Burnt Sugar & Bitters is a quiet story about what happens when control finally stops working.Sloane built her café the way she built her life, carefully, privately, and alone. Every detail mattered. Every crack was monitored. Every problem was handled before anyone else had the chance to notice.Then the café floods.What should have been a temporary disaster becomes something more destabilizing: an interruption she can't manage by herself. As repairs drag on and a looming deadline threatens everything she's built, Sloane is forced into the one position she's spent her life avoiding, needing help.Help comes anyway.From a community that remembers what the café gave them when they needed somewhere to sit. From a quiet, steady man who fixes things without asking for control. From a graduate student whose observations see through Sloane's defenses. From family, from friends, from people she never intended to lean on.But accepting help means letting go of the illusion that strength looks like solitude.Set over the slow rebuild of a small café and an even slower internal reckoning, Burnt Sugar & Bitters is a story about control, community, and the courage it takes to ask instead of endure. It's about learning that survival doesn't come from holding everything together alone, but from deciding to share the weight.A novel of quiet intimacy, emotional restraint, and earned resilience, Burnt Sugar & Bitters is part of the Tempest Hearts Series, where love grows not through grand gestures, but through small moments that hold.Some doors don't need to be forced open. Some just need to be held.