The Almost-Husband Next Door

Emma Spencer returns to Oakhaven after a broken engagement and a life in the city that no longer feels like her own. She comes home expecting to find only an old cottage, familiar memories, and perhaps a little peace. Instead, she discovers the one person she never expected to see again living right next door: Beckett Hayes, the man she loved ten years ago.Emma has spent a decade believing Beckett abandoned her. She was told he moved away, married another woman, and built a new life without her. But when she mentions his supposed marriage to Stella, a longtime friend of the family, she learns the shocking truth: Beckett never left Oakhaven. He never married. And, according to everyone who knows him, he never truly moved on.Then an old letter changes everything.The letter, written by Beckett years ago and accompanied by a rose-gold ring containing a raw emerald he bought with his last savings, reveals a promise Emma never knew existed. He had been waiting for her by the water, believing she had chosen to leave him.As Emma begins piecing together the events of that long-ago summer, she realizes that the story she has believed for ten years may have been deliberately constructed. Her mother and former best friend may have played a far greater role in separating her from Beckett than she ever imagined.Now the two people who once planned a future together are separated by a decade of lies, resentment, and lost time. But with the barrier between their properties literally destroyed by a fallen oak, Emma decides she will no longer run from the past.