Things We Left Behind

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Lucian Rollins keeps score
2. Sloane Walton does not flinch
3. A deal, a house, and old paper
4. Knockemout shows up hungry
5. When protection looks like pushing away
6. What holds and what drags
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I did not plan to read a 698 page romance about the coldest guy in Knockemout. I picked up the first book for Knox and his grumbling, stayed for Nash in the second, and told myself I was done. Then I kept thinking about the two people who never seemed to leave each other alone in the background. Lucian Rollins with his suits and his walls. Sloane Walton with her library cart and her sharp tongue. Lucy Score first published their story on September 5, 2023 with Bloom Books as Things We Left Behind, the third book in the Knockemout series. I went in curious and a little wary, because I like grumps but I get tired when control starts to feel like a personality.

This one is enemies to lovers with history. Not cute shared glance history. Old, tangled, small town history that both of them would rather pretend is finished.

Lucian is the rich one who got out. He makes money fixing problems for powerful people, the kind of man who walks into a room and the temperature drops a few degrees. Sloane is the librarian who stayed, funny in public and private about her hurts, clear that she wants a home and maybe kids one day. He has decided he will never offer that. He tells himself broken men break the women near them, so solitude is safer. She tells herself she would never trust him that far anyway. Then one night the bickering tips over and they stop pretending they do not notice each other. After that, neither of them gets to keep the old story intact.

What surprised me was how much this felt like a closing chapter for the town as much as for the couple. Naomi and Knox are around with Waylay and the dog. Nash is around trying to be a decent chief.

Lucian Rollins keeps score

Lucian does not relax. That is the first thing to understand about him.

He grew up in Knockemout under the shadow of a father who used money and fear the way other people use conversation. The older Rollins left marks on the town and on his son. Lucian responded the only way he knew how. He got richer, more controlled, more untouchable. He bought a fortress of a house outside town with gates and cameras. He wears clothes that cost more than most cars in Knockemout. He keeps lists, contacts, favors owed. He tells himself every dollar and every string he pulls puts distance between him and the name he inherited.

In the first two books he mostly appears to pay for things and leave early. Here you live inside his head and it is exhausting in a way I mean as a compliment. He notices exits. He notices who is lying. He runs scenarios while other people are ordering coffee. When he was a teenager he learned to step between trouble and Sloane, and he never quite unlearned it. He just turned it into a system. Cameras. Lawyers. A car that is always fueled. A plan for if someone comes for her.

That protectiveness is why people in town tolerate him and also why they keep their distance. Knox will accept his help and then tell him he is being cold. Nash will take information from him and then warn him not to cross a line. Lucian prefers it that way. If people expect nothing warm from him, he cannot disappoint them.

The trouble with that setup is that it works until Sloane is in the same room. She is the one person who does not flinch at the flat voice. She answers back. She calls out the suit, the schedule, the way he tries to pay for a problem instead of talking about it. He hates it. He also clearly waits for it.

I found him easier to like than I expected, though not always easy to be around. Score lets him be competent without making him all knowing. He misreads Sloane badly at times. He thinks giving her space means vanishing. He thinks keeping her safe means deciding for her. Those mistakes drive much of the middle of the book, for better and sometimes for worse.

Sloane Walton does not flinch

Sloane was my favorite surprise in book one. Librarians in romance can be written as quiet and sweet and waiting to be noticed. Sloane is not waiting.

She runs the library with real affection. She remembers which kid likes mysteries and which older man pretends he does not like romances but renews them twice. She helps Waylay find books without making a lesson of it. She helps Naomi with forms and phone numbers. She feeds people information the way other people in Knockemout feed people pie, steady and without fuss. Under that is a woman still sorting out what her father lived through and what it cost their family. Her dad was tangled up in the same old ugliness that shaped Lucian, and Sloane wants answers. Not revenge exactly. More like a clear record. What happened. Who knew. What was taken.

She also knows what she wants in a partner, and she says it out loud. A home. Laughing at breakfast. Kids running around at some point. That clarity is important because Lucian has drawn a hard line on the other side. No marriage. No kids. No cozy future where someone depends on him. In his mind, wanting those things makes them incompatible, and he repeats that to himself like a rule that will keep them both safe.

