morgan never left. The boy who once promised Nora forever became the man who watched her taillights disappear without explanation. He turned his late father's struggling hardware store into the heart of downtown Crescent Bay, poured his heartbreak into restoration projects, and convinced himself he was over her. Then she walks into his shop on a rain-soaked December morning, needing his help to restore the house they once dreamed of renovating together, and every carefully constructed wall comes crashing down.

Working side by side in the cold coastal winter, stripped-down walls aren't the only things being exposed. Nora discovers her mother's hidden journals revealing a love story that mirrors her own, letters that explain why she had to push everyone away, and truths about the night that changed everything. Caleb sees beyond the polished professional to the scared girl who never learned that love doesn't mean losing yourself.

Between heated glances over paint samples and stolen kisses in rooms full of memories, they're rebuilding more than just a house. But Nora's Seattle life is calling her back. As December marches toward its inevitable end, they're forced to answer the question they've been avoiding: Can you renovate a broken heart, or are some foundations too damaged to save?

--- SAMPLE FROM CHAPTER 1 ---

The December rain hit harder in Crescent Bay than it ever did in Seattle. Nora Bennett sat in her rental car outside 42 Shoreline Drive, watching water stream down the windshield and distort the house beyond into something almost unrecognizable. Almost.

The bones were still there-the wraparound porch her father had built the summer she turned twelve, the turret window where she'd spent countless nights sketching building designs and dreaming of escape, the blue shutters her mother had insisted on despite every practical argument against them. Now the shutters hung crooked. Paint peeled from the siding in long, sad strips. The porch sagged like it was tired of holding itself up.

Seven years. She'd stayed away for seven years, and the house had given up without her.

Nora grabbed her messenger bag and pushed open the car door, immediately regretting the leather boots she'd chosen that morning in her Seattle apartment. They were city boots, meant for concrete and controlled environments, not for the muddy gravel drive of her childhood home. Within three steps, cold water had seeped through to her socks.

The key stuck in the lock, just like it always had. She had to jiggle it twice, push her shoulder against the warped wood, and turn the knob at precisely the right moment. Muscle memory was a strange thing-her body remembered the exact sequence even as her mind had tried to forget everything about this place.

The door gave way with a groan that sounded almost accusatory. Inside, the house smelled of dust and something deeper, something that made her chest tighten. Her mother's perfume, maybe, or just the particular scent of abandonment.