2. Jensen
JENSEN
Sloane Winslow looks like she’s seen a ghost, which is fairly close to the truth. Two nights with her somehow altered my DNA to the point that I’ve been walking through life for the past year feeling transparent. Only to become solid again in a Colorado town I hadn’t heard of until a week ago.
“You ran away,” I tell her. It comes out harsher than I mean, though maybe not as unjustifiably butthurt as I feel.
The six other women around the antique table stare at me with varying degrees of curiosity and confusion, a healthy dose of caution thrown in for good measure.
I don’t know or care about any of them.
I care about the woman whose blue eyes have gone wide while she grips the edge of the table like she needs the anchor.
The last time I saw those eyes this close, she was tangled in hotel sheets and laughing at a joke I can’t remember because all that mattered was making her smile.
Her dark hair is shorter than it was in Nashville, barely grazing her shoulders now, and she looks thinner, which makes sense based on what the couple who hosted the cancer caregiver camp last weekend told me.
God, she’s so beautiful—haunt your dreams beautiful. She’s definitely been a frequent visitor in mine.
“How did you find me?” Her steady voice is a damn miracle, because I can practically hear her heart hammering across the room. Or maybe that’s mine.
“Finding you was easy after last weekend.”
She shakes her head. “I left before—”
“Did you think I wouldn’t see you?” I lift a brow. “In an ocean of people, I’d find you, Sloane.”
Her flinch is barely perceptible, but I notice. I can’t stop noticing—and remembering—everything about this woman. Even if all she gave me was a couple of nights and a fake name.
The other women’s gazes—her friends, I assume—snap back and forth between us. Has she told them anything about me, or was I relegated to the what happens in Nashville stays in Nashville time capsule?
The redhead with gentle green eyes clears her throat. “Are we having a Jerry Maguire you-complete-me moment right now?”
A blonde with a braid falling over one shoulder, who looks like she’d just as soon shank me as say hello, shakes her head. “If so, we missed the good part.”
“We’re not having a moment.” Sloane flicks a finger between herself and me. “And y’all—” She loops that same finger around the table. “—didn’t miss anything.” Her gaze lands back on me with icy composure. “We’re in the middle of a meeting, Jensen.”
“I’ll wait,” I answer, trying not to reveal what hearing her speak my name does to me. More memories—her calling it out in pleasure—assault my senses, and I grab hold of the doorframe with the same intensity she was holding onto the table moments earlier. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
That’s partially true. After three days of internet digging into the woman glaring at me, I cleared my schedule for the foreseeable future. And the store out front filled in so many of the details I didn’t have about her life without her needing to say a word.
Cover to Cover, the name lettered in gold across the front window, shelves running floor to ceiling and the scent of lavender layered on top of the scent of books.
It’s a place that invites you in and encourages you to stay a while with mismatched chairs, worn soft from use, tucked into various corners.
I knew from the second I walked in that it all belonged to her, and my urge to stay should be frightening.
I pictured this kind of life for her on the nights I let myself picture anything at all.
My phone has four missed calls from the record label and probably double that amount in unread texts. But I could give two shits about the people trying to find me. I’m exactly where I need to be.
The silence holds for a beat while Sloane’s chest rises and falls, her shuddery breaths in stark contrast to her steady tone. I can see her attempting to work out how to make me disappear with the least amount of fuss.
I’m all about fucking fuss at the moment.
The blonde who was with Sloane in the mountains—Avah Harris, according to the chatty cancer camp couple—pushes back her chair.
“Dude, if she says go away, you need to get going.” Her gaze is razor-sharp, which I admire even if I wish she weren’t looking to cut me. “Go strum your guitar somewhere else.”
“What guitar?” another of the women, this one with dark hair and just as much attitude, asks. “What’s going on, you guys?”
“I’ll wait,” I say again, my voice even. The protective vibe of these women tells me Sloane has people who love her, and I’m not interested in picking a fight with any of them.
She puts a hand on the dark-haired woman’s arm. “It’s okay, Iris. Seriously not a big deal.” She shrugs, her pasted-on smile a feat of forced indifference. “Jensen is just somebody I used to know.”
The fuck I am. Although it’s a fair point. I never shared my last name, and she gave me a fake first name. But those two nights were more than what I expected. So much more. Our connection slipped under my skin and made everything after pale in comparison.
