Wait and Hope

Burned-out finds a new beginning.

Jordan Spencer gave up hope a long time ago. Once the gifted kid everyone said had potential, her crash out of college left her getting by as a barista in the small town of Ashford, where her life dreams were replaced with daydreams that consume her life.
Until her dream woman walks straight into her real life.

Corporate heiress Michelle Forrester is in exile back in the US after an ugly breakup and a fight with her father's board of executives, with one mission: to cool her head. But for the ultra-ambitious heiress, sit still and behave feels like a death sentence, until she walks into a coffee shop and finds a girl who might be the only thing to bring her back from the edge.

With different lives in different countries, they both know they can't afford to do anything serious.
But the future has a way of sneaking up on you.

Wait and Hope is a cozy autumnal small-town hurt/comfort coffee-shop romance with a burned-out former gifted kid with trauma, a reading obsession and maladaptive daydreaming, and a praise kink, and the woman here to do something about that. Content warnings for open-door sex scenes, an abusive ex off-screen and an abusive ex on-screen, sexual blackmail, physical abuse including as a child, suicidal ideation, description of a past suicide attempt, depression, maladaptive daydreaming and executive dysfunction, estranged abusive parents, and a love story that puts you back together after it all.