Palm Springs, 1973. Don Harris is a piano player on the run after killing a Chicago mobster's son in a bar fight. On the lam, he meets a pretty blonde girl in town for a convention. He lets down his guard and spends the night with her only to discover she’s the younger sister of his best friend all grown-up. Foolishly, she tips her brother off to Don’s location, and he’s on the run again, hoping to find a safe place to land.

Out of money and desperate, Don accidentally walks into a gay bar where he allows a kid named Harlan to pick him up so he'll have a place to stay. As the mob chases them, Don begins to fall for the kid, putting them both in harm's way. Harlan has problems of his own, and Don knows he shouldn't get involved but he can't help but step in when Harlan gets in trouble. To save himself, Don's got to save Harlan.

After his mother’s death, a Chicago advertising executive in his early thirties returns to his tiny upstate New York hometown to spend the Christmas holiday with his recently widowed father. While struggling to get along with his prickly father, he finds himself becoming involved with the teenage crush he’s never forgotten, now a closeted sheriff's deputy.

The relationship still has the same old fire, but it complicated by the old crush being married. Suddenly, everything takes a backseat solving the mystery at the center of the deputy’s marriage. Will a Christmas visit bring happiness to anyone, or will it end in misery?