I can’t explain how being with Sloane changed me, or why I was at The Alcove every night for weeks after she disappeared, hoping and praying she’d return. She owed me nothing, but those two nights with her left me standing in the same life, yet somehow not the same person.
Two nights that felt like she’d seen more of the actual me than people I’d known for years ever bothered to.
I hold her gaze as she stands. The chair scrapes against the wood floor, and she smooths her hands down the front of her jeans. None of the other women speak, but I can feel the energy rippling off them, shouting at me to leave their friend alone.
Can’t do it. Or won’t. Same difference.
“This will only take a minute,” she tells the room without looking at anyone but me. “We can talk in my office.”
Another blonde, this one with an air of subtle authority, straightens in her seat. “Do you want one of us to go with you?”
“I’m fine, Sads. Thank you.”
The walk down the bright hallway to her office is less than ten feet. She doesn’t look back, but I can feel her awareness like an invisible string. She knows to the inch how far behind her I am.
She opens a door and gestures me forward. The desk is topped with stacks of invoices and a mug full of pens, and there’s a corkboard on the wall above it, filled with postcards and photos I don’t let myself look at. Not yet.
I haven’t been this close to her in over a year, and my body remembers everything my brain and heart have been trying to forget.
She crosses her arms as I turn to face her. She’s left the door open, and is staying between it and me, like she might need a quick escape.
“You can’t just show up—”
“You ghosted me,” I say. “We had plans to meet again.”
“Hardly,” she mutters.
“And when you saw me last weekend, you took off like your ass was on fire. Did you think I wouldn’t see you? Wouldn’t track you down?”
“What don’t you get about the concept of a one-night stand?”
“Two nights.”
“Semantics.”
“We weren’t finished.”
She lifts her chin, just like she did in a Nashville dive bar the night we met, when she told me she didn’t dance.
Thirty minutes later, I had her two-stepping around the dance floor.
What she lacked in coordination, she made up for in enthusiasm and it was the best toe crushing I’d ever experienced.
“We were finished,” she says. “Which is why I didn’t come back.”
This tiny office isn’t big enough to hold what I’m feeling. She continues to stare at me, arms still crossed, projecting a calm I don’t believe she feels. The color flooding her cheeks gives her away.
“I know you felt the same thing I did, Sloane.” My lips twist into a scowl. “The name fits you, you know?”
“It’s my name, so yeah, I know.” She glares harder if that’s possible. “Why can’t you take a hint?”
I exhale slowly, praying to a God I’m not sure I believe in for a lifeline I know I don’t deserve. “Why are you lying?”
Her eyes flash. “A couple nights of great sex doesn’t make us star-crossed lovers.”
“It was more than great sex,” I say.
“Amazing sex,” she concedes, and the corner of her mouth twitches before she fixes it back into a grimace.
“I wasn’t talking about the sex.” I don’t blink. “But amazing is an understatement.”
The twitch returns, and she presses her lips together to smother it. I feel a strange sort of satisfaction in the way she’s fighting this. Fighting and losing, I hope.
She tilts her head, and her gaze sharpens. “Maybe I decided grandpa kink isn’t my thing.”
That pulls a laugh from me. “I’m not old enough to be your father, let alone your grandfather.”
“Twelve years is close enough.”
“I think the fact that you remember the details means something.”
Her mouth opens and closes, but she doesn’t deny it. They say the devil’s in the details, but this feels like God answering my prayer, whether I deserve it or not.
We both turn at the knock on the doorframe. It’s the woman who offered to come with Sloane. “You need anything?” she asks softly, but I can see all the questions she’s not voicing because the air between Sloane and me is practically crackling.
“We’re finished.” She’s looking at her friend but speaking to me.
“For now,” I agree, because I’m pretty sure the women waiting for her in the room down the hall would happily dispatch me and bury the body if I push too hard.
She uncrosses her arms and gestures toward the hallway with a hand that’s not quite steady. “If you need help selecting your next unputdownable read, Suzanne at the register is more than capable. Otherwise, have a nice life, Jensen.”
There’s no way this is over. Not when I can smell her lavender scent with every breath, and I’m finally close enough to see the flecks of gold at the edges of her blue eyes.
I spent a year trying and failing to forget Sloane Winslow.
Now she’s so close I could reach out and pull her to me, and there’s no chance of me having a nice life, or anything close to it, until I figure out why she refuses to be a part of it.
But I nod and walk past her. I don’t know this town or her friends. Or who she is outside of those two perfect nights we spent together. But I’m damn sure going to find out.