Broken Crayon

Some people leave home to chase their dreams. Others leave to outrun their past.

Susan Carter never planned to return to Hartwell.

She came back only long enough to settle her late father's estate, sell the family hardware store, and leave behind the memories that have haunted her for twenty-five years. But every creaking floorboard, every handwritten label, and every unfinished brushstroke on the mural her father left behind reminds her that some places refuse to let go.

Then John Dawson walks through the front door.

Once the quiet teenager her father took under his wing, John is now a successful developer with plans to transform the abandoned mill next door into the future of Hartwell. He only needs one thing to make it happen.

Her signature.

Working side by side forces them to confront a shared history neither has forgotten and feelings neither expected to survive the years apart. But when a man from Susan's past arrives determined to reclaim the control she fought so hard to escape, old wounds are reopened and the future she's been building begins to crack.

As secrets surface and loyalties are tested, Susan and John must decide whether some broken things are meant to be left behind...or whether the most beautiful colors come from the pieces that refused to stay shattered.

A deeply emotional, slow-burn contemporary romance about healing, second chances, found family, and discovering that even a broken crayon can still color.