The most perfect love is born when two imperfect people refuse to give up on each other. Caroline Edwards is an eighteen year-old waitress. Her mother is dead and her father is in prison for the death of his wife. While Caroline is hundreds of miles away at school her younger sister Lilly is being cared for by relatives back in her hometown of Taylorsville, Kentucky. Caroline counted the days, hours and minutes until the time came that she was able to get away from the pressures and opinions of the people she grew up with and anyone else that knew what went on between her parents that night, nearly ten years ago. Now safely tucked away at a small college in the lake town of Cumberland, Caroline goes to work and goes to class but remains as secluded as possible everyone else, outside of her cousin Gabe. Everything is going just the way Caroline wants it, until her drunk of a psychology professor throws a wrench in her neatly laid out plans. One lone project is keeping Caroline from fulfilling her course requirement and escaping the clutches of Dr. Hayes, who for some reason seems hell-bent on making her life more difficult. When Caroline receives the name of her partner, her heart sinks. There is only one person from back home that attends the University of the Cumberlands. Only one person that knows all the secrets she couldn't keep hidden in the small town back home. And of course, that one person would be assigned to her. Andrew Nalley grew up in Taylorville and went to high school with Caroline. They were never friends. Actually, they were the exact opposite as Caroline can't remember the two of them ever speaking. But Andrew knows about her. He knows about her father. He knows what happened to her mother. Everyone in Taylorsville does. There's no keeping a secret in a town that small.To Caroline's great relief, Andrew does not do as she expected; he makes no attempt to throw her jaded past in her face the way others have often done. He is kind. He is sweet. He is gentle. And against all odds, she finds herself feeling things for him that she has never felt before.
