There’s a particular kind of tension that comes from wanting something you know you shouldn’t have.

Not in a dramatic, forbidden, star-crossed way. I want to be clear about that, because that’s a different story — and a good one, but not this one. This is something quieter than that. More internal. More personal. The kind of wanting that doesn’t announce itself with grand gestures and impossible circumstances. The kind that just sits there, steady and inconvenient, in the middle of an ordinary day.

It’s the kind of wanting that comes with history.

With context.

With the full understanding of what it meant the first time, and exactly what it could cost the second.

Marc knows what Finn means to him. He has always known. That’s part of the problem — there’s no ambiguity to hide behind, no comfortable uncertainty to retreat into. No illusion. No idealised version of what this could be if only things were different. He’s not reaching for something unknown. He’s standing in front of something he already understands completely, something that has already shaped him in ways he can’t undo and, if he’s being honest with himself, wouldn’t want to.

And he still wants it.

That’s where the conflict lives. Not in whether he should feel it — he does, and that part is beyond argument. The tension is in what he does with it. In the space between feeling something and acting on it, where every decision carries the full weight of what came before.

I find this particular kind of internal conflict endlessly interesting to write. It’s not about obstacles in the traditional sense. Nobody is standing in the way. No external force is keeping these two apart. The only thing between Marc and what he wants is Marc — his understanding of the situation, his awareness of the stakes, his knowledge, bone-deep and unambiguous, of exactly why this is complicated.

Because sometimes the hardest thing isn’t wanting someone.

It’s knowing exactly why you shouldn’t — and wanting them anyway.

These two asked a lot of me. Marc especially. He is not a man who makes himself easy to know, and he is certainly not a man who makes his inner life available for inspection. Getting inside that and writing it honestly — writing the wanting without softening the conflict, writing the conflict without cheapening the wanting — was the work of this book, and I hope it shows.

I hope it feels true.

Because I think most of us have stood somewhere in the neighbourhood of where Marc stands. Maybe not in the same circumstances. But in that particular place where you understand something completely and it doesn’t help at all.

One month.

That is all that stands between this book and release day.

I keep thinking about how long stories live quietly before anyone else sees them. They begin as a thought. A scene. A question. A character who will not leave. Then they become notes, outlines, scraps of dialogue, deleted chapters, rebuilt scenes, late nights, second guesses, and stubborn little moments where something finally clicks.

And then somehow, after all that private work, there is a date.

June 1.

That is the day Almost Yours Again steps out of my hands and into the world.

I am trying to enjoy this part, even though my natural instinct is to panic, fiddle with everything, and decide at the last minute that perhaps I should become a hermit instead.

But there is excitement too.

Real excitement.

Because I love these characters. I love this damaged, loyal, complicated world. I love the way these men keep choosing each other even when they are afraid. I love the team around them, the tension, the found family, the old pain and new hope.

This book is Book 1

It is the first door into the Dead Reckoners world.

And in one month, I get to open it.

Thank you to everyone who has followed, read, encouraged, clicked, liked, or quietly wandered over here to see what I am doing. You are early, and that means more than you know.

One month to go.

In the Avery Beckett world, touch is rarely casual.

That is one of the things I love most about writing emotionally restrained romance. Not every intimate moment has to be grand. Sometimes the smallest gesture carries the most weight.

A hand offered.
A shoulder brushed.
Fingers resting briefly against a wrist.
Someone standing close enough to be felt, but not demanding anything.

For characters shaped by service, trauma, injury, secrecy, and survival, touch can mean everything.

It can be comfort.
It can be memory.
It can be danger.
It can be permission.
It can be a question.

In Almost Yours Again, the physical relationship is complicated because the emotional relationship is complicated. These are not people who can simply fall into each other and have everything be easy. There is history between them. There is pain. There is love, yes, but love does not magically erase what happened.

So touch becomes language.

It becomes a way of asking, “Is this okay?”
A way of answering, “I’m still here.”
A way of saying, “I want you, but I will not take from you.”
A way of rebuilding trust without rushing the healing.

I think there is something powerful about restraint.

About characters who want each other and still choose care. Who feel desire and still make space for fear, injury, grief, and uncertainty.

That kind of tenderness matters to me.

Because sometimes love is not the dramatic declaration.

Sometimes love is the hand that does not grab.
The body that waits.
The person who could push, but doesn’t.

Almost Yours Again might be for you if you like your romance emotional, intense, and a little bit wounded.

