Ayla is twenty years old and has learned how to keep people at a distance. Her mother left on an ordinary Tuesday — suitcase at the door, two sentences on a note — and since then Ayla has built a shield of evening walks and quiet rooms and the belief that people always go.

Then there is Finn. A man with a too big coat and gray eyes who see more than most people. He also fled. Also broken in its own way. But he's not leaving.

In the fictional city of Velora, they are slowly building something out of the ordinary things: coffee without milk, the river on Wednesday morning, linden blossom in June, a ring with a small irregularity in the gold. A bookstore that becomes hers. A child who has the eyes of his father.

Breathless is a novel about two people who learn to open up — for each other, for the world, for the life that awaits on the other side of fear. But it is also the story of what is left when you lose the most beautiful thing you have too early.

About grief that changes you without breaking you. About love that doesn't stop when people stop.

A novel about the doors we learn to open. Even if we are afraid. Just then.