Devastated by the death of her grandfather, six-year-old Kelly Rodgers barely manages to cope with the profound loss. Already facing issues at school, she finds herself spiraling deeper into despair, when a fateful interaction through the fence in her backyard gives her hope. In the years following, Kelly realizes that life’s tragedies can be dealt with through acceptance; until another series of agonizing events leaves her heart in pieces. Finding herself thrown into new surroundings, Kelly embraces her life and resolves to never fall in love. That decision is easy to keep until her junior year when she is drawn by an unavoidable attraction to the new guy, tormented James Delaney.  The moment he looks up at her and smiles, her body betrays her. And he notices. She is determined to avoid him, but soon Kelly is forced to face the inevitable truth: She doesn’t want to avoid James... and he won’t let her. Even though tragedy always follows love.

After an attempted suicide Carter finds himself in a coma. He is able to hear the world around him, yet he can't move. What he hears propels Carter to begin to see life in a new way, especially when one of his nurses, Kinley, shares parts of her tragic past with him. Soon, Carter realizes he is falling in love with her.   Months after being transferred from the hospital, to a rehabilitation facility, he suddenly wakes up with a passion to live that he never had before and a determination to find the one person he feels may be able to help him put the pieces of his life together again. However, when he returns to the hospital, Kinley is gone and Carter must try to find her based solely on the things she shared with him while he was in a coma.   Only, nothing is as it seems and Carter learns the biggest lesson of them all... the differences between expectation, perception, and reality.