Summer We Couldn't Explain

She was a scientist chasing clarity. He was the mistake she never quite forgot.
When Aria Serrano, a rising PhD candidate in environmental chemistry, is awarded a coveted summer research fellowship in the remote Sierra mountains, she expects breakthroughs, data collection, and maybe a few mosquito bites-not to be paired with her longtime academic rival and walking contradiction, Theo Whitaker.
Aria remembers Theo as the broody genius who torched her confidence in undergrad seminars with one well-timed smirk. He remembers her as the girl who spilled a smoothie on his award-winning project at seventeen-and somehow never left his mind. Now, forced to share a cabin, a field lab, and far too many long hikes into the wilderness, Aria and Theo must navigate years of simmering tension, professional friction, and something they're both too stubborn to name.
As they collect soil samples by day and secrets by night, the thin line between rivalry and chemistry begins to blur. But when past wounds, professional sabotage, and personal fears threaten their fragile truce, they'll have to decide: is what's growing between them just a byproduct of proximity, or something worth defending?
Set against the golden haze of an unforgettable summer, The Summer We Couldn't Explain is a slow-burn romance about intellectual equals, emotional messes, and the impossibly tender art of falling in love with someone you thought you knew-and realizing you never did.