Jess Quinn is just barely over two years sober, chronically over-caffeinated, and one bad day away from fist-fighting her own coping mechanisms.
She’s rebuilt her life carefully: recovery meetings, long grooming shifts at Boopity Snoots, questionable emotional support energy drinks, and just enough dark humor to keep herself functioning. The only thing she hasn’t fully escaped is Travis. The abusive ex-boyfriend who still treats her recovery like a personal betrayal.
Dean Torres has spent the last year drifting quietly through the same NA meetings without ever saying much.
A former combat engineer with PTSD, tightly controlled anger issues, and a lifestyle built around temporary job sites and emotional distance, Dean prefers silence over conversation and solitude over attachment. He notices Jess anyway. Everybody notices Jess eventually.
Especially because Jess is always talking.
The night Travis corners her outside a meeting, terrified and out of options, Jess blurts out the first thing that comes to mind…
“Babe! There you are!”
and immediately reaches towards the first man she sees.
Unfortunately for Dean, that man is him.
What starts as one impulsive lie quickly becomes something neither of them expected. Because Dean doesn’t just pretend to protect Jess… he actually does it. Quietly. Thoroughly. Relentlessly.
Until her safety starts feeling less like an obligation and far too much like love.
But healing is messy when two people are carrying years of trauma they’ve never fully unpacked.
And the closer Jess gets to the calm, steady man behind Dean’s silence, the more terrifying it becomes to imagine losing him.
The Things We Quit is a raw, emotionally charged romance about sobriety, survival, PTSD, found family, and the frightening vulnerability of being loved softly after a lifetime of chaos, balanced with sharp humor, emotional healing, and a heroine who absolutely cannot stop talking.
317 pages