She swore she'd never give Nash Calloway another second of her time.Then her family ran out of options.Seventeen-year-old Sage Maddox has spent three years building a wall around herself and her little brother, brick by careful brick. She knows what it costs when you let someone in and they make you a punchline. She learned that freshman year, courtesy of Nash Calloway — the careless, golden-boy son of Blackmere's most prominent family.But when Sage's estranged father resurfaces with a custody lawsuit, every legal bill pushes her family one step closer to breaking. Her mother is already working double shifts. Her brother's medical chart grows thicker every month. And the only job that pays enough to help is at The Driftwood, the café owned by Nash's family.Sage takes it. She has no other choice.Except Nash isn't who she remembers.He shows up to open the café at dawn with shadows under his eyes and deflects every question about his family with a practiced smile. When he quietly covers her shift so she can rush her brother to the hospital — and then refuses to let her thank him — Sage starts to wonder what he's hiding. Something that echoes the silences in her own house. The ones where her mother cries behind closed doors and no one says what they're afraid of out loud.As the summer heat presses in and the custody hearing looms, Sage and Nash fall into a rhythm of early mornings, shared confessions, and glances that say more than either of them means to. But Nash's family holds ties to the very legal case she's fighting, and the closer she gets to him, the more she risks handing her father exactly what he needs to win.Trusting Nash might be the thing that saves her family.Or the thing that costs her everything she's fought to hold together.The Space Between Heartbeats is a tender and sun-drenched YA contemporary romance about enemies-to-lovers, first love, family loyalty, and the terrifying leap of trusting someone when you can't afford to be wrong.Perfect for readers who love sweet YA romance, enemies-to-lovers tension, summer beach reads, and the emotional warmth of J.L. Wyer and Tillie Cole.An unforgettable, heart-cracking coming-of-age story.