Sheltered - J. Dill - Bog

"My mind is my enemy and my best friend. My protector and a liar, desperately seeking truth. I live here, aware but sheltered, protected from the gifts of vulnerability..."
Alex's songs always began with the pencil he kept behind his ear, the place Sarah created when he first met her in high school, and high school was where they started a conversation they never wanted to finish.
But life isn't high school, and adolescence ended for Sarah and Alex when they graduated in 2006 and continued onto colleges near their Midwestern hometown. The pair remained best friends as they approached the lives that had been handed to them but never asked for.
Alex had always been a dreamer who wished to become a musician. And he loves Sarah, but he's never known how to balance his dreams with responsibilities, and one of his dreams is to believe that she might love him back. His hopes are complicated further when the grandmother who raised him developed dementia, and he found himself running her business full-time while struggling to care for her.
Sarah had been burned one too many times. Finding a date was always easy--she was beautiful, smart, adventurous, and proud. Finding the right connection was a different story. And she couldn't help but long for connection. She loved sharing her knowledge with others and learning about the stories they had to tell. Sarah didn't start dating with low expectations...They slowly developed over time.
Although Sarah and Alex have remained friends through the hardships of growing up, they find themselves burdened with responsibilities and recovering from pain they never imagined they might endure.
Will Alex and Sarah learn how to navigate the habits they've learned to survive and set them aside for something more? Or does the aftermath of life's cruel events take root so deeply that love could never grow beside it?