By midnight, Kai Worthington is sitting beneath a jungle gym, counting the seconds between a stranger’s breaths.

A few hours earlier, he was on his way to a party. Then he stopped for Linnea Thorsen and followed her into a San Francisco he barely knew. She was sharp, funny, impossible to read. Now she is barely conscious, and he is terrified of losing someone else.

Linnea has survived a year on the streets by knowing what men want and what their kindness costs. Kai keeps getting the calculation wrong. He makes no demands she knows how to answer. He keeps showing up. And slowly, dangerously, she begins to want him there.

As her recovery falters and his grief catches up with him, their attachment becomes something neither can keep safely under control. Then Kai makes a decision that belongs to her.

Linnea knows how to leave. She has done it before.

This time, leaving means losing the man she has finally allowed herself to need.

Content warnings

For adult readers. Includes heroin use and overdose, withdrawal and relapse; a brief graphic sexual assault involving an object and sustained injury care; sex work and past underage exploitation; childhood sexual abuse; suicidal thoughts, suicide-related grief and bereavement; financial dependence, controlling behavior and a physical grab.

Both protagonists are adults throughout the central romance. Includes consensual sexual intimacy without anatomically explicit narration of the act.