All Izzy wanted was to keep everyone at arm''s length.
What she got was six-foot-four of silent hockey enforcer who showed up without asking, remembered her sandwich order, and never once demanded she talk about her feelings.
Worse? He made ‘comfortable’ feel like enough.
Even worse? Comfortable was just another word for hiding—and she’d been hiding for thirteen years.
Izzy is a social worker at Hartford’s Department of Children and Families, and she’s spent over a decade saving every kid she can reach because she couldn’t save the one who mattered most. Her sibling drowned when she was fifteen. She’s never forgiven herself. Now she runs workshops for at-risk teens, takes on impossible cases, and keeps everyone—friends, family, boyfriend—at exactly the right distance: close enough to care, far enough to survive losing.
Torren MacLeod is an enforcer for the Hartford Hawks and he’s built his entire identity around protecting people. His parents died when he was twenty-one, leaving him to raise his spiraling younger brother alone. He doesn’t do feelings. Doesn’t do words. Just shows up, takes the hits, and keeps everyone else safe—even if it destroys him in the process.
She has walls. He has silence. Neither of them planned on three months of ‘surface-level’ suddenly cracking wide open when a case gets too personal, a brother ends up in the hospital, and they both have to face the terrifying truth: comfortable isn’t the same as whole.
He tells himself he doesn''t need her to say it back.
She tells herself needing anyone is just another way to get hurt.
Somewhere between the panic attacks and the midnight confessions, Izzy stops running from vulnerability and Torren stops hiding behind protection. Because he doesn’t just show up for her—he stays. And she’s starting to realize that letting someone love her doesn’t make her weak.
It makes her brave.
She’s terrified that loving him means she has something left to lose.
He’s terrified she’ll never let him all the way in.
This could break them both apart—or become the safest place they’ve ever found.
Genre: Romance
What she got was six-foot-four of silent hockey enforcer who showed up without asking, remembered her sandwich order, and never once demanded she talk about her feelings.
Worse? He made ‘comfortable’ feel like enough.
Even worse? Comfortable was just another word for hiding—and she’d been hiding for thirteen years.
Izzy is a social worker at Hartford’s Department of Children and Families, and she’s spent over a decade saving every kid she can reach because she couldn’t save the one who mattered most. Her sibling drowned when she was fifteen. She’s never forgiven herself. Now she runs workshops for at-risk teens, takes on impossible cases, and keeps everyone—friends, family, boyfriend—at exactly the right distance: close enough to care, far enough to survive losing.
Torren MacLeod is an enforcer for the Hartford Hawks and he’s built his entire identity around protecting people. His parents died when he was twenty-one, leaving him to raise his spiraling younger brother alone. He doesn’t do feelings. Doesn’t do words. Just shows up, takes the hits, and keeps everyone else safe—even if it destroys him in the process.
She has walls. He has silence. Neither of them planned on three months of ‘surface-level’ suddenly cracking wide open when a case gets too personal, a brother ends up in the hospital, and they both have to face the terrifying truth: comfortable isn’t the same as whole.
He tells himself he doesn''t need her to say it back.
She tells herself needing anyone is just another way to get hurt.
Somewhere between the panic attacks and the midnight confessions, Izzy stops running from vulnerability and Torren stops hiding behind protection. Because he doesn’t just show up for her—he stays. And she’s starting to realize that letting someone love her doesn’t make her weak.
It makes her brave.
She’s terrified that loving him means she has something left to lose.
He’s terrified she’ll never let him all the way in.
This could break them both apart—or become the safest place they’ve ever found.
Genre: Romance
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