thingsbrookneversaid
Adira Rhodes is the girl who can carry it all... until she can't. Joel Smallbone is the person who wants to help her... if she'll let him. When Joel meets Adira, she's a junior in high school, tasked with raising her baby brother and living up to her parents' impossible standards. Seeing the deep brokenness and exhaustion behind the strength in her eyes, he extends an offer of help and support that neither of them are sure she'll ever accept. But as the walls she's built around herself begin to crack and the ways she's coped begin to come to life, she turns to Joel and Moriah out of sheer desperation.
Thrown into the deep end of trying to help a girl who doesn't really want their help - and whose parents definitely don't want it- Joel finds himself in a struggle to show Adira that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is hope and healing in letting people love her just because.
And just when he thinks things are looking brighter for her and she's accepted her place in the Smallbone family, she falls violently out of contact, and he's left waiting on a phone call just to know she's okay and she's coming home. Months later, he sees her selling herself on a corner on the worst side of Nashville. As months of shame and lies all come crashing down, Joel struggles to help Adira believe that the worst night of her life doesn't have to define every night after it... that this is exactly how freedom can be found.