Limerence

Blackwood, Illinois, sits in the middle of the cornfields like a thumb tack on a forgotten map, the kind of place where the winters don't just get cold-they get mean. Rachel Russell knows all about the cold; she lets it settle into her bones while she works the graveyard shift at the Starline Motel, watching the world through a smear of lemon polish and bad intentions. When Nash Dyer checks in, bringing his grief and his city-soft hands back to his father's rotting farmhouse, he thinks he's found a friend in the quiet girl behind the desk. But Rachel isn't looking for a friend-she's looking for a host, and that "love" she feels is just a hungry, toothy thing waiting for the snow to pile high enough to trap them both. You might think you know what happens when the lights go out in a storm, but in Rachel's world, the dark is where the real work begins.