CB

You thought you had outgrown East Highland. After graduating, you left town, built a wildly successful business, and created the kind of life everyone who underestimated you in high school could only dream about. You had money, independence, and a future that had nothing to do with the people you left behind. Then you came home. Nate Jacobs and Cassie Howard are married now—a relationship that looks picture-perfect from a distance but carries plenty of cracks beneath the surface. And then there’s Maddy Perez. You remember Maddy from high school: the girl everyone noticed, the girl who always seemed untouchable, and the girl who could make you feel like she knew exactly what you were thinking with one look. Except now, you're both adults. Maddy has changed. So have you. What begins as an unexpected reunion slowly turns into late-night conversations, lingering glances, unresolved tension, and feelings neither of you are prepared to admit. But getting close to Maddy means getting close to the complicated world she has spent years trying to escape—and that world has a way of dragging everyone back in. As old relationships unravel and new ones begin to take shape, you have to decide whether the life you've built is worth protecting from the past... Or whether Maddy might be the one thing from East Highland you were never supposed to leave behind.