A young widow returns to her late father’s New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life, in this thrilling and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Husbands & Lovers.

“Utterly transporting . . . one of the most gorgeous love stories I’ve read in a long time.”—Emily Giffin

Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: The property is mired in debt she canʼt repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.

Thirteen summers ago, the teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy’s best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy’s life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career, Ben has returned to live quietly in the Peabodys’ caretaker lodge. He’s also the last person who saw Lucy’s father alive.

As Lucy reconstructs her father’s troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal from the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy’s long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.

A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can.

Ben

By the end of the third quarter, he doesn’t hear the crowd anymore. He doesn’t feel his broken fingers, taped together in the first quarter, or the cut on his forearm, which the trainer stitched up at halftime. The sutures have since burst, but the temperature now lurks around nine degrees Fahrenheit, accelerated by a steady wind off Lake Michigan, and that will freeze up your blood pretty good.

He’s aware of none of these things. Only afterward, as he watches the tape on repeat, will he notice such details.

That’s one thing he loves about playing football. When you start the fourth quarter of a conference championship game, and you’re behind by a single field goal, and you jog onto the field after a thirty-two-yard punt return to face down a steaming, bloody offensive line protecting an arrogant twenty-three-year-old quarterback with a howitzer arm, first and ten on your own forty-eight-yard line, end zone at your back, snow driving like pins into your skin, you don’t think about anything else.

You don’t think about the tens of thousands of people on their feet in the stands or the tens of millions of people watching on live television.

You don’t think about your pain or the other guy’s pain or the weather or that missed tackle just before halftime.

You don’t think about your past or your future, or your mom’s high blood pressure, or the girl you’re about to marry, or the girl who got away. You don’t think about anything except your job. What you need to do in this play, this minute, this second, to win the game of football.

•

The quarterback’s name is Garcia and he’s got some growing up to do, but with an arm like that his mental age is what it is. Staring him down over the backs of the linemen, Ben feels like a grizzled veteran, a shrewd old man at thirty-two. Garcia is a kid who wants to make the big play, to be the hero. On first down, he shoots a bullet up the right side to his fastest receiver and overthrows him by at least five yards.

On second down, Ben blasts through a gap between the right tackle and the end and sacks Garcia’s ass before he sees Ben coming. As he rises to his feet, Ben is aware of the deafening roar that surrounds him, but not exactly conscious of it. He doesn’t spare a glance for Garcia, picking himself up from the frozen tundra. What he feels is triumph. Adrenaline. Nailed him. Nailed his cocky ass. He feels the congratulatory slaps of his teammates. The awe that anoints him from the crowd. The instant reversion of his brain to the next play, the moment right now, the job he needs to do.

Until he watches the tapes later, he won’t hear the announcers—the play-by-play guy who says And BIG BEN RESSLER gets in with a MONSTER sack, loss of eight, maybe NINE yards on the play, and the color guy who says OH MAN, that is VINTAGE Ressler right there, he saw that gap
and shot in there so fast, he just LAID OUT Garcia on the grass and strolled away like he was out walking his dog, and that’s why he’s the best free safety playing in the league right now, Kevin.

The last nice thing anyone has to say about him.

•

Third and eighteen.

He needs to shut this shit down now so his offense can take the field and score. Win this game. Last year, they lost the Super Bowl in the final three seconds and he is not the f*** going to let that happen again.

But first you need to get to the Super Bowl. You need to win this game. You’re down three points in the fourth quarter, so what are you going to do to WIN THIS GAME?

You are going to shut this shit down. Now.

Nose tackle—juiced with adrenaline—jumps offside. Five-yard penalty and replay of down.

Third and thirteen. Offense needs a big play, a long pass from that gun-slinger quarterback. Ben looks to his inside linebacker, who looks back over his shoulder at Ben. He and Darius joined the team together as rookies, started ten seasons side by side. Thrill of victory, agony of defeat. Everything in between. They communicate with nods, with flicks of fingers. With a glance like this one.

