Where the Stars Fall

Sadie Brennan has spent a decade becoming someone nobody back home would recognize. Sharp suits, sharper ambitions, and a city apartment she never has to share. When a call forces her back to the small town she escaped the day she turned eighteen, she signs a rental car agreement with a pen running dry and tells herself it will only take a week. Waiting at the diner where she once worked summers is Declan Maddox, older now, steadier, with the same steady gaze that once made her believe in forever. He asks no questions. He offers no forgiveness. He just pours her coffee like no time has passed at all. As Sadie reconnects with the people she left behind, the father who still won't talk about her mother, the best friend who married her brother, the girl she used to be, she and Declan fall into something dangerously familiar. Late-night drives. Half-finished sentences. The kind of closeness that feels like coming home and like standing on the edge of a cliff at the same time. With her return flight looming and every old wound still raw, Sadie faces the question she's been running from since she was seventeen: was leaving the bravest thing she ever did, or was it the biggest mistake?