Sometimes the love you need most looks different than you imagined. Clare Martin thought nothing of agreeing to live with her dementia-ridden grandmother when her parents left on mission. Balancing that with her job as a social worker and the expectations of her career-driven boyfriend proved doable-until Grandma started a house fire. Mason Hughes has loved Clare for years, but the time was never right to tell her and now she's dating someone else, fixing Mason firmly in the friend zone. He's working to be a pediatric neurologist, a dream inspired by a special boy with a terminal brain condition, and must choose a medical school. Finances are so tight he's forced to consider a program across the country, a troubling fact he's kept secret. Lucia Roberts, a seventeen-year-old on Clare's caseload, loses her foster home and is placed in an unwelcoming group home. At every turn she's met with rejection and becomes desperate for any proof she has value-enough to make choices that could
