Can two broken men build one life? Ten years. That’s what Makai lost for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s been exonerated, but the abuse he suffered in prison isn’t so easy to leave behind. He heads to the one place he remembers being happy: Acker, Wisconsin, where he spent summers with his grandpa. Unfortunately, not everyone wants Makai there. Ten days. That’s how long Emil, now twenty-one, was held prisoner as a teenager. The mental and physical injuries he suffered at the hands of a drug trafficking ring still haunt him. Nightmares, anxiety, and PTSD challenge the connection forming between Makai and Emil, though together, they might find a way to move beyond their pain and into a future -- and a relationship -- that both had thought impossible. Now they just have to convince Emil’s father, the town sheriff. It won’t be easy with danger closer than they know ...

“Okay,” Mom said and went to pour him some orange juice.


It had been a thing, in the first couple of years after he’d gotten out of the hospital. His screams waking them all up, and Mom bringing him juice or him going to the kitchen. She’d been so scared back then too.


Emil was pretty sure she hadn’t really understood the trauma he’d suffered, the way his mind had warped to cope, before the first ten or so times he screamed in the night. Afterward, since it probably felt like the only thing she could do to help, she’d started this tradition. One they’d thought they didn’t have to go through again.


“What prompted this?” she asked quietly as she handed over the glass.


He sat at the breakfast table, and she took her old spot, leaning to the island nearby, but not too close. Distance. It all boiled down to distance.


Chapter 46