Magnolia Steel returns home from Australia, but her heart is still tangled up in Alex Sebring—the former rugby star who made her believe in something real.

Real enough to try the impossible––long distance.

The time zones are brutal. The distance, worse.

But they make a promise—to hold on, even when everything else tells them to let go.

Until someone in the shadows pulls the strings.

Two messages.

Two lies.

Two broken hearts—each left believing the other walked away.

For Alex, the silence becomes unbearable. The heartbreak. The what-ifs. It all spirals into a storm of anxiety and depression he can’t outrun.

Then—hope. A chance to reclaim the life he lost.

A shot at a professional comeback. One last opportunity to fight for the game torn away from him. To take it, he’ll need surgery.

The procedure brings him to the States… and back into the path of the woman he never forgot.

The heat between them hasn’t faded.

If anything, it burns hotter than ever.

They weren’t meant to fall apart. But they’ll have to fight like hell to come back together.