Two Women, One Heart Already Taken

Dean "Gunner" Pratt never gave Shay Maddox a reason to count the keys on his ring. For three years she was his — she thought she was THE one, the woman he was slowly, surely building a life toward. She had a key to his place. She thought that meant she was the only one who did. She wasn't. For two of those three years, there was a her. A woman named Lacey, kept in a parallel life across town, given the same low promises, the same slow maybe, the same key. Gunner wasn't torn between two women he loved. He was a coward who could not bear to lose either one — so he never chose, and he let two women believe they were the only one, because a man who never picks never has to grieve what he lets go. Shay found out. And Shay walked. Because she is not going to stand in a lineup and audition for a man like he's a prize at a fair. She doesn't want to win him. She wants to have been the only one — and she already knows she wasn't, and there is no grand gesture on earth that un-rings that bell. Now Gunner is circling back, and for the first time in his life the coward's math has failed him: keeping everyone safe from his cowardice cost him the one who actually had his heart. If he wants Shay — really wants her — he has to do the one thing he's spent his whole life avoiding. Choose. Cut the safety net all the way loose. End it, cleanly and for good, with a woman who also deserved better than being kept. And risk losing everything, with no key held back and no guarantee it wins him anything at all. An emotional, found-family motorcycle club other-woman-drama second-chance romance about the man who kept two women rather than risk grieving one, the difference between being chosen and being kept, and a woman who refuses to compete for what should never have been a competition. A real, honestly-reckoned two-timing betrayal, a humanized 'other woman' who was wronged too, a hard-won grovel, and a heroine who decides — on her own terms — whether she takes his key or keeps her own. Full-length novel with a guaranteed happily-ever-after.