He’s been in love with her for ten years. He’s got six weeks left to say it.

Grant Talbot has shown up for Jenna Ludington for a decade. Handyman. Math tutor. The man in every seat her girls’ father left empty. He’s also been hopelessly in love with her the whole time—and he’s never said a word. He doesn’t need to. She’s made it clear he’s her best friend, and that’s all he’ll ever be.

So he’s leaving. A restaurant, an ocean, a fresh start in New Zealand—enough distance to finally stop waiting.

Then his estranged half-sister leaves a baby on his doorstep and vanishes.

Grant doesn’t know which end of a bottle is up. Jenna can do it in her sleep—and most nights that first year, she did. Suddenly they’re up at midnight in the same kitchen, trading off a fussy newborn and accidentally building the exact life they’d both stopped believing they’d get.

Trouble is, Jenna doesn’t need anybody. She’s beaten cancer three times, raised two daughters alone, and built a whole life on one rule: don’t depend on someone who might leave.

And Grant’s plane leaves in six weeks.

She can’t fall for a man halfway out the door. He can’t ask her to give him a reason to stay.

Some things only take root in winter.

A small-town, best-friends-to-more romance about the love that shows up, the fear that keeps us small, and the family we never saw coming.