20. Sloane
SLOANE
The ATV sways through another switchback, and I tighten my grip on the roll bar more out of habit than necessity, because the grizzled local who’s our ride down the mountain drives the dirt road like it’s paved.
“You doing okay back there?” Darren calls over his shoulder, steering around the next switchback with total confidence while I resist the bone-deep urge to scold him about keeping his eyes on the road.
When he pulled up to the cabin this morning, he quickly reassured us we were in good hands.
That he’s been running the Beartooth roads for close to fifty years. And I absolutely believe him.
“Fine,” I answer. It’s mostly true, if you don’t count the fact that my heart has been skipping and stuttering since we started our descent. A fact that has nothing to do with him navigating this washboard trail from a muscle memory that belies conscious thought.
I didn’t want to leave.
When Darren’s ATV appeared in the clearing, I had to physically stop myself from telling him there’d been a mistake.
That we weren’t ready. Could he come back in a week?
Or possibly never? I wanted to stay in the little-house-in-the-big-woods fever dream for a while longer.
To wake up tomorrow with Jensen’s arms around me.
Bump into each other while he made coffee and I handled everything else.
The man is truly useless in the kitchen, but his skills in the bedroom more than make up for it.
I loved the writing I’ve been doing. Pages and pages of hurried handwriting, filling my golden notebook with thoughts and emotions that come from a deeper place inside than I’ve been willing to mine before this trek.
Maybe they could be a book. Not a bestseller, probably not even a shelf-sitter beyond Cover to Cover, but proof that I have something to say worth sharing with the world. Something that’s mine.
That part snags in my brain as the ATV rattles down the mountain.
All my life, I’ve given the credit away.
The bookstore was successful because of Grandma’s trust fund, not because I pulled it out of the red with fourteen-hour days and a stubborn refusal to let it fail.
My positive attitude during treatment was because of Kristen Quinn’s book, not because I’m a person who cracks jokes while a nurse is threading a PICC line into my arm.
It was always my mom’s voice, her personal brand of dismissal playing on a loop in my head whenever I tried to take credit for anything.
That’s nice, Sloane, but let’s be realistic about who you are and what you can do.
But maybe the credit was mine all along, and I kept handing it to other people because it felt safer than admitting I might be good enough on my own.
It’s entirely possible I’ve been the hero of my own story this whole time, but I was too scared to read the pages.
Jensen is part of that story now, and my heart hurts when I think about this chapter ending. But it has to end. I know it does.
I refuse to be the sick girl who needs someone to take care of her. I won’t become the thing everyone already assumes I am—fragile, dependent, a burden someone carries because I’m not strong enough on my own.
“You sure?” Jensen looks over his shoulder at me from the front seat, and the annoying butterflies that have set up shop in my stomach riot once again at the way his gray eyes go soft when they meet mine. “We can switch.”
“I’m good back here,” I tell him, then add, “Maybe a little tired.”
When the softness in his expression shifts to assessment, I realize my mistake.
When a person with cancer says she’s tired, that word carries about forty pounds of subtext that a healthy person’s version doesn’t.
It could mean anything from I didn’t sleep well to the disease is back and it’s eating me alive and you’re going to have to watch me fade away.
It might sound ridiculous to assume he’s thinking that, except the shadow that crosses his face tells me he’s absolutely thinking it.
My brother gets the same look when I yawn too many times or cancel plans or say any word adjacent to exhausted.
I’ve spent the last year resenting every variation of that look.
From the furrowed brow, the tightened mouth, the way people feel obligated to care when they think you might be dying and are too polite to ask outright.
I’m so goddamn tired of seeing all of it.
Based on Jensen’s history and mine, which we’ve only scratched the surface of, would I ever be able to tell the difference between him worrying because he cares and worry stemming from watching his mother get sick and not survive it?
I think we both know what answering that question would cost us, which is probably why neither of us has tried.
“All good. Promise.” He nods, and I smile, then lean my head against the headrest and let my eyes drift closed.
Background noise fills the space between us.
Gravel pings off the undercarriage. The engine grinds as Darren shifts into a lower gear, humming a tune under his breath that I recognize but can’t name.
My last conscious thought as sleep takes me is about Kristen Quinn and the fact that I could have taken a rented vehicle to her cabin instead of hiking three days through the wilderness.
How many other things has she twisted for her brand and her social media following?
I don’t know, but I’m sure as shit going to ask her when I track her down.
Oh, yeah. About that. I’m not going back to Skylark. Not yet.
I don’t care if it makes me look like an unhinged fan stalking her favorite author across state lines. I came out here to complete my bucket list challenge, and I’m not going home until I do.