Watercolors

Luminous Brooks had mastered surviving in gray.Gray paintings. Gray routines. Gray love. Gray versions of herself that never asked for too much and never felt too loud. After losing her job, falling behind on rent, and watching life close in around her piece by piece, the last thing she expected was an inheritance from a grandmother that failed her decades ago—a massive old-money lake house sitting in the middle of Lynn Beach.Beautiful.Quiet.And filled with memories she spent years trying not to touch.The rules are simple: live there or lose it.So Lumi does what she’s always done. She stays small. Minds her business. Keeps her head down. Pretends the water surrounding the property doesn’t make her chest tighten every time she looks at it.Then there’s her neighbor.Ashlee “Wave” Reeves— the golden boy of swimming. The man the world watched win over and over again. But retirement left him standing still in a life that no longer fits the way it used to. Now his days revolve around keeping peace, raising the teenage daughter he’s still learning, and trying to figure out who he is outside of being everybody’s idea of perfect.Lumi was never supposed to become part of that.But somewhere between late-night talks, paint-stained fingers, quiet laughs across the lake, and tension that lingers long after the moment is over, Wave starts becoming the one place Lumi feels safe enough to unravel.And that terrifies her.Because water remembers.It remembers the summer that changed everything.The grief she never spoke out loud.The little girl she used to be before fear made a home inside of her.Now, with love slowly coloring in the parts of herself she buried years ago, Lumi has to decide if she’s willing to keep surviving in gray… or finally learn how to live in color.Watercolors is a slow-burning Black romance about healing, softness, grief, yearning, and love that touches every version of who you’ve been. Read more