We Touch Through Strangers: Things We Did At A Distance

by Omari Vale

Two people. Two screens. A thousand miles of silence between them.

Marion and Eli swore it was simple—no dating apps, no cheating, no complications. Just messages. Just fantasy. Just play. What began as harmless sparks in the quiet hours quickly ignited into something deeper, darker, and more dangerous than either imagined.

Every clip they sent, every word they wrote, every boundary they blurred pulled them closer together while tearing apart the lives they thought they controlled. What was once a rush of secret desire becomes an unrelenting addiction. Marion begins to crave not just Eli, but the strangers who resemble him. Eli tells himself he’s faithful, even as Rae—a coworker who sees straight through him—pulls him into her orbit. Both fight to keep hold of the love that sparked in airports and messages, but the hunger inside them keeps rewriting the rules.

We Touched Through Strangers is not a fairy-tale romance. It’s a confession. A caution. A story about what happens when distance doesn’t protect you but instead feeds the fire. This book doesn’t flinch from the raw when desire becomes performance, when fantasy becomes survival, when silence becomes the loudest voice in the room, love can be the first casualty.

Omari Vale’s prose is searing, intimate, and relentless—turning metaphors into fire, tension into foreplay, and distance into a battlefield. Readers who dare to enter will find themselves caught in the same spiral as Marion and asking not just what would you risk for love, but what would you lose for lust.

This is digital intimacy at its most human. A novel about temptation, the fractures it leaves, and the haunting question that lingers long after the final

When you’ve already touched through strangers…can you ever touch each other the same way again?

471 pages, Paperback

Published January 20, 2026

About the author

Omari Vale writes where confession and poetry collide. His debut, Letters in Silence: The Lost Letters of James King, opens the door to a private archive of letters, poems, and fragments that read less like literature and more like scripture for the wounded heart.

Vale’s work is unfiltered, intimate, and deeply human—capturing radiance, fracture, wound, and echo in a voice that refuses to tidy up love or grief. Instead, he leans into the silences we inherit, the secrets we carry, and the truths that ache to be spoken aloud.

As part of Crown Cipher Publishing, Omari Vale adds a confessional current to the house’s catalog of raw, unflinching stories. His writing is not about perfect endings but about resonance—offering readers the recognition that even broken words can still carry light.