What do you do when you lose the person dearest to you? How do you dare to live – let alone love, again? Hope Hadley’s answer to these questions is: you don't. She returns reluctantly to her home town after five years of studying in another part of the country. Jensen, her uncle and only family, is relieved that she’s back but Hope has only one thing on her mind: to get through life one day at a time, with as little emotion as possible. Little does she take into account that life has a way of happening regardless of whether one is an active participant or not. Her strategy to keep all emotional attachments at an arm's length works for a while. That is, until she meets Damon.