The Year We Burned Slowly

When wildfire photographer Mara Chen returns to the hometown she abandoned six years ago, she expects to face her dying father and the guilt she's carried across four continents. What she doesn't expect is Lucas Brennan—her first love, now fire chief, and the man whose heart she broke when she chose her camera over their future.

Mara Chen built her career documenting disasters from a safe distance behind the lens. She's won awards, graced magazine covers, and mastered the art of never staying anywhere long enough to feel the burn. But when her father's cancer diagnosis forces her back to Ridgemont, Oregon, she discovers that some fires can't be outrun. The town is suffocating under wildfire smoke, her childhood home is falling apart, and everywhere she turns, she collides with Lucas Brennan—the boy she loved, the man she left behind, and the only person who ever made her want to stop running.

Lucas has spent six years becoming the man Ridgemont needs. As fire chief, he's built a life of purpose protecting the town and people Mara couldn't wait to escape. He's moved on, built walls, and learned to live with the scar tissue where his heart used to be. Or so he tells himself. But when Mara walks back into his life with those haunted eyes and that camera always ready to capture everyone else's pain while hiding her own, every carefully constructed defense begins to crumble. He knows better than to fall for her again. She's still the woman who chooses leaving over staying. Except this time, something's different. This time, she looks as broken as he feels.

As wildfires rage closer to Ridgemont and Mara's father's condition deteriorates, she and Lucas are thrown together again and again—at the hospital, during evacuations, in stolen moments that taste like second chances and smell like smoke. The chemistry between them never died—it just waited, patient and dangerous as embers in dry grass. But desire isn't enough when trust has burned to ash. Mara must decide if she's brave enough to stay and fight for what terrifies her most—a life where she's the one being seen instead of always watching through the viewfinder. And Lucas must choose whether loving her again is worth the risk of another devastating loss.

In a season of destruction, can two people who specialize in surviving learn how to truly live? In the suffocating heat of a summer that's burning everything down, Mara and Lucas discover that sometimes you have to walk through the fire to find your way home.