He’s never stayed anywhere. She stopped believing she was worth staying for.
Jazz Okafor has spent three years letting her ex’s voice live in her head rent-free. Just a pet photographer. Cute little hobby, sweetheart. She’s photographed every three-legged dog and one-eared cat the rescue has taken in, and she’s good at it — but somewhere along the way she stopped believing she was good at anything that counted. So when she submits her portfolio to the most prestigious wildlife photography competition in Montana, it isn’t confidence. It’s defiance. And to her shock, she wins.
Finn Holbrook is the other winner. He’s a renowned, world-traveling, professional wildlife photographer who’s never met a town he couldn’t leave by sundown. His mother told him to be selfish, to live for himself. But all it has gotten him is fame and loneliness. So he does the one thing he swore he never would. He stays. Signs a lease in Haven Creek. Adopts a complete disaster of a rescue kitten. But can he learn how to stay after a lifetime of leaving?
Paired to shoot a wildlife calendar together, Finn chases the light while Jazz waits for the moment as they compete to capture the best picture. But somewhere between a dawn elk migration and a midnight Montana sky, the assignment stops feeling like a competition and starts feeling like the first thing either of them has ever been brave enough to fight for.
Then a man with a folder full of Finn’s credentials looks at Jazz’s photographs and calls them charming.Quaint.Amateur. And Finn, the one person who should defend her, says nothing at all. She’s heard that silence before. She swore she’d never stand in it again.
Now Jazz has to decide whether she’s willing to shrink herself to fit in Finn’s shadow, and he has to prove that staying isn’t being in a place—it’s showing up when it counts. Can two people who’ve spent their whole lives hiding behind a lens finally risk being seen themselves?
