Mara Ellison is sixteen days away from losing the indie game studio she sacrificed her personal life to build. Her final lifeline is a solo retreat to an isolated Adirondack cabin to finish a make-or-break narrative prototype. She needs absolute silence and total control.
She gets Sloane Park instead.
Sloane is brilliant, infuriatingly observant, and the exact indie developer who publicly trashed Mara's last game. Thanks to a double-booking and a massive winter storm, they are trapped together with a failing generator, shared desk space, and one bed.
Sloane is hiding from her own crashing career, having rage-quit her life in the city to avoid a toxic publishing deal. What starts as a bitter turf war between two rival developers quickly evolves into a high-stakes creative partnership. As the snow piles up and their deadlines loom, the friction between Mara's rigid need for control and Sloane's raw, unpredictable passion sparks an undeniable physical connection.
But Mara has spent a decade managing people to avoid letting them close, and Sloane has spent her life walking away before she can be hurt. To save their work—and each other—they have to stop treating vulnerability like a system error and finally risk the one thing they both fear most.
