We open in the spring of 2016, at a university campus. A student-our hero-bumps into a girl in front of a building, and she drops her books at his feet. He returns most of them, but before he can hand her the last one, she's off without a word.
Her face is kept purposely hidden from us-and from him-and there's something rather urgent in the way he runs after her, trying to catch up. But he loses her around the bend.
He looks down at the book, titled A Hand to You (on the cover, a note has been handwritten in pen, "To Dummy"). He heaves a heavy sigh of disappointment.
A sudden downpour sends him running for cover, which is where a girl steps up next to him, her face hidden under an umbrella. He recognizes the gold key necklace she's wearing and his fingers instinctively touch the silver necklace around his neck, in the shape of a lock.
"You..." he starts to say in surprise. But the girl with the hidden face walks off again.
He thinks, "In the time in my life when you were my every moment, we loved. And in this moment now, I hope that it's you."
Then we jump backward two years, to the spring of 2014.
As Claire aims to leave her oppressive stepfamily behind, she befriends Zion. Will he be her ticket to freedom or a distraction in achieving her dreams?
*****
Claire Olsen has had a crush on Zion Petrakis since the first time she laid eyes on him, but he never noticed, instead only having eyes on the school's it girl, Maddie Jennings. Knowing she couldn't compete with Maddie, Claire hid her feelings for Zion, satisfied with admiring him from afar. However, when a series of events led Claire closer to Zion, her feelings for him grew from infatuation to love. And despite fighting hard to keep her feelings contained by distancing herself from Zion, he was determined to show her that he's earned a spot in her life.
[[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]