A love triangle romance about home, first love, second chances, and the courage to choose yourself.
Avery has always been good at taking care of everyone but herself. Growing up in the river town of Briarley, she knew how to read a room before she knew how to drive: the way her father's truck door shut told her everything about his day; the way her mother straightened a cardigan revealed how much gossip had been exchanged at the grocery store. The town loved her, watched her, and quietly decided who she was supposed to become. And Rhett, the boy next door with sawdust on his shirt and blueprints in his head, loved her most of all.
When Avery stepped onto a bus at nineteen and left Briarley behind, she broke more than one heart. She walked away from Rhett and the future everyone had already imagined for them, choosing instead a city where no one knew her name. In that noisy anonymity she built a different life: working at a community clinic, helping children who live on the edge of crisis, and slowly learning through therapy that her worth is not measured in how many people she keeps from falling apart.
Then, just as Avery starts to feel the ground beneath her steady, the past and present collide. A late-night phone call drags her back to Briarley: her father has fallen from a ladder, and the words "small bleed" rip through the fragile distance she has built. At almost the same moment, Micah, the quietly intense critical care doctor she loves, receives the email he has been chasing for years: an elite fellowship in another city, the kind of offer that turns careers and lives upside down.
Back in Briarley, Avery is thrown into the orbit of Rhett again. He is still the man who knows every bend in the river and every creak in her parents' house. He is also the man who spent years learning how to let go of the girl who chose to leave. The chemistry between them is undeniable, shaped now by adulthood and the knowledge of what it means to lose each other. Meanwhile, miles away, Micah is pacing hospital stairwells, weighing the bright promise of prestige against the life he has quietly been building with Avery in the city they share.
As her father grumbles through recovery and her mother finally admits she does not want a martyr for a daughter, Avery is forced to confront the triangle she has unconsciously been drawing for years. It is not just between Rhett and Micah; it is between the version of herself who stays close to keep everyone safe, the version who follows someone else's dream to avoid being the one who disappoints, and the version who dares to choose a life that fits her even if it means someone gets hurt.
In a story that moves between hospital rooms, back porches, riverbanks, and cramped city apartments, Avery listens to the quiet, inconvenient voice she has spent years learning to trust. She has hard conversations with the men who have loved her in such different ways. Rhett must decide whether loving her means holding on or letting her go. Micah must face the possibility that turning down the fellowship that once defined his ambitions might be the only way to become the man he actually wants to be. Avery must finally stop postponing her own life "until things calm down" and step through a door she can live with.
Between The Hand I Hold And The One I Miss is an emotionally layered, deeply human love triangle romance. Expect slow-burn tension, honest therapy scenes, complicated family loyalty, and a heroine who refuses to sacrifice herself on the altar of anyone's expectations-not her parents', not her first love's, and not her partner's. If you love small-town river settings, hospital corridors, and stories where choosing yourself does not mean giving up on love, this novel will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
