⭐ Reader Favourite · Standalone Novel
The Climb
Some climbs you don't make alone.
He still locks the van every night. Habit. There's nothing inside but a sleeping bag, a cracked phone, and a man who used to have a house, a wife, and a family around the table.
Three years after his wife died, Leo is fifty-five and living in a stalled van at the edge of a parking lot — hungry, careful, and lying to his grown kids in heart emojis so they'll never know how far he's fallen.
Then there's Marlie — who spent thirty years as the doctor everyone leaned on. Newly divorced, newly retired, she walks her dog past the same corner every morning and tells herself she likes the quiet. One morning she notices the man on the bench — the one whose shoes are still laced, who sits like someone who once had somewhere to be — and for the first time in months, she can't walk past.
A coffee. A coat. A Friday-night dinner neither of them planned. What grows between them is unhurried and real — two capable people who are very good at surviving and terrible at needing anyone.
But starting over at fifty-five comes with history. With money, and pride, and adult children who get a vote. With the weight of everything they've already lived through.
Tender, slow, steamy. A standalone later-in-life, second-chance romance. Found family. Guaranteed happy ending.
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