It might be for you if you love characters who do not say what they feel easily, but show it in every choice they make.

It might be for you if you enjoy second-chance romance where the past is not brushed aside. Where forgiveness is complicated. Where love is still there, but trust has to be rebuilt one careful moment at a time.

It might be for you if you like found family stories. The kind where the side characters are not just standing around waiting for their own books, but are already part of the emotional architecture of the world.

It might be for you if you like protectors who need protecting. Soldiers who know how to survive but not how to soften. Men who think wanting is selfish. Men who think being loved is something they have to earn.

It might be for you if you like quiet tension more than easy declarations.

A hand on a shoulder.
A pause at a doorway.
A look held too long.
A conversation that says everything except the words.

Almost Yours Again is not a light, fluffy romance.

It is about damage and devotion.
It is about love after fear.
It is about the terrifying choice to let someone close again.

And if that sounds like your kind of story, I hope you will meet these characters on June 1.

Found family is one of the emotional engines of the Avery Beckett world.

Not as decoration. Not as a few side characters standing around to make the main couple look more interesting.

Found family is the structure holding everything up.

In the Compass Point and Dead Reckoners world, these characters have been through things that changed them. Some have been discarded. Some have been underestimated. Some have been told, directly or indirectly, that they are no longer useful.

But together, they become something else.

A unit.
A home.
A warning.
A place to land.

I love writing characters who know each other’s tells. The ones who notice when someone is too quiet. The ones who do not ask “are you okay?” because they already know the answer, so instead they put coffee down, take the closest chair, and stay.

That kind of loyalty is romance too.

Not romantic love, necessarily, but love all the same.

Found family means someone checks the locks because they know you will not sleep otherwise. Someone remembers the anniversary you pretend not to remember. Someone stands between you and the thing you are not ready to face. Someone makes room for the damaged parts without making them the whole story.

In Almost Yours Again, the romance matters deeply.

But it does not exist in isolation.

It grows inside a world where loyalty is fierce, where people are messy, where protection can be both gift and burden, and where being known is sometimes the most frightening thing of all.

That is the family I keep coming back to.

The chosen one.

The earned one.

The one that stays.

Almost Yours Again is the beginning.

Not the beginning of the whole world — because this world has been living in my head for a long time — but the beginning of Avery Beckett stepping out into the open.

This book is a military romance novella about history, damage, loyalty, and unfinished love.

At its heart are two men who once meant everything to each other. Life, service, secrecy, injury, fear, and time have changed them both. They are not walking back into something simple. They are not picking up where they left off as if nothing happened.

Too much happened.

That is what makes this story matter to me.

I love second-chance romance when the second chance has a cost. When love is still there, but trust has to be rebuilt. When attraction is complicated by grief. When wanting someone is not the same as knowing how to reach for them.

Almost Yours Again is not about pretending the past did not hurt.

It is about asking whether love can survive what happened. Whether tenderness can exist alongside trauma. Whether two people can find their way back without erasing the damage that changed them.

There is found family here. There is military history. There is emotional restraint. There are hard conversations and quiet moments where the silence says more than dialogue ever could.

This is Book 1.

The door opens here.

And on June 1, readers get to step through it.

I write military romance because I am fascinated by people who are trained to endure.

Not because they are invincible.

Because they are not.

There is something deeply emotional about characters who know how to protect everyone except themselves. Men and women who can assess danger, read a room, make impossible decisions, and keep moving — but have absolutely no idea what to do when someone looks at them gently and refuses to leave.

That is where the story lives for me.

Not in the weaponry. Not in the action. Not even in the danger, although those things have their place.

The story lives in the quiet aftermath.

It lives in the moment someone flinches from kindness because they do not trust it yet. It lives in the way a man might stand guard at a doorway because saying I love you is too much, but keeping watch is something he understands. It lives in restraint, loyalty, exhaustion, grief, and the slow, terrifying realisation that maybe survival is not the same thing as living.

Almost Yours Again is built from that emotional place.

It is about two people with history. Two people who loved each other once, lost each other, and are not sure whether the pieces left behind can still fit. It is about trauma, yes, but also tenderness. It is about being seen when you would rather hide.

I do not write perfect heroes.

I write men who are trying. Men who fail. Men who still show up. Men who need love but do not believe they are allowed to have it.

That is why I write military romance.

Because sometimes the bravest thing a character can do is let someone stay.

31 Days to go