OFF LIMITS
Zara Cole comes home for her birthday weekend and finds her brother Marcus’s best friend, Damon, staying at the house. Nothing new. She’s always managed to keep her feelings buried.
Then a blizzard hits. Marcus gets stranded away. Camille and Ryan can’t make it through.
Three days. Just the two of them. Completely alone.
What starts as tension slowly becomes something neither of them can control — honest conversations, stolen touches, and a connection that burns through every reason they have to stay away from each other.
But the snow melts. Marcus comes back. Their partners return. And suddenly Zara and Daman are standing in the middle of something real, something undeniable, completely surrounded by everyone they’d hurt if the truth came out.
The story follows what happens after, the guilt, the secrets, the obsession, the consequences. Marcus will eventually find out. Ryan will eventually see it. Camille already suspects more than she lets on.
It’s a story about two people who know better, choose each other anyway, and have to live with every single thing that costs them.
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Chapter: What Was GrowingCHAPTER FIFTY EIGHTPOV: MarcusSix months.Six months of Sundays.Six months of Catherine at the table learning what the table was. Not being told — she’d been told before she came the first time and she’d understood before she sat down. Learning in the other way. The accumulative way. The way you learned things that mattered by being present for them over time.She’d been present.Every Sunday.Without fail.She brought something different every time. Not always food — sometimes a specific tea she’d found. A book she thought Zara would like. A wooden thing for Marcus James that had arrived in a bag with no ceremony and which he had assessed for three minutes and then accepted into the rotation of wooden things with the expression.The rosemary was still on the windowsill.Had been there six months.The kitchen smelled like something was about to happen.Always.She was not like anyone he’d been with before.He’d been with people. Not many — he hadn’t been a person who moved through
Last Updated: 2026-06-01
Chapter: Who Marcus BroughtCHAPTER FIFTY SEVENPOV: SandyShe noticed on Wednesday.Marcus came for dinner on Wednesdays sometimes. Not always. When he came on Wednesdays it was usually because something was happening that he was processing through proximity and food. He didn’t say what the something was. He just appeared and ate and talked about things adjacent to the something and eventually went home.She’d been watching this pattern since she was old enough to watch patterns.Wednesday this week he came and he was different.Not obviously different. Her parents didn’t notice. Marcus James was two and a half and was at the stage of noticing things at three in the morning and not noticing things that were in front of him, so he didn’t notice.But Sandy noticed.She noticed because Marcus was slightly too loud. Marcus was always loud but this was the performative loud of someone who was managing something rather than the natural loud of someone simply being themselves.She noticed because he kept checking his
Last Updated: 2026-05-30
Chapter: The New HouseCHAPTER FIFTY SIXPOV: ZaraThey found it in May.Not dramatically. Not the way houses appeared in films — the door opening and the light and the knowing immediately. It took six weeks of looking and seven viewings and two near-misses and one house they’d almost convinced themselves into before Sandy had stood in the kitchen and said no with the considered expression and they’d both known she was right.The seventh one.Semi-detached. A quiet street in Hackney. A garden that needed work. A kitchen that was larger than Marcus’s by exactly enough. A room for Sandy with a south-facing window. A room for Marcus James with a north-facing window that got the specific grey morning light he’d been assessed at. A room that could be an office. A room that could be other things.A dining room with space for a bigger table.They walked through it twice on the day.Sandy was last to come downstairs.She’d been upstairs for seven minutes.She appeared at the bottom of the stairs.Looked at them.“Y
Last Updated: 2026-05-27
Chapter: What Marcus KnewCHAPTER FIFTY FIVEPOV: MarcusHe’d known for two months.Not because they’d told him. Because he paid attention and because some things announced themselves before anyone said them out loud. The way Zara had been looking at the house lately — the specific look of someone measuring something. The way Damon had been quiet in a different register than his usual quiet. The way Sandy had started keeping her drawings in stacks instead of spreading them across the table because there was no longer enough table for the spreading.He’d known.He’d been waiting for them to tell him.He’d been cooking for two months while knowing.Sunday.After dinner.Zara’s face when she looked at him said now.He put the kettle on.Made tea.Brought it to the table.Sat.Looked at them.“Tell me,” he said.Zara looked at Damon.Damon looked at Marcus.“We’ve been thinking about moving,” Zara said.Marcus looked at his tea.He’d rehearsed this moment.Not dramatically. Just, he’d thought about what he’d say.
