Book overview
She fixes everyone's messes.
Coming home means facing the one man who never needed fixing.
Charlotte "Charlie" Hayes has built a career out of fixing other people's disasters. As a music publicist, she can spin a scandal, save a reputation, and make the messiest men look good-even the one she's dating.
So when her famous boyfriend's career implodes right before Christmas, Charlie throws herself into saving him-until Brent cancels their lease without telling her and vanishes on his comeback tour. Homeless and single, Charlie's forced back to the small Connecticut hometown she thought she'd escaped, complete with holiday lights, dark family memories, and Hunter: her steady, maddeningly good best friend, who she's been avoiding for months.
Hunter Wells has spent years being the one who stays, who shows up-and who loved Charlie quietly because he knew she wasn't ready. But now she's back, and he's done waiting. With his thriving dog-walking business rooting him in Pinegrove, Hunter doesn't need saving. He needs Charlie to stop running long enough to imagine the life she never let herself want-with him.
As Charlie manages her ex's high-pressure tour and her own uncertain career from afar, small-town Christmas starts to feel less like a temporary escape and more like one mess she can't clean up-and maybe doesn't want to. But Hunter will always belong to the town she spent years outrunning, and Charlie won't easily risk the new beginning she fought so hard for. For their love to last beyond Christmas, they'll have to answer the hardest question: can they create a future big enough for both their dreams?