Leaning In

Name: Leaning In
Author: Charlotte Watson

109 pages

Claire Robinson has spent most of her life trying to earn approval she never quite gets. At the marketing firm where she works, she’s constantly overlooked. In her family, she always falls short of her parents’ impossible standards—and fails to impress the parade of ‘suitable’ men her mother keeps supplying. Each date is somehow worse than the last and leaves Claire wondering whether love is just another test she’s destined to fail. Which would be easier to accept if she could stop thinking about Tom, her best friend’s older brother, and someone she’s had a crush on since she was a teenager.

Tom Ford—the history teacher, not the designer—is everything Claire’s status-obsessed mother would dismiss before he’d finished introducing himself. His idea of wealth is a Sunday coaching football in the rain and a truly terrible French Revolution pun—he’s also been quietly gone for Claire for years. So when one impromptu pizza dinner ends in an unexpected-yet-life-altering kiss, Tom’s ready. But Claire’s not: she panics and buries her feelings (and Tom) under weeks of silence.

When her firm is hired to rebrand the school where he teaches, Claire runs out of ways to avoid him. But letting Tom in means learning that sometimes the hardest thing isn’t falling in love—it’s leaning into the belief that you’re worthy of being loved back.

Leaning In is a best-friend’s-brothe

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