She spent fifteen years making sure she never needed him again. He came back with an investor's money and a plan to take the one thing in Cedar Hollow that still had her family's name on it.
Grace Calloway is the person Cedar Hollow calls when something needs doing. She runs the town's beloved bookshop, knows everyone by name, and after two years of fighting for it — she is this close to turning her grandfather's derelict feed store into a community arts center. Then Jake McAllister drives back from Nashville with a competing proposal for the same building, and the slow burn she has been managing for fifteen years becomes a five-alarm problem.
Because Jake was her best friend before he was her rival. And Cedar Hollow, with its long memory and its complete inability to mind its own business, remembers exactly what happened between them the summer they were eighteen — the creek path, the kiss, and the diner booth the morning after where Jake said nothing happened while Grace stood at the counter ten feet away.
Now the town council has forced them into a joint presentation. Jake is fixing up his father's house, showing up to community cleanups, and being infuriatingly, inconveniently himself. And Grace, who built an entire life around not needing him, is running out of reasons to keep the wall up.
With the council vote looming, Cedar Hollow watching every move, and fifteen years of silence finally breaking open, Grace has to decide whether her defenses are protecting her or just keeping her in place. And Jake has to reckon with the fact that the life he built in Nashville was always missing the one thing he left behind.
Fans of slow burn small town romance and enemies-to-lovers tension will feel every beat of this one. The Rival Between Us delivers banter with teeth, a community that meddles from love, and an HEA rooted in belonging — the kind where choosing each other and choosing home turn out to be the same decision.
