Learning to Breathe Again
(2026)(The third book in the Where Love Leads series)
A novel by Rebecca Catherine
Kennedy Briggs didn’t claw her way into nursing school just to wash out.
But the program is brutal—four exams, constant checkoffs, and a B-average requirement that feels less like a goal and more like a countdown. One bad grade, one missed assignment, one panic spiral… and her future is gone.
And lately, panic has been coming too easily.
Eli Mercer has spent his years post-deployment keeping his life simple.
A steady job at the garage. A loyal dog. A quiet apartment in Clayborn where nobody asks about the war—or the parts of him that never really came home.
He doesn’t need much.
Until Kennedy.
Until the dream he can’t stop seeing every time he passes an empty studio space with a FOR LEASE sign in the window.
A dojo of his own. A fresh start. Something worth building.
Something worth staying for.
But when a fellow soldier from Eli’s past comes home from Iraq—haunted, restless, and unraveling fast—the fragile peace Eli and Kennedy have fought for begins to crack.
Because the past isn’t buried anymore.
It’s sitting at their kitchen table.
And it’s pulling them all under.
As Kennedy battles exhaustion, classes, and the relentless pressure of a program designed to break her, Eli finds himself facing the one truth he’s avoided for years:
You can’t protect the people you love if you’re still at war inside yourself.
Kennedy doesn’t need a savior.
She needs a man who will show up—again and again—when everything gets hard.
And Eli Mercer has never walked away from anything worth fighting for.
Learning to Breathe Again is an emotional clean, age-gap romance featuring an ex-military protector hero, nursing school stress, found family, and guaranteed HEA.
Genre: Romance
But the program is brutal—four exams, constant checkoffs, and a B-average requirement that feels less like a goal and more like a countdown. One bad grade, one missed assignment, one panic spiral… and her future is gone.
And lately, panic has been coming too easily.
Eli Mercer has spent his years post-deployment keeping his life simple.
A steady job at the garage. A loyal dog. A quiet apartment in Clayborn where nobody asks about the war—or the parts of him that never really came home.
He doesn’t need much.
Until Kennedy.
Until the dream he can’t stop seeing every time he passes an empty studio space with a FOR LEASE sign in the window.
A dojo of his own. A fresh start. Something worth building.
Something worth staying for.
But when a fellow soldier from Eli’s past comes home from Iraq—haunted, restless, and unraveling fast—the fragile peace Eli and Kennedy have fought for begins to crack.
Because the past isn’t buried anymore.
It’s sitting at their kitchen table.
And it’s pulling them all under.
As Kennedy battles exhaustion, classes, and the relentless pressure of a program designed to break her, Eli finds himself facing the one truth he’s avoided for years:
You can’t protect the people you love if you’re still at war inside yourself.
Kennedy doesn’t need a savior.
She needs a man who will show up—again and again—when everything gets hard.
And Eli Mercer has never walked away from anything worth fighting for.
Learning to Breathe Again is an emotional clean, age-gap romance featuring an ex-military protector hero, nursing school stress, found family, and guaranteed HEA.
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Rebecca Catherine's Learning to Breathe Again