Cecilia's mom has tried to protect her from everything from mean kids at school to harmful sun rays her whole life. But one thing Cecilia's mom has been especially adamant about protecting her from is the exciting city that has always been only a 30 minute drive from their home in Tacoma -- Seattle. Her mom sees the city as a portal full of things that could harm her daughter, so Cecilia is shocked when she actually allows her to get a job in the city, even if her mom does set up a few rules. But as Cecilia spends more time in Seattle, she wonders why her mom has always been so scared of, and she always finds herself falling even more in love with the city she's spent her whole life longing after. Eventually, she begins to fall for more than just the city itself, but also a blonde, guitar-playing guy who calls Seattle home.

Dawn has never been great at many things; she was the last kid on her block to be able to ride a bike without training wheels, she was never invited to join in games of volleyball at school because no one wanted her on their team, she failed more math quizzes than she passed, and she never really learned how to swim past the doggy paddle. The one thing Dawn has ever really been good at, the one thing she can truly excel in doing, is running away. Dawn knows when to drop everything and escape to a new world, whether it's mentally (through music) or physically (using her high school graduation money to get a plane from Tampa to Boston). She has mastered the art of repressing the aspects of her life that she doesn't enjoy by leaving them behind, but what happens when someone slips into Dawn's life from behind a velvet curtain and makes her no longer feel the incessant urge to run? TRIGGER WARNING: mention of domestic violence (I just wanna be clear that this story is totally fiction!! None of these events actually happened, all of this just comes from my mind lol)