Where the Pain Lives (Book #2 in Saltwater Creek Series)

Sophie 35 stories

Story Notes

Summary

Maverick Callahan survived the war. He didn’t survive what came after. A decorated soldier. A missing leg. A cabin on a remote Oregon ridge with the only men who understand the ghosts in his head. For years, painkillers kept the memories quiet and the phantom limb bearable. Until the night his body simply… stops. He wakes up in a small-town clinic with a nurse’s hand on his chest and his team looking at him like they’ve already buried him once. Emma Whitaker didn’t expect the mountain man with steel eyes and a carbon-fiber leg to become her problem. She definitely didn’t expect to be the one who drags him back from death. Now Maverick is trapped in a hospital bed, forced into rehab, stripped of the only thing that made the pain tolerable—and the only familiar face in the chaos is the nurse who refuses to be intimidated by him. He’s angry. Raw. Mean when he hurts. She’s calm. Steady. Impossible to push away. But Emma sees what no one else does: Maverick isn’t trying to die. He just doesn’t know how to live without being numb. As old history resurfaces, loyalties are tested, and the men on the ridge refuse to let one of their own fall apart, Maverick is forced to face the one battle he’s been avoiding for years: The one inside his own head. And the only person who can help him through it… is the woman he’s trying hardest to keep at arm’s length. In Saltwater Creek, healing doesn’t come quietly. It comes with pain, truth, and the kind of love that refuses to let you give up.