After a painful breakup leaves her questioning everything, Riley Chen returns to her hometown and takes a job at her family's bookstore. When she meets Sam, the charming butch contractor renovating the shop next door, Riley discovers that sometimes you have to go back to move forward—and that home isn't always a place.
Introduction
Riley Chen stood in the doorway of Turning Pages, her mother's bookstore, and wondered when everything had gotten so complicated. Three months ago, she'd been living in San Francisco with her girlfriend of four years, working at a tech startup, convinced she had her life figured out. Then Melissa had sat her down one Tuesday evening and casually destroyed everything.
"I'm not attracted to you anymore," Melissa had said, like she was commenting on the weather. "I think I might actually be straight. Or at least, I need to explore that possibility."
Riley had moved out two weeks later, crashed on her best friend's couch for a month, and finally admitted defeat when her lease came up for renewal. Now she was back in Cedar Falls, Oregon—population 15,000, one stoplight, and approximately zero queer visibility—helping her mother run a bookstore while she figured out what the hell to do with her life.
"You're staring at that...
Morgan Chase (they/them) spent a decade as a therapist working with LGBTQ+ youth and adults, witnessing firsthand the lack of authentic queer smut fiction that honored both desire and emotional truth. After years of activism and community work, they began writing the stories the queer community deserved—hot, honest, and unapologetically diverse. From their shared artist loft in Portland, Morgan crafts stories across the spectrum: gay romance, lesbian love, trans experiences, and polyamorous relationships. Their lived experience as a non-binary person brings authenticity and insider perspective that ensures representation isn't performative—it's genuine.
