To everyone who knows him, West Ashby has always been that guy: the cocky, popular, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good football god who led Lawton High to the state championships. But while West may be big man on campus on the outside, on the inside he's battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer.

Bryn Wallace had been the one bright spot in my life before my grandparents brought me to live with them. After finding my mother's dead body, my grandparents had picked me up and I started a new life in The Shores, Alabama. It had always bothered me that I never got a chance to tell Bryn goodbye. Now, seven years later, my memories of the beautiful girl who I considered my first love were destroyed by the disappointment she had become.

A small town where pickup trucks rule, the farmer's market is bigger than the grocery store, and just about everyone goes to church on Sunday is the last place Henley Warren expects to find herself three months after her grandmother's death. But Gran left a list of things she needed Henley to do after she died, and fulfilling those wishes means spending a summer in the same place her mom fled from when she was only seventeen years old. With each task that is ticked off the list, events are set in motion that uncover secrets surrounding Henley's life.

Hughes Farm was the largest racing-horse establishment in the South. The family that owned it was known to be wealthy, powerful, arrogant, and terrifying. My first encounter with them didn’t prepare me for all that was to come. I don’t think anything truly could have. Growing up with only my father and brother hadn’t been easy, but we’d had each other. Losing them was the hardest thing I’d ever faced. It had made the times we went without food, electricity, or even shelter seem insignificant in comparison.

Rock legend Dean Finlay's ready for an easier life. He's tired of the fame and done with younger women. The older he gets the younger they get. Brielle McGinnis got kicked out of her foster home the day she turned eighteen. The pregnancy she'd been trying to hide had taken what little youth she had managed to hold onto away. Life made her tough. Now, at twenty-eight years old, she has a good job with insurance working in admissions at a local junior college. When Dean comes walking into the college office, she wants an autograph for her son, but his arrogance changes her mind.