If love is like water, then I shouldn’t be alive.

I was never supposed to be here.
I never meant to come home.
I was raised to shut up and disappear.

Now my parents are dead, leaving only me and my younger brother, who’s barely alive in an ICU.
I’m told I’m all he has left.

Still, his best friend remains by his side.
Tristan.
Kind. Generous. Radiant. Beautiful.
I don’t remember him, and I’m not sure I want to.

Reconnecting with Austin and the people I left behind is an emotional upheaval I’m not at all prepared for, but Tristan wants me to try. He wants to me to be the man I never thought I could be—an artist. A professor. A brother. The sole heir to a fortune I was told I don’t deserve.

Everything in this town hurts, and there’s very little comfort to be had when the guard around my heart has been firmly in place for so long that it can’t let even the most beautiful things in.

When Tristan, who is as perfect as he is forbidden, asks me to stay, I do—to try to be the person he believes I can be. But nothing in my past could possibly prepare me, or him, or any of us for the consequences of that first mistake. I was never supposed to be here.

Readers can expect MM romance, high angst, hurt comfort, found family, and love that grabs you by the heart and won’t let go. Mature content. Check content and trigger warnings. 18+.