This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Sera Blackwood pressed her fingertips against her temples, willing the crushing wave of emotions to subside. The coffee shop buzzed with the usual morning rush, but for her, it was a symphony of feelings that didn't belong to her. The businessman at table three radiated anxiety about his presentation. The college student in the corner booth was drowning in homesickness. The elderly woman by the window carried a grief so profound it made Sera's chest ache.

Being an empath wasn't the mystical gift that books and movies made it out to be. It was exhausting, overwhelming, and isolating. At twenty-six, Sera had learned to build walls around her heart, but they were more like sandcastles against a tsunami when emotions ran high.

She closed her laptop and gathered her things, abandoning her half-finished article about sustainable living. Working from coffee shops had seemed like a good idea when she started freelance writing, but the emotional noise was becoming unbearable. Her small apartment in Portland's Alberta Arts District would have to do, even if the isolation sometimes felt like a prison.

The bell above the door chimed as she stepped onto the sidewalk, and immediately she felt it – a warmth, gentle and unfamiliar, like sunshine breaking through storm clouds. She turned, scanning the street, and her eyes landed on a man crossing toward the coffee shop. He was tall with dark hair that caught the morning light, wearing a simple gray sweater that suggested comfort over fashion. But it wasn't his appearance that stopped her in her tracks.