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 ...

Kalle sent him the information for the journalist, and Emil looked her up online. She seemed compassionate, a good kind of person who didn’t sensationalize stories but tried to find the human aspect in them instead. Makai still took a few days to think about it.


When Makai finally sat down at the kitchen table one afternoon to compose the email, Emil took the cats out, and after a while, the telltale sound of hesitant guitar playing came through the open door.


Emil had restringed the guitar the previous night with an old unopened package of strings he’d found in his things, and then he’d slept restlessly and woken up once. Makai had been so in tune with him that he’d woken up as well. It wasn’t just his own coughing that woke him.


He admired the hell out of Emil for still going for it, still making the effort even though it clearly unsettled him on some level.


Chapter 83