by Abby Jimenez
First published 2025
Charlotte is not having a good Valentine's Day. She has a stalker, she is done with men, and she has the bear spray to prove it. Her plan is simple: stay in her apartment and wait out the holiday. Across the hall lives Seth, an arborist who signed his divorce papers today. Not last month. Today. He smells like pine and wants nothing to do with trust or feelings or any of this. Then something goes wrong in the building and the two of them end up stranded one flight up with no way down. They are stuck together on a ledge, literally. Seth knows heights. Charlotte knows danger. Neither of them knows what to do with the strange warmth building between them. The longer they stay trapped, the harder it gets to stay guarded. Abby Jimenez, the number one New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer, keeps this short story funny and surprisingly tender. Two people with very good reasons to keep their distance discover that sometimes the safest place is right next to someone new.
Genres: romance, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, contemporary-romance
Vibes: emotionally-engaging, funny, heartwarming, lighthearted, tender
Tropes: forced-proximity, second-chance-romance, slow-burn, strangers-to-lovers
Setting: apartment building
Period: Valentine's Day
81 pages · Kindle Edition · Amazon Original Stories