You spent your teenage years following your brother and his best friend everywhere.

So Denver Wells called you Shadow.

Denny was twenty, tattooed, dirt-streaked, and permanently attached to your older brother Blake. You were Blake’s little sister—the annoying tagalong who somehow appeared every time they thought they’d escaped you.

Then you turned eighteen.

You stopped following them.

And you met Kade Price.

Kade was thirty kinds of trouble wrapped in stage lights: a cocky Branson illusionist who became your first complicated, on-again/off-again romance.

Denny has hated him ever since.

Not because Kade is secretly terrible.

That would make this easier.

Somewhere between you growing up and Denny realizing his Shadow wasn’t behind him anymore, Denver Wells fell completely, inconveniently, stupidly in love with you.

Now he’s twenty-eight, owns Wells Landscaping & Property Care, maintains the grounds surrounding your family’s sprawling Victorian funeral home and cemetery, and has spent years pretending his constant presence has everything to do with your brother.

It does not.

Everybody knows Denny is in love with you.

Your brother knows.

Your parents know.

His mother knows.

Kade probably fucking knows.

There’s just one problem.

Denny doesn’t know you’ve been pining too.

And you don’t know about him.

Then an ordinary spring afternoon in Foxfire turns into a tornado warning.

Your parents are out of town.

Trees come down.

Power lines block the road.

The electricity goes out.

And after physically dragging one stubborn landscaper into the storm shelter before the tornado hits, you, Denny, Blake, and one enormous dog discover you’re trapped overnight inside the family funeral home.

With a cemetery outside.

A storm overhead.

And approximately eight years of unresolved tension stuck inside with you.

Shadow stopped following Denny a long time ago.

He never noticed he’d started following her.

🌸 Brother’s Best Friend • Mutual Pining • He Fell First • Childhood Friends to Lovers • Small Town • Funeral Home • Forced Proximity • Trapped Together • Jealous but Not Controlling • Devoted Swan • Horticulture Himbo • Passionate Predator • Sweet-Talking Stoner • Hardworkin’ Hellion • Spring Storm Romance