Sloane refuses to audition for a man. I liked that a lot. She does not pretend she does not want kids to keep Lucian comfortable. She does not play cool about the past to seem easy. When he pulls his disappearing act, and he does it more than once, she does not chase him with speeches. She gets angry. She sets terms. She goes back to work.

She is also carrying fear she does not advertise. Being watched, being followed, finding signs someone has been near her house, these moments rattle her more than she admits to friends. She covers with jokes. Score shows the cover slipping in private, in the way Sloane double checks locks or sits in her car a minute longer before going inside. That felt true. Brave people still get scared in parking lots.

If Naomi's arc in book one was learning to say no to pleasing everyone, Sloane's arc here is learning to ask for help without feeling like she failed. That is hard for a woman who helps everyone else for a living.

A deal, a house, and old paper

The plot kicks in when Lucian comes back to Knockemout to finish his father's business for good. Papers. Property. Debts. Names that still owe or are owed. He wants to close every file, sell what can be sold, bury the rest. Sloane is pulling on the same thread from the other end, looking through her father's things, asking questions at the library archives, trying to line up dates and accounts that never made sense.

They end up in each other's way. Then in each other's house, in a manner of speaking.

Without giving away the exact turns, they agree to a practical arrangement that puts them close. Shared space. Shared information. Rules that both pretend will hold. It does not hold. Proximity does what proximity always does in these books, especially when both people have wanted each other since they were young and angry and did not have words for it.

Score structures this in two timelines that braid together. Present day scenes move the investigation and the romance forward. Flashbacks fill in the teen years, when Lucian was already hard and Sloane was already mouthy, when they formed a bond neither family would have approved. Those flashbacks explain why their adult fights sting so much. They are not fighting about library fines or a parking spot. They are fighting about who left, who stayed silent, who let the other take the hit.

The paper trail matters. Old letters. Bank records. A safe deposit box kind of mystery, though Score keeps it at a level a non accountant can follow. I am not a thriller reader and I could track it. Who paid whom. Which house hid what. Why Sloane's father kept certain files. Why Lucian's father wanted certain people quiet. Each answer opens a smaller, sadder question about how little protection kids had back then.

The house itself becomes a character. Lucian's place is all glass and stone and quiet, built to keep the town out. Sloane fills it with library totes and coffee mugs. He pretends to mind. He clearly likes hearing another voice in rooms that echo.

Then the rules break. A night together that was supposed to mean nothing starts meaning something. A secret he kept to shield her lands like a betrayal once she learns it from someone else. She tells him to go. He goes, because leaving is what he knows. That pattern repeats, and I will talk about whether it repeats too often in the last section.

Knockemout shows up hungry

One reason I forgive the length is the town. Knockemout eats up pages in the best way.

Naomi is now settled with Knox and Waylay, and seeing Naomi as the steady one who brings food instead of the new girl who needs rescue is satisfying. Knox still growls at everyone, still fixes things without being asked. Waylay is older, funnier, more secure, and she adopts Sloane as an aunt in all but name.

Nash is in chief mode through much of this. Honest John's diner does its usual duty as courtroom and therapy office.

What I like is that help here looks like food and rides and showing up with tools. No one gives Lucian a big speech about opening his heart. Knox tells him he is being stupid in plain language. Naomi tells Sloane she can be mad and still accept help. Nash tells them both to lock doors and stop playing amateur detective without backup. It is love expressed as practical nagging, very Knockemout.

There is also a fundraiser and library thread that gives Sloane a work life outside the romance. Budget fights. A leaky roof. Lucian tries to solve it by writing a check, and she tells him a check without showing up is just PR. He actually listens, which for Lucian is growth.

The steam in this book runs warm and frequent, but Score keeps it adult without turning graphic in a way that stalls the story. Doors close. Mornings after carry the weight. What matters is how they talk after, or fail to. He gets tender and then panics. She gets honest and then guards herself. Their banter in bed is the same as their banter in the library, quick and a little competitive, which keeps it in character.

I should note for readers who track content. There is talk of childhood harm, corrupt adults, death of parents, threats and stalking, property damage, and on page danger in the last act. There is also frank talk about wanting kids and not wanting kids, which becomes a real conflict rather than a throwaway. Nothing felt inserted for shock, but this is heavier than a breezy small town comedy. It reads like romance with suspense woven in, not cozy with a kiss at the end.

