Light of the North Star: A Small Town Second Chance Romance

Fifteen years ago, Lacey Grey vanished without a word. The love of my life simply disappeared one night without a word of explanation to anyone. It gutted me, and it has haunted me every single day since.

I've tried everything I can think of to get over her, including the old adage about getting under someone else. Yeah, that doesn't really work. Not when it's the love of your life, your soulmate. Your person. The one human on this planet who just fits you like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

So when she suddenly appears in Three Rivers the very day my best buddy Riley gets engaged, I'm stunned. More than stunned. It literally took the breath out of my lungs, left me reeling.

But all too soon, it's apparent Lacey Grey and I never lost a step when it comes to our physical chemistry. That, we discover, is all too explosive. It's like picking up where we left off when we were eighteen...except better, somehow.

Our emotional chemistry? That's...a bit more complicated. Mainly because of all the unanswered questions lingering and looming between us.

My feelings for her never changed. The question is, will our pasts let us rediscover the love that once burned so brightly?

* * *

Cole Mannix was my everything. And then we made the kind of mistakes that teenagers in love make in the heat of the moment, and it turned our lives upside down and inside out.

So, I ran.

I did it to protect Cole, though. I mean, yes, my parents were...not exactly supportive. But really, I did what I did to protect Cole, so he could have his life. After all, only one of us needed to have our lives ruined, right? Might as well be me.

Cole, however, did not, does not, and will never agree with that sentiment. He's...Cole. A white knight, a paragon of goodness and virtue. Sort of. Mostly. He's not perfect, but he's pretty damn close. He would have insisted on protecting me. Taking care of me. It wouldn't have worked and I knew it, so I ran.

I ended up spending the next fifteen years selling my soul piece by piece and bit by bit to a man who never loved me, who only ever wanted me to be the trophy wife, the arm candy. And that's all I was.

Until he hit me-after cheating on me with someone barely legal.

I left him and ended up back in Three Rivers sort of by accident. And then I, very much by accident, ran right into Cole Mannix and discovered that despite the passage of fifteen years, not only is he bigger, hotter, and sexier than ever, he's kinder. More mature. Wiser. And oh, so understanding.

And he makes my body sing.

I haven't felt that...well, since him, fifteen years ago.

It's better than ever between us, physically. Which is good, right?

Except we have a LOT to talk about. A LOT to figure out if we're going to rekindle the love we once had. It's what we both want, and it seems like a foregone conclusion....

If we can get past the past.