Midnight in Austin

Some walls are thinner than we all realize.

For seven New Year's Eves, the trip belonged to Jade and Theo. Just the two of them, in a neutral city where neither of them had to focus on anything but being together.

This year Sarah's coming.

Not asking. Coming. Four days in an Austin boutique hotel with Theo, his wife, and rooms that share a wall, and Jade already knows what that means before the plane touches down. She'll do what she always does. She'll read the room, smooth the edges, be the harmless best friend everyone loves while she keeps what she feels for Theo locked somewhere it can't spill.

Then night falls, and the wall between her room and theirs holds everything but sound. Jade lies in the dark and hears the thing she has no right to hear, and she doesn't stop listening. Four days of wanting from the wrong side of the wall, six inches from the two people she's trying not to want, and no air left to breathe.

Midnight in Austin is a prequel to A Soft Place to Land, following Jade and Theo through the New Year's Eve tradition that will eventually bring them together. This is a slow-burn, friends-to-lovers story featuring explicit power dynamics and a hero who's still married to someone else. The happy ending comes later. The crossing starts now.