Beyond the Score

Mason Hillcrest has always understood people in categories: teammates, classmates, hookups, strangers. Physical closeness has never meant emotional closeness, and affection has never been something he expected from anyone-not from his quiet, emotionally distant father, and not from the carefully controlled life he was raised in. So when his father leaves the country for business and sends Mason to live with his uncle's family for the year, Mason expects little more than a temporary inconvenience.

Until he starts getting to know Autumn Kennedy, his uncle's step daughter.

Warm, openhearted, and effortlessly affectionate, Autumn treats care like it's the most natural thing in the world. To her, it means nothing. To Mason, it feels like an earthquake. As their connection deepens, long-buried truths about Mason's family begin to surface, and he's forced to face the damaging way his unconventional upbringing has caused him to process affection.