Scientific "Facts": Layla's Version

Layla always thought “chemistry” was just a pretty word people used when they didn’t know how to explain attraction. Then Ryder Wheeler looked at her like that, and suddenly every argument, every almost-touch, every year spent pretending she was over him started feeling a lot like a match held too close to gasoline. "Chemistry. I’d always thought the whole idea of it between people sounded ridiculous. A convenient little metaphor humans invented to make desire feel poetic. There was no scientific law for the way someone’s presence could alter the air in a room, no formula for the pull of another person’s body toward yours. And yet with him… God, with him, I understood why people reached for the word. Because something happened around him. Something volatile. Unstable. Like static before a storm. It had always been there between us, buried beneath arguments and distance and all the careful ways I tried to ignore it, but now, with my hand against the heat of his ribs and his eyes fixed on mine, it felt undeniable. Like some dangerous reaction finally exposed to open flame." #WhereTheWindSettles #ContemporaryRomance #CowboyRomance #SecondChanceRomance #SmallTownRomance #BookTok #RomanceBooks #WritersOfTikTok #AuthorTok