Things We Never Got Over Spicy Chapters: Every Scene, Heat Level & Warnings (2026)
Things We Never Got Over spicy chapters are packed into the middle third of the book: nothing explicit for the first 40 percent, then a run of on-page scenes once Knox Morgan stops pretending he doesn’t want Naomi Witt. Lucy Score’s small-town grumpy-sunshine hit rates 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit on our five-chili scale, with open-door, detailed scenes (about five of them) and a lot of dirty talk from a man who otherwise speaks in grunts. It’s for readers who want the found-family small town first and the heat second, and who don’t mind a romance that shares the page with a custody fight and a crime plot. The timing is good: Prime Video’s Things We Never Got Over series cast Molly Griggs as Naomi (and her twin, Tina) and Matthew Noszka as Knox in September 2026, and the show is in production. Below: where every scene falls, content warnings, how it compares to the rest of Knockemout and other small-town hits, and a hotter bonus scene from our own shelf.
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Is Things We Never Got Over Spicy?
Yes. The door is open and the scenes are explicit, but they don’t start until well past the 40 percent mark, and the book is long (572 pages in paperback), so it reads as a slow burn with a hot middle. Ratings vary: some reviewers call it mid-heat with two or three real scenes, others call it very graphic. Our count puts it at about five explicit scenes plus several heated near-misses, which is four chilies, not five.
The setup does the slow-burn work. Naomi runs out on her own wedding and drives to Knockemout, Virginia, to help her estranged twin, Tina, who promptly steals her car and money and leaves her holding a niece, Waylay, she has never met. Knox is the tattooed local barber who decides on sight that the runaway bride is going to be trouble, and then spends a few hundred pages making sure she and Waylay have everything they need while insisting he doesn’t care. By the time he finally kisses her, every nosy neighbor in Knockemout has seen it coming.
Things We Never Got Over Spicy Chapters List
The chapters are numbered and titled, but we could only pin one exact chapter number to two sources. For the rest we give the location (percent through the book, and roughly where that falls in the 572-page paperback) where two readers’ Kindle highlights and Goodreads progress updates agree. Descriptions are non-graphic and spoiler-light.
- Around 42 percent (about page 240): the first kiss. After a frightening night ends at the hospital, Knox kisses Naomi, first gently and then not gently at all. This is where the slow burn breaks.
- Around 44 to 45 percent (pages 250 to 260): the first full scene, in Naomi’s bed, the same night. Explicit, long and full of Knox’s very unexpected vocabulary. The morning after, her parents arrive while he’s still upstairs, which is the funniest page in the book.
- Around 49 percent: a heated moment at a family gathering that gets interrupted. Suggestive rather than a full scene.
- Chapter 28, “Third Base” (around 53 to 54 percent): Knox’s truck, parked in a field. Explicit, includes a frank conversation about protection, and our pick for the hottest scene in the book.
- Around 55 percent: the first night at Knox’s place, and the point where their “just sex” arrangement stops fooling anyone.
- Around 68 to 72 percent (pages 390 to 410): after a confrontation at the bar, a heated moment in the back office, then one more scene before things fall apart. Explicit in places, and the last of the heat before the third-act crisis.
Content Warnings
Things We Never Got Over is cozier than it is dark, but the back half has real violence. In brief: child neglect by an absent parent, theft and family estrangement, a custody battle, a police officer shot, organized crime, a kidnapping and hostage situation with a gun, grief, and explicit sex with dirty talk. There’s also a mid-book moment where Knox says something cruel about Naomi that a lot of readers struggle to forgive.
How Spicy Is Things We Never Got Over Compared To…
- Things We Hide From the Light (Knockemout #2): 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit. Nash Morgan and Lina Solavita, about the same heat, with more of the crime plot.
- Things We Left Behind (Knockemout #3): 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno. Lucian Rollins and Sloane Walton, enemies to lovers, and easily the most graphic book in the trilogy.
- The Pumpkin Spice Café (Laurie Gilmore): 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door. Same grumpy small-town hero, much gentler heat.
- Mile High (Liz Tomforde): 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit. A different genre and a similar heat level, though the first scene comes sooner. Our Mile High spicy chapters guide has the full breakdown.
- Butcher & Blackbird (Brynne Weaver): 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit. Same heat, a much darker book, and a near-identical “nothing until 60 percent” structure.
