Nate Cross went into the mountains carrying a grief he had never learned to survive. Years earlier, a car crash took Elena and the future they had only just begun to imagine, leaving him with memories sharp enough to turn every new attachment into a threat. When an avalanche nearly kills him near Blackpine Ridge, Mara is the woman who drags him back toward life. She has a daughter, Sophie, a cabin full of responsibilities, and no interest in becoming someone else's emotional rescue mission. But a brutal winter keeps throwing them together. Snowstorms, broken heat, community festivals, and the dangerous beauty of the mountains begin to create a fragile routine in which Nate remembers what it feels like to care about ordinary things again. Mara sees the man beneath his isolation, while Nate finds himself growing attached to both her and Sophie in ways that terrify him. Then Mara discovers pieces of the successful life he abandoned, and the past he has kept locked away becomes impossible to avoid. As another storm closes in and the mountain turns dangerous again, Nate must decide whether protecting the people he loves means leaving before he can lose them or staying when every instinct tells him to run. The mountain once took almost everything from him. This time, it may give him a reason to live.
Nate Cross went into the mountains carrying a grief he had never learned to survive. Years earlier, a car crash took Elena and the future they had only just begun to imagine, leaving him with memories sharp enough to turn every new attachment into a threat. When an avalanche nearly kills him near...