SOPHIA
I spent my life becoming whoever the mission required.
Different names. Different faces. Different lives.
Until one mission shattered everything I thought I knew about myself.
Now all I want is silence.
I disappear into the Alaskan wilderness, hoping the mountains can bury the memories that haunt my dreams and the guilt that follows me into every waking hour.
The last thing I expect is Levi Hale.
Quiet. Stubborn. Infuriatingly observant.
A man with scars of his own and an unsettling ability to see through every wall I've spent years building.
He doesn't push for answers. Doesn't demand explanations. Somehow, that makes him even more dangerous to the fragile peace I'm trying to find.
Because every time he looks at me, I feel something I haven't felt in years.
Safe.
I came to Alaska to disappear.
I never expected to find someone who would make me want to stay.
LEVI
Five years in prison for a murder I didn't commit.
Five years of watching my life disappear while the rest of the world kept moving.
When the truth finally set me free, I wanted nothing more to do with the world that had condemned me.
Alaska offered everything I'd been denied.
Freedom. Solitude. Peace.
Now I spend my days guiding strangers through some of the most breathtaking wilderness on earth and my nights thanking God for the second chance I never thought I'd have.
Then Sophia La'Grange walks into my life.
Beautiful. Guarded. Carrying secrets she refuses to share.
She says she wants to be left alone.
But I recognize the haunted look in her eyes because I've seen it in my own reflection.
Behind her carefully guarded words is a woman who's forgotten what it feels like to trust. And behind those walls is a heart I'm beginning to care about far more than I should.
The more time we spend together, the harder it becomes to remember why I promised myself I'd never risk my heart again.
Because Sophia makes me want things I thought I'd lost forever.
A future. A family. Someone to come home to.
And for the first time in years, I'm beginning to believe God might have something more planned for my life than simply surviving it.
TOGETHER
Some wounds aren't visible.
Some prisons don't have bars.
And sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.
Neither Sophia nor Levi came to Alaska looking for love. Both believed solitude was the only way to escape the pain of their pasts.
But beneath Alaska's snow-covered mountains, quiet conversations turn into unexpected friendship, and friendship blossoms into a love neither thought possible.
For Sophia, loving Levi means trusting someone with secrets she's spent a lifetime protecting.
For Levi, loving Sophia means risking the peace and freedom he fought so hard to reclaim.
As their carefully guarded hearts begin to open, they discover that God's greatest blessings sometimes arrive when hope seems lost.
But can two people who have spent years running from their pasts find the courage to face tomorrow together?
Or will the scars they carry cost them the one thing neither believed they deserved?
A second chance at love.
tessabrookman@grovechronicles.com
