I Stay is a 16,500-word contemporary romance novella steeped in the Mexican-American soul of Safford, New Mexico—where curanderas whisper prayers in grandmothers' kitchens, café de olla steams in thermoses, and folding chairs in garages hold generations of healing. This slow-burn friends-to-lovers follows two traumatized Mexican-American professionals navigating abandonment wounds and the radical act of choosing each other first. Perfect for readers who want emotional intimacy, small-town Southwest setting, and brown love that heals.

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Adina has learned one rule in Safford, New Mexico: expect nothing. A father who drove away. An ex who stopped replying mid-sentence. A lifetime of slow fades. So when her best friend Teófilo turns from his grandmother's red tool chest, gold chain catching light, and her chest tightens, she crushes the feeling immediately. He will leave. They always do.

Teófilo smiles through everything—angry parents, a cousin who sneers that he's "not really Mexican" because his Spanish falters, a grandmother whose curandera prayers he couldn't understand as a child. But the smile cracks when Adina pulls away from his touch. He felt the chemistry. She ran. Now he fears he is only ever the safe option, never the first choice.

Thrown together in that same garage, they circle each other over café de olla and comfortable silence. They sneak away to a closed drive-in theater. Adina admits her ex's slow fade. Teófilo admits the cousin who laughed at his roots. They kiss at the Lookout Point. They fumble toward healing—until Marco finds them on a footbridge and a hidden half-sister in Phoenix spills out. A secret Teófilo never told her.

When he pulls away instead of leaning in, Adina's trauma screams: He's ashamed of me. She walks off the bridge alone. Can two Mexican-American kids carrying the weight of never feeling enough—not for each other, not for their own culture—learn to finally stay?

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This is not a romance about perfect people. It is about a woman who flinches at loud voices and a man who smiles through everything because he was taught no wasn't an option. Set in Safford, New Mexico—where curanderas heal, grandmothers keep folding chairs, and café de olla is love in a thermos—I Stay centers Mexican-American identity as both wound and balm. If you have ever been told you're not enough of something, or that you're the one someone settles for, this novella will make you believe: someone can say I stay—and mean it forever.

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