Every Lie We Told
Battle Lines
M.J. Ortmeier
The big guns have gone silent, but the war isn’t over. After the explosion of The Downward Spiral, Mark and Jen retreat behind their strongest defense yet—distance. They’ve fought too long and too hard to keep pretending silence can save them.
Battle Lines isn’t about open conflict. It’s the reckoning that follows, the uneasy quiet after the shouting stops. The walls they built to protect themselves have become borders. What once felt like strategy now feels like exile.
Steinbeck’s line captures it perfectly: this is what comes after reason fails and two people, exhausted by their own defenses, begin to wonder if life might be easier apart. The war has moved inward, into the private spaces where love used to live.
Available 12/1/25
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