She came to Cedar Ridge to disappear. He's the first person who ever asked her to stay.
Maddie Chen has spent eight months and five towns learning how to vanish. New name nerves, exits memorized, cash counted to the dollar - whatever it takes to stay ahead of the man she left. Cedar Ridge, Colorado, is just supposed to be town six. A week, maybe. Long enough to look like a tourist and move on.
Then she walks into a gear shop to buy a headlamp she doesn't need, and the man behind the counter doesn't look at her the way men look at a woman alone. He just... settles. And for the first time in two and a half years, Maddie says her own name out loud because she wants to.
Sawyer Hartley has been the guy who holds his whole family together for nine years - the steady one, the one who's fine.He knows how to read a room and how to give people exactly what they came in for. What he doesn't know how to do is want something for himself. Until a guarded woman with factory-new boots and a careful smile gives him a name he can't stop thinking about.
When Maddie's ex sets out for Cedar Ridge, the town quietly closes ranks - and a fake relationship that started as cover becomes the most real thing either of them has ever been part of. But Sawyer is keeping one room of himself locked, and Maddie ran eight hundred miles from a man who did exactly that. Before she can stay for good, they'll both have to learn the difference between being protected and being known.
Where the Trail Ends is a slow-burn, open-door small-town romance about found family, second chances, and the quiet courage it takes to let someone say your real name. Set in the same Colorado mountain town as The Snow Between Us and The Long Way Home - and fully readable on its own.
One-click and come home to Cedar Ridge.
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