Cole and the Farmer's Daughter: A Small Town Southern Maryland Romance

I came to Waldorf for neon and a break from the fields. Instead I found a girl with a bruise on her arm and a city of small cruelties that call themselves law. When Josh Stevenson planted lies and the cops came, I learned just how fast a stranger can become all you have left. Mr. St. James took me in, put me to work, and gave me a place to stay-but the truth still had to be found in the Stardust's smoke and the testimony of bartenders and tired men.Scarlett's quiet is not weakness. I watched her stand up to the man who'd hurt her and, in return, saw everything in me I'd been trying to bury: the urge to stay, to protect, to build a life that wasn't just a vacation. We face a trial, threats, and the hard question: do we let obligation drag us back to where we came from, or do we choose a future together?Raw, honest, and full of the small moments that make a life, this is a story about a boy who learned how to be a man-and the woman who made him brave enough to try.