Last Updated: 2026-05-26
Chapter: What Marcus SaidCHAPTER FIFTY FOUR POV: Damon The drive home was long. Five hours. Edinburgh to London on a Saturday in March with two children in the back and Marcus in the front passenger seat because Marcus had decided this was his seat and had been in it since the first family road trip and had never vacated the position. Sandy was reading. Marcus James was asleep with the bear. Rosie was looking out the window. He drove. Zara was in the middle row with the children. He could see her in the rearview mirror occasionally reading something on her phone, watching the road, the specific quality of her presence that had been beside him for seven years and that he still noticed every time. The way it should be. The way he intended it to stay. Somewhere past Newcastle. Sandy put her book down. Looked at Rosie. “You’re thinking,” Sandy said. “I’m always thinking,” Rosie said. “About the building,” Sandy said. “Yes,” Rosie said. “What about it,” Sandy said. Rosie looked out the window.
Last Updated: 2026-05-25
Chapter: The First AnniversaryCHAPTER FIFTY THREE POV: Rosie She’d been drawing the building for a year. From the photograph on Sandy’s fridge. From the pictures Isla sent. From the architectural drawings Sandy had shown her that Isla had emailed specifically because Sandy had asked specifically and Isla had said yes immediately. She had twelve drawings of it. Different angles. Different light. Different details focused on — the entrance, the windows, the plaque, the relationship between the old stone and the new glass panels Isla had added to the east side. She knew the building better than most buildings she’d visited. She hadn’t visited this one. Until today. Edinburgh by train. She’d been on trains before. To see her nan in Bristol. To London once with school. But this train felt different because the destination was different. Because the destination had been living in her folder for a year and was about to stop being drawings and start being real. She sat with Sandy. Sandy was reading. Sandy read
Last Updated: 2026-05-24
Wrong Pair of Eyes
SYNOPSIS
The Wrong Pair of Eyes
Mia Caldwell isn’t looking for anything.
She has Ethan, warm, loving, six thousand miles away but counting down every day until he’s back. She has her studies, her routine, her carefully maintained life. She has a relationship built on a year of long distance and the kind of trust that costs something to keep.
She isn’t looking.
But then Ryder Holt walks out of a cafeteria door while she’s on the phone with her boyfriend and something in her chest moves without permission.
He doesn’t introduce himself. Doesn’t flirt, doesn’t chase, doesn’t do any of the things she could easily dismiss. He just looks at her. Direct and unhurried and completely certain, like he’s already made a decision and is simply waiting for her to arrive at the same one.
They get paired for a project and she finds out he requested her specifically, she’s bringing him coffee and losing arguments she should win and lying awake thinking about a man she has no right to think about while Ethan sends heart emojis from across the world and says he’s coming home early.Three weeks. She has three weeks to get herself under control.
Ryder Holt has other plans.
Possessive without touching her. Obsessive without saying it. He sees her in ways that feel both thrilling and terrifying and the closer he gets, the more Mia realizes the real danger isn’t him but how little she’s pulling away.
The Wrong Pair of Eyes is a slow burn dark romance about desire arriving at the worst possible moment, loyalty cracking under the weight of something real, and a woman caught between the love she chose and the one she never saw coming.
