Wayward Place

Whether it was divine inspiration or a long-awaited nervous breakdown, I didn't know. The only thing I could be sure of was that I was thoroughly and completely stuck… until I wasn't.Kit Hastings used to believe in love. She built a career on it, in fact—writing sweeping romances where everything worked out in the end. But somewhere between heartbreak, loss, and a life that quietly unraveled, she stopped believing in her stories… and in herself.So she does the only sensible thing left: she drives away.What she finds is Wayward Place—a sagging old house at the end of a long dirt road, inhabited by a group of strangers who don't belong anywhere else. They are odd. Stubborn. Kind in ways that feel inconvenient. They keep animals in the kitchen, stories in their pockets, and doors open whether you like it or not.Kit doesn't want them. She doesn't want their noise, their chaos, or their quiet insistence that she might not be as alone as she thinks.But grief has a way of hollowing a person out… and sometimes, the only way to fill that space again is with people you never would have chosen.As the days stretch into something softer, something almost like hope, Kit begins to wonder if the life she lost isn't the one she was meant to live after all.Because love, it turns out, doesn't always arrive the way we expect.And sometimes, the story you can't write… is the one you have to live.