This Side of Beautiful

She walked away from everything. Now she's walking back. Janae Camille Warner was MILA to the world. A platinum-selling hip-hop queen who sold out arenas and made Houston proud. Then the highs got higher, the lows got unbearable, and the industry that built her watched her burn. After three years of silence, sobriety, and hard-won healing, Janae is done hiding. She's not coming back as MILA. She's coming back as herself. Returning to Houston for a surprise performance at the rodeo, Janae carries the weight of her past like an open wound. The scandal that ended her label deal. The family she lost. The man she loved and walked away from. Her bipolar disorder has never disappeared; it's just been harder to outrun without the substances that used to drown it out. And the world is watching, cameras rolling for her reality show comeback, waiting for her to crack. Landon Hayes doesn't chase spotlights. A Juilliard-trained guitarist and founding member of jazz-soul band Hollow Bones, he has built a quiet, disciplined life around his music and very little else. Crowds drain him. Socializing costs him. He moves through the world to a rhythm only he can hear, and he has spent a lifetime learning to make peace with being wired differently. He doesn't do drama. He definitely doesn't do women like Janae Warner. Except he can't stop watching her. What starts as a professional collaboration, Janae joining Hollow Bones on a comeback tour, becomes something neither of them expected. A connection that is grounding and terrifying in equal measure. Landon's steadiness is everything Janae didn't know she needed. And Janae's rawness and fire crack open something in Landon he has kept carefully sealed. But Janae's past isn't done with her. Old demons surface, public scrutiny intensifies, and Landon must decide whether love means staying through the storm or if some fires are too hot to stand beside. This novel contains candid depictions of bipolar disorder, neurodivergence, addiction and recovery, emotional trauma, and adult language and situations.