The Wrong Kind of Free
Parole is Shaw Carter’s final shot at freedom, and he doesn’t want to lose it. After a felony conviction nearly cost him everything, the path forward is narrow—keep his head down, stay out of trouble, and survive long enough to earn his life back.
It would be an easy task if he wasn’t placed in the mayor’s custody, and is forced to share the same apartment with his son.
Lucas Hale is everything Shaw should avoid. He’s sharp-tongued, infuriatingly composed, and far too comfortable pushing Shaw to his limits. From the very first night, it’s clear Lucas doesn’t want Shaw there. Every word that came out of Lucas' mouth was a provocation.
Shaw tells himself it doesn’t matter. He can endure anything for a few months.
But tension has a way of twisting.
What starts as hostility quickly turns into something far more dangerous. Their fights grow closer and sharper, charged with something neither of them wants to name. Their moral lines blur. Control slips. And suddenly, the one thing Shaw can’t afford becomes the one thing he can’t stay away from.
Because Lucas isn’t just getting under his skin, he’s unraveling him.
But beneath the tension and the touching and everything neither of them will say out loud, Lucas is carrying a secret, one that doesn’t just connect him to Shaw’s past.
It is Shaw’s past.
And when the truth finally surfaces, Shaw will have to decide if the man he’s falling for is his salvation or the reason he never should have been free at all.