Beneath her Skirts

Lila Moreau has built a careful, independent life as a junior editor in a mid-sized coastal city. At twenty-six, she’s fluent in burying old longings beneath deadlines and polite smiles. But when her childhood best friend—Elias “Eli” Rivera—returns after nearly a decade away, working the late shift at the neighborhood bar where they once shared stolen sodas and secrets, everything she thought she had neatly packed away begins to unravel. Eli is no longer the gangly boy who followed her everywhere. He’s a quiet, magnetic man who carries the weight of his family’s struggles and his own hidden scars. Their rekindled friendship quickly ignites into something far more dangerous: a raw, aching attraction neither can afford to indulge. Family expectations, past betrayals, and the fear of destroying the only person who truly knows them stand between them. Beneath her skirts—and beneath the surface of their ordinary lives—lies a love that demands everything.