Two Feet of Desk

About this book

On a hit true-crime podcast, Lena Boyd argues for reasonable doubt and Cole Marchetti argues for guilt, and both mean it. When one cold case points them at the same overlooked man, two hosts who agree on nothing start agreeing on each other. A warm, slow-burn workplace romance.

Every week on the hit true-crime podcast Cold Read, Lena Boyd argues the case for reasonable doubt and Cole Marchetti argues the case for guilt — and they mean every word. She watched a rushed certainty send her brother to prison for a killing he didn’t commit. He watched a jury’s doubt set his sister’s murderer free. Each of them was destroyed by the very principle the other lives by, and the show is a hit precisely because their fight is real.

Then the network threatens to cancel them unless the next season breaks out, and one fifteen-year-old cold case forces Lena’s doubt and Cole’s pattern onto the same overlooked man. Trapped in the same booth, the same rental cars, the same late nights, the two people who can’t agree on anything start agreeing on the wrong thing: each other. Falling for him feels like betraying the brother who made her. Falling for her feels like forgiving the doubt that failed his sister.

When the case breaks the right way, the wall each of them built to survive a sibling starts to come down — until the question of how to name a killer, and how sure a person is allowed to be, threatens to end the show, the case, and them.

A warm, banter-forward, enemies-to-lovers workplace romance about doubt and conviction, grief and the people who get us through it, and learning to trust the same truth from opposite sides. Slow burn. Dual POV. Happily ever after guaranteed.