The Ocean Between Us - excerpt

Ben Preston saves lives for a living. As a Manhattan firefighter, his world is built on discipline, instinct, and trust earned in smoke and heat. The work grounds him. Outside the firehouse, everything feels less certain. His relationship with Nina is steady but strained, shaped by different dreams and unspoken expectations. Nothing is wrong. Yet nothing quite fits anymore.

Laura Wistenkowski lives inside controlled chaos. As an ER doctor, she thrives where decisions mean survival. In crisis, she is precise and confident. Outside the hospital, the clarity fades. Her partner Michael offers stability, ambition, and a carefully planned future. He wants her brilliance focused on progress, not emergency rooms. Laura is not sure she wants the life he is building for her.

A luxury cruise promises escape. Rest. Distance from routines that have grown heavy. For both couples, the journey is framed as a reset, a pause before life demands answers. Beneath the excitement, something quieter lingers. A sense that this trip matters more than anyone admits.

As the ship pulls away from New York, they all believe they know what the next week will bring. Calm water. Open horizons. Time to breathe.

They are wrong.

Because some journeys do not offer escape. They strip everything down. They test who you are when comfort disappears and choices cannot be delayed. Out on the open sea, far from land and certainty, truth surfaces. Not as a moment of romance, but as a reckoning.

This is a story about duty, identity, and the space between the lives we build and the lives that call to us.