When protection looks like pushing away

The middle third is where couples in long romances either deepen or loop. This one does both.

Lucian's core belief is simple and sad. He thinks he inherited something rotten and will pass it on. So he protects Sloane by managing her. He withholds a file because it will upset her. He makes a call without telling her because it is faster. He decides they should pause because he is bad for her future. Each time he frames it as care. Each time she hears control.

Sloane pushes back, but she has her own loop. She digs alone when she should bring backup. She jokes when she should say she is scared. She tells Lucian she does not need him right after a night where someone tried a door handle or left a message that was clearly meant to frighten. Both of them are right about the danger and wrong about how to face it.

That danger grows. Tires slashed. A break in that could be random and probably is not. Old associates of Lucian's father resurfacing now that papers are moving. Sloane hates being managed, but she also starts sleeping with her phone on loud.

There is a second goodbye that hurt to read. He cuts her out to draw fire away, telling himself it is noble. She experiences it as abandonment, because it is. For a stretch after, the book sits in the ache. Sloane throws herself into work. Lucian throws himself into empire. Friends pick sides without meaning to. Waylay asks where he went with the bluntness only a teen can manage. Naomi does not excuse him. That refusal to let him off easy matters. If everyone had forgiven him fast, I would not have bought the reunion.

The turn comes not with a grand speech but with changed behavior. He starts telling her plans before he acts. He hands over files even when they make him look bad. He asks what she wants for safety instead of announcing it. She starts letting him in earlier, before fear hardens into jokes. They agree on backup, on locks, on who to call, on what not to keep secret. It sounds unromantic on paper. On the page it reads as intimacy, because for these two, paperwork is love language.

The climax is messy in a human way. People misjudge timing. Someone gets hurt. I will not spoil who did what, but I will say the resolution ties back to those old papers and to choices their fathers made.

What holds and what drags

What holds is the emotional logic. Two people who learned young that love leaves or harms have to learn a different definition. Safety as people who come when you call, not as never needing anyone. Family as chosen routines, not just blood. Sloane wanting kids is not treated as a flaw to fix or a trap. Lucian not wanting them is not treated as villainy. They talk, fight, revisit, talk again. The final agreement they reach feels worked for, not granted because the page count ran out.

The banter holds too. Score writes fights that are funny without losing hurt. Waylay gets the best lines, as usual. I laughed out loud more than once, which I needed because the backstory is grim.

Now the drags, because at almost 700 pages there are some.

The push and pull repeats. He leaves, she builds a wall, they get close, he panics. The beats are well written each time, but the shape is the same.

Lucian's control also tests patience. I understand why he withholds information. His father taught him knowledge is power to hoard. As a reader, though, watching a smart man keep making the same mistake with a smart woman gets tiring. Score knows it, to her credit. Other characters call him on it in plain terms. Still, one fewer secret kept for her own good would have tightened the middle without losing theme.

The threat side is thinner than the family side. The men tied to the old corruption scare us because they menace a librarian, not because we learn much about what drives them now.

A smaller note. If you prefer short, low angst romance, this will feel like a lot. If on page danger around a beloved workplace like a library bothers you, even when handled with care, save it for when you have bandwidth.

I closed it thinking about the library, oddly. Not the big house or the money. The image of Sloane re shelving after a hard day while Lucian moves chairs without being asked, both quiet, both staying. For a series that began with a runaway bride and a barber who did not want complications, ending with a fixer learning to stay for story time feels right. Knockemout does not fix people. It feeds them, teases them, shows up with a truck, and waits until they admit they need it. Lucian takes longer than most to admit it. Sloane takes longer than most to let help count. When they finally meet in the middle, the town is there with coffee, as always, ready to take credit.

FAQ

Who are the main characters in Things We Left Behind?

Billionaire fixer Lucian Rollins and Knockemout librarian Sloane Walton, with Naomi, Knox, Waylay and Chief Nash Morgan in support.

Is Things We Left Behind part of a series?

Yes. It is Knockemout book 3, first published in 2023 after Naomi and Knox in book 1 and Nash in book 2, and it closes Lucian and Sloane's long setup.

Does Lucian want marriage and kids like Sloane does?

No at first. Sloane is clear she wants a home and kids someday while Lucian refuses both, and they have to talk through that gap instead of hiding it.