Between Homework And That First Kiss

A Single Parent Widower Romance.
A widowed paramedic, his anxious daughter, and the tutor their district once feared must redraw what “family” means when a school assignment forces them to decide who really lives at the center of their circle.Graham has spent years keeping his life small on purpose. As a paramedic and single father, he knows how quickly everything can change. After losing his wife, he decided the safest plan was one house, one job, one girl to protect. His days are built around shifts at the station and steady routines at home. Feelings beyond that are a luxury he does not think he’s allowed.

His daughter, Maddie, is the one who pays the price for that quiet survival. Middle school has become a minefield of tests, crowded hallways, and assignments written for families with two cheerful parents and a dog. Anxiety tightens her chest every time a teacher says the word “presentation.” By the time her grades start to slip, Graham has run out of ways to pretend it’s just a phase.

Enter Lena , the private tutor who arrives at their kitchen table with algebra worksheets, grounding techniques, and a past the district would rather not talk about. In her previous job she was the adult kids trusted when the world felt like too much, until one scared parent and an anxious administrator decided that kind of closeness was a problem. Now she lives by new stay useful, stay kind, and never stay long enough to matter.

Maddie blows those rules apart in the first month. With Lena’s help, numbers stop feeling like enemies. The hoodie pocket Lena sews from a piece of Maddie’s late mother’s dress becomes a lifeline on hard days. And Graham, watching the way his daughter finally breathes around this stubborn, tired, funny woman, starts to feel something he thought his heart had retired hope.

Then a well-meaning teacher assigns the “Family Circles Project,” a neat set of rings where students are supposed to write who lives in their home, who belongs in their support network, and who stands on the edges of their orbit. Maddie’s circles do not fit the worksheet. There’s a dad. There’s a girl. There’s a ghost mother who still lives in pancakes and bedtime stories. And there is a tutor who “doesn’t count” according to the instructions, but who has quietly moved into the center of their emotional map.

When hallway whispers and an old district email collide with this new life they have built, all three of them are forced to answer questions they have been avoiding. How close is too close for a parent and a private tutor in a system that confuses care with risk? Is a new love story allowed to exist alongside a grief that never really left? And who gets to decide what counts as family when forms and policies lag far behind real lives?

Between Homework And That First Kiss is a slow-burn, closed-door single-parent romance about the quiet heroics of staying. Set between school gym nights, kitchen-table tutoring sessions, and a porch where one small, terrifying kiss changes everything, it follows a widowed father trying to be brave again, a girl learning to speak up about who is in her circle, and a woman who must decide whether this time, she’s willing to stay. If you love emotionally rich, low-spice contemporary romance where found family grows out of ordinary days and hard conversations, this story is for you.