The defense organizes into nickel coverage, man-to-man across the line of scrimmage except for Ben, who sits up high by himself. Darius will lock on the tight end. Cornerbacks will lock on the wideouts. Protect the middle, that’s Ben’s job. Protect the middle and make the play on the long ball. Shut this shit down.

The huddle breaks. The offense spreads out for third and long, no surprise.

All week Ben has studied film. It drives his fiancée crazy, how he returns late from the practice field and bolts down dinner and watches film until bedtime, then gets up and works out and watches more film before he heads to practice. But it’s the only way he knows. You need to get inside the head of the other team; you need to know how they’re going to move before the ball snaps. You need to know where the quarterback is going to throw the ball before he moves his arm.

So Ben watches the offense spread out into the Arizona Right Max All Go formation and knows exactly what will happen. Three wide receivers, one taking the place of the fullback. Tight end makes four. The lone remaining running back will protect the right side—the strong side. The offensive line will max protect to give the quarterback all possible time to drop back, read, hitch, make a deep throw.

When the ball snaps, all four receivers will sprint up the field. The tight end will release inside and then widen out to the hash marks.

Ben will have to choose where to go. Where he thinks the quarterback will throw the ball.

Follow the eyes, Ben knows.

All week, the coaches have been drilling down on Garcia’s tendency to look the safety to one side and then fire off the pass to the other side. A veteran quarterback will know how to feign one way and draw coverage away from his intended receiver. But Garcia is a kid with a big arm and a big ego and not a lot of cunning. He relies on his arm strength and ball speed, not his ability to misdirect his opponent. If you know what you’re looking for, you can read him like a traffic sign.

Ben positions himself eighteen yards off the line. Frozen ground like concrete under his shoes.

Quick count, single cadence, GO. Ball snaps.

Ben drops into his controlled backpedal and finds the quarterback’s eyes. There it is. Garcia looks left to his weak side receivers on Ben’s right.

Sure, kid. Try to fool me.

Ben plants his next backstep and angles left to the strong side. In the same instant, Garcia snaps back and fires a line drive dart to the tight end racing up the seam, right where Ben is heading.

Ben tracks the ball in flight. It’s coming in hard and high—f***ing gun-slinger. He takes two more strides and launches his body like a missile as the tight end raises his arms and leaps for the ball.

This is the part Ben loves. Prey locked in your sights. You aim your shoulder pad right into the sweet spot, right between the two numbers on the jersey in front of you, and you drive hard, you commit your body to the collision, to the crunch of impact, the kill.

Not the literal kill, of course.

The figurative kill. Taking out the opponent. You don’t actually kill anybody, good God. You just want to shut this shit down.

You want to win the game and go to the Super Bowl and win that game and start all over again in the summer. Over and over until your body is too old and slow and broken down and you retire. Maybe you try coaching, or announcing, or opening a restaurant, or a car dealership. In the meantime, you’ve gotten married during the offseason and had a few kids, also during the offseason if you’ve planned it right, and now that you’re retired you can spend more time with them, show them how to play ball, so they can go out and win games too.

But you don’t kill anybody.

“An utterly transporting novel, When You Loved Me is a perfect showcase of Beatriz Williams’s trademarks: richly drawn characters, buried secrets that echo across generations, and the kind of emotional and moral complexity that lingers long after the final page. This is one of the most gorgeous love stories I’ve read in a long time.”—Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author of Love You More

“A beautifully woven story of passion, survival, and buried treasure in all its forms . . . When You Loved Me will both warm and open your heart. I absolutely loved it.”—Annabel Monaghan, New York Times bestselling author of Dolly All the Time

“Rich details set the stage in each of the timelines, with compelling characters and lots of plot strings that, in Williams’ deft hands, all weave together in a supremely satisfying read.”—Booklist, starred review

“Beatriz Williams delivers a thrilling, heartfelt story of love, forgiveness, and the treasures we carry in our heart.”—SheReads, “Most Anticipated Historical Fiction of Summer 2026”

Beatriz Williams lives with her husband and children in Connecticut. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Along the Infinite Sea, Tiny Little Thing, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, and Overseas. She also writes under the pseudonym Juliana Gray. View titles by Beatriz Williams