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. Two years ago Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton Alabama couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away. As West’s pain becomes too much to handle he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father—so in the dark shadows of a post-game party he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else. West expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply to reveal a pain even deeper than his own—or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go…