Read the Series in Order
Knockemout is three connected standalones, each with its own couple, best read in order because each book picks up threads from the last. Start with Things We Never Got Over (January 2022, Knox and Naomi), then Things We Hide From the Light (February 2023, Nash and Lina), then Things We Left Behind (September 2023, Lucian and Sloane). Our Lucy Score books in order guide covers her other series, including the Riley Thorn Christmas mystery out November 10, 2026, and our list of books like Things We Never Got Over covers the small-town grumps to read next.
The Prime Video series comes from co-showrunners Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder, who wrote the pilot, with Lucy Score as a co-executive producer and Tommy Martinez cast as Nash. No premiere date has been announced.
If You Wanted It Hotter: A Fractal Enigma Bonus Scene
The thing that makes Knox irresistible isn’t the beard. It’s watching a grump who swears he wants to be left alone quietly rearrange his life around a woman and a kid who were never supposed to be his. Our pick is that book, snowed in on a mountain, with an exclusive bonus chapter the retailers would never print.
Wrong Cabin, Right Daddy — Isla Wilde
She booked the wrong cabin. He was the right everything. Emma Carter is a single mom running on fumes, frozen meals and grim determination, and she booked one remote mountain cabin for one desperate week of rest. She didn’t expect a six-foot-four bearded stranger already living in it. Hank “Bear” Morrison is a divorced woodworker who moved up the mountain to be alone, and then a blizzard closes the road and a four-year-old decides he’s her daddy before either adult is ready. Knox and Waylay energy, in one cabin.
The bonus scene: “First Morning” is set after the epilogue, on the day Lily starts school and the cabin is quiet for the first time in four months. Two adults, one empty house and a whole morning to themselves. Labeled too hot for Amazon. Read the novel first.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Grumpy/Sunshine, Single Mom, Mountain Man, Snowed In, Forced Proximity, Found Family, He Falls First
Read the Wrong Cabin, Right Daddy bonus chapter →
Start reading Wrong Cabin, Right Daddy →
Booked and Hooked — Isla Wilde
The grumpy bookseller didn’t believe in happy endings until the girl upstairs started reading him like a dirty novel. Noah Calder runs his bookstore the way he runs his life: quiet, controlled and alone. Then Lena Vale moves into the apartment upstairs, rearranges his displays without asking and films content in his shop like she owns it. A small-business grump, a sunshine heroine who refuses to be scared off, and a slow burn that pays off at full heat. It has its own bonus chapter, “Closing Time,” for the anniversary.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Grumpy/Sunshine, Forced Proximity, He Falls First, Praise Kink, Slow Burn, Touch Her and Die
Start reading Booked and Hooked →
Bad Neighbor, Great Lay — Isla Wilde
Marcus Lane doesn’t have room for chaos. He’s a single dad with a seven-year-old, a labeled spice rack and a bedtime routine he could run blindfolded. Then a carefree new neighbor moves in next door, and thin walls, loud music and parking wars turn into a power outage that traps them in the building’s elevator. Another grump with a routine and a kid to protect, and the neighbor who finally gets him to let loose. Free with Kindle Unlimited.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Neighbors to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Single Dad, Grumpy/Sunshine, Forced Proximity, Praise Kink, Thin Walls
Start reading Bad Neighbor, Great Lay →
For more grumps, our grumpy sunshine romance guide sorts the trope by heat, and where to start with Isla Wilde maps her small-town and single-parent books.
FAQ: Things We Never Got Over Spicy Chapters
What chapter is the spicy scene in Things We Never Got Over?
The first full scene comes about 44 percent of the way in, around page 250 of the paperback, right after the hospital kiss. The truck scene, our pick for the hottest, is chapter 28, “Third Base.”
How many spicy scenes are in Things We Never Got Over?
About five explicit scenes, plus a few heated moments that get interrupted. Almost all of them fall between the 42 and 72 percent marks.
Is Things We Never Got Over dark?
Not really. It’s a warm small-town romance with a crime subplot that escalates in the last third, including a kidnapping and gun violence. The romance itself is grumpy-sunshine, not dark. Our romance spice levels guide explains how we rate heat separately from darkness.
Is the sequel spicier?
Things We Hide From the Light is about the same. Things We Left Behind, the third book, is the spiciest of the trilogy by a clear margin.
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