What if love isn’t about finding the right person, but learning how to stay present once you do? How to Stay is a mature, deeply reflective love story about two emotionally intelligent adults who refuse to lose themselves in the name of connection. Ethan has spent his life mastering momentum; career, success, visibility, until presence begins to ask more of him than performance ever did. Amara has learned how to protect her independence so well that intimacy has often required her to shrink. When their lives intersect, what unfolds is not a dramatic romance driven by urgency or illusion, but something far more demanding and far more meaningful: a relationship shaped by attention, restraint, truth, and choice. Set against the quiet rhythms of modern life, How to Stay explores love not as passion alone, but as practice. It asks what happens when two people choose alignment over intensity, presence over escape, and honesty over fear. This is not a story about falling in love. It is a story about stopping the habit of leaving. Written with elegance, emotional depth, and literary restraint, How to Stay is for readers who value introspection over drama, substance over spectacle, and connection that lasts because it is lived; one conscious choice at a time.