Beyah Grim has only ever known a life of poverty and neglect. After surviving by any means necessary, she finally has a hard-earned ticket out of Kentucky with a full ride to Penn State. Two short months before she's finally free, an unexpected death leaves her homeless and forced to spend the remainder of her summer on a peninsula in Texas with a father she barely knows.

Begging the summer to go by quickly and hoping to remain as invisible as possible, Beyah wants nothing to do with Samson, the wealthy, brooding guy who lives next door to her father and who couldn't possibly understand where Beyah's coming from or what she's been through. But with an almost immediate connection too intense for them to deny, and futures leading them to opposite ends of the country, Beyah and Samson decide to stay in the shallow end of a summer fling, neither of them realizing that a rip current is about to drag both their hearts out to sea.