We Almost Made It: An emotional slow burn romance about the love that almost was

It started as a game. A way to feel something without falling apart.It ended somewhere between fiction and the truth they couldn’t admit.Seventeen-year-old Melanie is grieving the loss of her best friend and working part-time in a hotel when she meets Caleb—private, complicated and a tabloid magnet. They’re both looking for a way out. Instead, they find each other.To escape the weight of their lives, they invent a game: pretend to be tragic lovers from A Farewell to Arms. A way to feel something without getting too close. A story they can control.But some stories refuse to stay fiction.As the years pass, their connection lingers—through distance, addiction, grief, and silence. They try to move on, to let go, but the story they wrote together keeps finding its way back.What happens when the lines blur between pretending and feeling?When you tell yourself it wasn’t real—but you never quite believed it?Told in second person, We Almost Made It is an intimate, emotionally layered romance about grief, identity, and the kind of love that doesn’t fade—even when it’s never fully named.📚 For readers who love:Slow burn, second-chance romanceCharacter-driven love storiesQuiet intensity over dramaStories about grief, healing, and emotional complexityBooks that stay with you long after they endSuitable for readers who crave slow burn romances tangled in grief and longing.Ideal for anyone who’s ever loved quietly, from a distance, or in secret.Perfect for fans of emotional, character-driven stories where love is messy and complicated.“Clingy,” I echoed as the word clung to me, damp and cold like a wet fabric refused to dry. It wasn’t tenderness you saw in me, nor longing, nor care. But something excessive, a contamination, an annoying inconvenience – something to be scrubbed out. Something to be avoided. I didn’t know that wanting you could make me feel so unclean all of a sudden, that wanting you felt like disgust steam pressed into my skin. Clingy, I grew afraid of this word, like the rain Catherine was afraid of. “Do you think I am clingy?”