Brittainy Cherry's New Romance Will Make You 'Ugly Cry': Read a Sneak Peek ofIf You Stayed(Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Brittainy Cherry and her new novel, ‘If You Stayed’.Photo:Amanda Evans Photography; Sourcebooks Casablanca

Amanda Evans Photography; Sourcebooks Casablanca

Brittainy Cherry has a new book on the way and it promises to be a tearjerker.

InIf You Stayed, Kierra’s first love comes back into her life after a long absence, stirring up feelings she thought she’d never experience again.

“There once was a man who loved me, until he forgot every memory we’ve ever shared,” the book’s synopsis teases. “Gabriel Sinclair would forever be my first …The accident that nearly took his life ripped the memory of me from his grasp — and for the last decades, I’ve let the guilt of that one terrible night keep us apart.”

Trapped in a loveless marriage with a controlling husband and raising a child, Keirra knows she should push Gabriel away to protect him from the complexities of her own life. But, as the synopsis puts it, “I can’t deny the hope that blooms whenever he’s near — the chance that he might remember me, that we could reclaim the chapters of our story that we’ve lost.”

“If You Stayedis a story of hope, redemption and true love," theUSA Todaybestselling author tells PEOPLE. “I hold this story close to my heart because it shows that no matter how dark life can get, the sun will always shine again.”

In an exclusive excerpt shared with PEOPLE, we get a peek into Kierra’s home life — and how she feels about her husband.

Sourcebooks Casablanca

Kierra

Some people daydreamed about dinner parties. The perfect space with elegant floral arrangements. Gold silverware and plate settings. Classical music playing in the background. Guests dressed to the nines with wine and champagne poured at a ridiculous pace. There was such an elegance to dinner parties with wealthy individuals, yet the one thing that always seemed to be missing was the heart of it all.

My husband, Henry, was a perfectionist. He also happened to be one of the most brilliant minds in Maine, if not the world. But when my husband wasn’t being a super genius, he was busy becoming my greatest heartbreak.

I met Henry Hughes during the hardest chapter of my life.

I had many regrets in life. Choosing Henry as my husband might’ve been among my top three worst decisions. I didn’t love Henry anymore. Most days, I debated if I even liked him. I’d seen his red flags from the beginning, yet I’d chosen to quietly ignore them. A part of me at the time probably thought that was the love I deserved. A part of me believed I was lucky that anyone would want me — scars and all.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

That was the problem with falling in love when you were out of love with yourself: even monsters looked appealing then. Some say that during the lowest moments of life a person can come across someone who will bring them their warmest summers or their coldest winters. Henry was my cold front, the chilling punishment during my season of despair.

We weren’t in love; we were imprisoned in a loveless marriage. At least I had been. For the longest time, I’d figured he was my karma for the mistakes of my past.

Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered staying in a marriage as harsh as my own, but then I’d see her face — Ava Hughes. The greatest gift Henry had ever brought into my world. I feared deep down that if I left Henry, he would never let me see her again — and that was always enough to get me to stay.

Our daughter, Ava, was a professional at hiding out in her bedroom to read whenever a party was going on. I wished so deeply that I could hide away with her. With a book in my hand, of course. I’d choose fictional realms with dragons over reality with Henry and his friends any day of the week.

“I needed a moment of solitude before everyone arrives. Cake?” I offered, plopping down on the edge of her bed.

“Always,” she replied, taking her slice and diving right in. “You know, you could always tell Dad that you don’t like dinner parties,” she stated matter-of-factly. As if going against Henry’s plans was ever an option. If he didn’t get his way, he’d be a nightmare to deal with. I had to pick and choose my battles with him, which resulted in dinner parties and fake smiles at people who I could hardly stand.

“The dinner parties are fun,” I lied.

“Liar,” she replied.

Ava was a professional at reading me like an open book. Some days, I swore she knew me better than my husband did.

“It’s a very important dinner, I guess,” I explained.

“All of Dad’s parties are important,” Ava commented as she shoved a forkful of Funfetti cake into her mouth. “Becausehe’simportant.”

She wasn’t wrong. In addition to being brilliant, Henry was extremely important in his industry. He didn’t think like other people, which was so refreshing when we’d first met. His business, Sweet, was a high-tech company that was taking home technology to a whole new place. It covered everything, and I mean everything. The latest technology used artificial intelligence to learn humans within their home, so it would know exactly when a person wanted a cup of coffee — before the thought even crossed their mind. They were also working on a system that used light to brighten people’s moods in an instant.

While what he’d accomplished was impressive, I was kind of scared of how little control his technology seemed to give people. If artificial intelligence could be used to brighten a person’s mood, it could probably be used for darkening a person’s personality, too. I didn’t like the idea of that, yet Henry simply told me that I wasn’t informed enough to understand what he was doing.

Henry not only spoke to Ava and me about his technology. Often, his work also came home with him. And of course, my home was the laboratory to test everything out. I lived in a fully operating smart house that knew me better than I knew myself.

Though, sometimes I wondered about the coffee system. It felt very “which came first, the chicken or the egg” to me. Did the AI know I craved a coffee, or did I smell the coffee after it was brewed and then I craved it?

Either way, Sweet lived up to its tagline.Let us take care of the small tasks so we can make your life Sweet.

You couldn’t go a week without seeing his name in the headlines. He was basically the next Steve Jobs when it came to innovation. He even went through a black turtleneck and blue jeans era when he started out.

It wasn’t always like that. At one point, I thought he really loved me. Cherished me. Yet, those days seemed few and far between. Still, I put on a brave face as if I were happy with him because I cared more about keeping my relationship with Ava as strong as it could be. You see, Ava wasn’t my biological daughter. I met her and Henry when Ava was five years old. She was the brightest light and had been the greatest gift to my life I’d ever received. Though, when Henry and I first went through a rough patch, he told me we could divorce but I’d never see Ava again.

That threat alone was enough to make me stay. A life without Ava was no life at all, to my mind. Even if that meant staying in a loveless marriage. I never complained around Ava about living in Henry’s shadow because I knew how much she loved her father.

To be fair, I often wished I felt the same way about Henry that Ava did. Maybe I would’ve liked him and his dinner parties a lot more.

source: people.com