Reed and Hazel stole my heart in this second chance at love romance. They became close during their last summer in their hometown so when things heat up, they both walk away thinking it will be a great memory to look back on, but fate has other plans. Years go by with Reed always avoiding going home, he always felt he was constantly compared to the men in his family and could never measure up. When Reed walked away from Hazel that summer, he was determined to create his own path and leave his own mark on this world, but things don’t always go as planned. Hazel comes back to town with the intentions of sorting her grandfathers in order then plans to leave as soon as possible, she has a big secret and wants to avoid as many people as possible. When fate intervenes and brings these two back in each other’s lives can they explore what is next or are they doomed to leave yet again without looking back? They have amazing chemistry and have always loved each other in a way but time apart and the things that have happened can’t be undone so they must decide where they go from here. I know this is vague, but this story was so beautiful and heartfelt it should be enjoyed with me spoiling anything for anyone, just sit back enjoy another hit in this series and let the emotions take you. ( )

There were many aspects of this story that I enjoyed in a fluff-romance kind of way, but I have to say I thought she'd make him work harder to win her back, and that made it much less believable/enjoyable even for fluff. It was so strange and off-kilter; all he had to do was mention a near-death experience, and then he basically got out of apologizing? Even his sister Harlow gave him a harder time than Hazel did for abandoning her with a baby and effectively blocking her on all forms of communication. I get why the author thought Hazel might be swept up in the emotion of a conversation like that, especially since she always had feelings for him, but I was incredibly surprised she didn't even temporarily put on the brakes to work out a co-parenting relationship for "Sofia always has to come first" reasoning, or give even lip service to the idea that she might have a hard time trusting him with Sofia or her own heart again after how he treated her. Like, hey, "it's nice you're saying everything I always dreamed of you saying, but it's going to take more than a couple days for me to trust that you're really in this for me, not just that you see wooing me as the easy way to make a stable environment for our kid, when to me it sure seemed like I never mattered to you, you just used me as an emotional bandaid during a challenging period of your life, and that you threw me out like trash immediately afterwards." or, "hey, you're doing everything incredibly well with Sofia, but I have a personal history with how your wooing can be followed by total nothing, so can we talk about how serious you are about beginning a relationship with our daughter and the logistics of how you're going to make that happen before this becomes the parenting equivalent of a one-month fling? I mean, you're still in the military, right? What does this look like to you?" [cue conversation about important things] ( )