HERS - PAIGE-TAYLOR HARTNESS

 Spencer Knight spent years in the Navy as an ordnance technician, a role where survival meant thinking three moves ahead and treating every mistake as final. When he transitions to civilian life at Old Dominion University, he approaches the shift like a Queen's Gambit, sacrificing the certainty of the military for an open, undefined future. Yet his most complex game isn't found in a classroom, but on a digital chessboard shared with Beth, a woman who sees through his strategic defenses. Their relationship, shaped across sixty-four squares, becomes his only bridge when distance, memory, and unquiet ghosts threaten to stall his progress.

As Spencer navigates the middle game of his new life, he realizes that while he can calculate any angle on the board, he has yet to master the one move that matters most. Will he continue protecting his flanks in a solitary endgame, or will he finally abandon the board for the woman who has already seen his next move?