Hero Next Door: A forced proximity, firefighter next door small town romance

Losing everything was supposed to be the end. It might be the beginning.

I’ve built my life around moving on.

New places. New projects. New causes. Make an impact, then keep going. It worked—right up until a scandal I never saw coming burned my reputation to the ground… and a house fire took everything else.

Now I’m stuck in a small mountain town with nothing but borrowed clothes, a growing list of problems, and a firefighter next door who refuses to let me fall apart quietly.

Colter Gibson is steady, capable, and entirely too easy to lean on. A single dad with deep roots, a protective streak a mile wide, and a way of looking at me like I’m something other than a hot mess.

Letting him help was supposed to be temporary.

So was staying in Gibson Hollow.

So was whatever this thing is igniting between us.

But the longer I’m here, the harder it is to pretend he doesn’t feel like home.

And when the life I lost comes calling, I have to decide…

Do I go back to who I was—

Or risk everything for the one place—and the one man—that makes me want to stay?

In a town that takes care of its own, sometimes you have to learn how to let yourself be one of them.