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Chapter: March And What It BroughtCHAPTER 67 POV: Mia March arrived with the specific quality of a month that had been waiting. Not impatiently — the specific patient waiting of something that knew its time was coming and had been preparing accordingly. She felt it in the quality of the mornings. The light different. Not winter’s careful light or summer’s generous abundance. Something in between — present and considered, the light of a season that was becoming rather than arrived. She stood at the kitchen window on the first morning of March and felt the becoming of it. His footsteps behind her. Coffee appearing beside her hand on the sill. “Thank you,” she said. “Mm,” he said. They stood. The garden below. The sky above. The Meridian roofline. “How are you feeling?” he said. The same question he’d been asking every morning since February. Not performing concern. Actually asking. Wanting the specific, honest answer rather than the comfortable one. “Better than yesterday,” she said. “Good strange still
Last Updated: 2026-06-01
Chapter: February DeepeningCHAPTER 66POV: RyderThe student’s essay published on the fourteenth of February.He found out from Dr. Osei — she appeared in his doorway at eight in the morning with her phone held up the way she always announced things that mattered.He read the notification.The journal. The title. The Current Keepers. Her name.He sat back.“Have you told her?” he said.“Mia’s telling her now,” Dr. Osei said.He looked at the notification.At the name on the paper.A first year student’s grandmother’s story — now in the world. Permanently. For the ones who found it.He thought about his own first paper.About the day it published.About Mia standing at the desk reading the confirmation email.About how much had changed since then.About how much had stayed exactly the same.“Ryder,” Dr. Osei said.He looked at her.She was watching him with the expression she wore when she’d observed something and had decided it was worth saying.“What?” he said.“You look like your father in that photograph,” s
Last Updated: 2026-05-28
Chapter: Whatever Comes AfterCHAPTER 65 POV: Ryder January again. The third one. He woke in the Meridian apartment on the second of January and looked at the ceiling and felt the specific quality of a year that knew what it was before it had properly started. She was asleep. He lay still. Listened to her breathe. Thought about the garden. About the mountain. About whatever comes after said in the dark on December 27th with his arm around her and Cape Town outside the window. She’d said yes. Not in words. She’d held his arm tighter. Which was the same thing. Which was better than words. She woke at seven. Found him already at the desk. The fourth paper. She appeared in the doorway. “Already?” she said. “January second,” he said. “The year doesn’t wait.” “It’s seven in the morning,” she said. “The morning doesn’t wait either,” he said. She crossed to him. Looked over his shoulder. He let her read. She read. “The opening line,” she said. “Yes?” he said. “It’s the best thing you’ve writt
Last Updated: 2026-05-26
Chapter: The GardenCHAPTER 64 POV: Mia The morning moved slowly. The specific, deliberate pace of a day that understood its own significance and wasn’t going to be rushed through it. She dressed in the guest room. The dress she’d chosen in November — simple, the colour of the Cape Town summer sky in the early morning, before the heat fully arrived. Nothing elaborate. Nothing performing occasion. Just the dress she felt most like herself in, the same way the ring was the ring he’d chosen because it was entirely itself. She stood at the mirror. Looked at herself. At the ring. At the dress. At the face she’d been living in for twenty-four years and was about to carry into a garden. Priya appeared in the doorway. She looked at Mia. Mia looked at her. “Hi,” Priya said. “Hi,” Mia said. Priya crossed the room. Stood beside her at the mirror. They both looked. “The courtyard,” Priya said softly. “September,” Mia said. “Your face,” Priya said. “I know,” Mia said. “I saw it before you did,”
Last Updated: 2026-05-25
Chapter: December 27thCHAPTER 63 POV: Mia They landed at noon. The mountain was the first thing. She saw it through the window and put her hand on his arm without thinking — the same gesture as last December, the same instinct. He looked at the window. Then at her hand. Then at her face. “There it is,” she said. “Yes,” he said. The city coming up beneath them. The specific light — sharper than anywhere else, more decisive. Making everything below look considered. She looked at it. Felt the specific quality of returning to a place that had become significant. Not the first time’s awe — something deeper. The recognition of somewhere that held things. His hand covered hers on the armrest. She turned her palm over. They held on. Amara was at the airport. Same spot as last year. Smaller again — that’s how it always was, people smaller than the space they occupied in your thinking. She saw them through the crowd. Her eyes found Ryder first. Then Mia. She crossed to them without waiting. She t
Last Updated: 2026-05-24
Chapter: December AgainCHAPTER 62 POV: Mia The student’s essay arrived on a Monday. Not emailed — printed. Placed on Mia’s desk before the nine o’clock session with a note on top in handwriting she recognised now. Honest rather than finished. Though I think it might be both. Mia read it before the session. Then she sat back. Looked at the ceiling. Then she read it again. Thirty-two pages. The grandmother. The story told every Christmas. The current keeper. The chain of it moving through people across generations, each one responsible for carrying it forward without changing its essential truth. But more than that. The essay had found something she hadn’t anticipated — hadn’t told the student to find, hadn’t suggested, hadn’t in any way directed toward. It had found the connection between the stories communities kept in narrative and the stories institutions erased from official record. The gap. The same gap in Ryder’s fourth section. The same gap Dr. Osei had been thinking about for twenty y
Last Updated: 2026-05-23
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