Pause

He sees her before he knows her.

She feels seen before she's ready to be known.

In a candlelit corner of a Chicago hotel bar, Clark becomes captivated by a woman he doesn't know, a woman who appears each week, always alone, always after dinner. He doesn't speak to her. Not yet. But something about her quiet presence unsettles him, challenges him, stirs something dormant.

Simi isn't running, but she's not standing still either. She's grieving, healing, trying not to come undone. The hotel is her refuge. The ritual is her escape. When Clark finally approaches her, their connection sparks quickly, but what begins as a slow burn becomes a complicated entanglement neither of them are prepared for.

Told in alternating points of view, Pause is a magnetic, intimate story about timing, grief, longing, and emotional resurrection. For readers who believe love doesn't always arrive gently and sometimes, the person who sees you most clearly is the one who meets you when you're falling apart.

For fans of: Normal People by Sally Rooney, Before We Were Strangers by Renée Carlino, and Seven Days in June by Tia Williams.