The Care of Broken Things by October Arden

Samuel has spent years building walls.
Not the prison’s concrete ones, but the kind that keep lives from bleeding into each other. As the prison’s self-appointed librarian, he’s carved out a fragile peace where silence is his shield. The inmates call him The Ice Queen—a title he wears like armor. After a lifetime of being preyed upon, he knows better than to let anyone close.
Then Eli arrives like sunlight through bulletproof glass.
A wrongfully convicted pediatrician, and unbearably kind, Eli is everything Samuel knows to avoid, so when he steps in to protect the man, it’s supposed to be a one-time act of mercy.
But Eli’s husband has another plan.
Nathaniel—who looks at Samuel like he’s something more than a convict—makes a request that shatters everything:
“Be his prison husband. Love him where I can’t.”
It’s a lie that should be easy. Samuel’s an expert at deception. But the longer he plays the role, the more the lines blur: Eli’s warmth seeping into his frozen bones, Nathaniel’s quiet strength, the whispered secrets of Eli’s daughter who trusts only him.
Now the man who built his life on solitude hoards these moments like contraband.
Some loves rewrite your sentence.