21. Sloane
SLOANE
“Hey, Sloane. We’re at the motel.”
Jensen’s voice, low and soothing, reaches me from far away, and when I open my eyes, his arm is stretched between the front seats, his hand resting on my knee.
It takes me a few groggy seconds to register that the ATV has stopped moving and we’re parked in front of the same motel I checked into several days and approximately one lifetime ago.
“You must have been plumb tuckered.” Darren twists in his seat, grinning to show off his gold molar. “Never seen someone able to sleep their way down the mountain. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks.” I return his smile as I stretch my back. “It’s a gift.”
Jensen’s expression is more stressed than impressed. He’s not smiling.
“I always fall asleep in cars,” I assure him, keeping my voice light. “Any moving vehicle, really. It’s a whole thing. You should hear my mom complain about having to drive around the neighborhood when I was a baby because it was the only way I’d nap.”
Jensen nods, but the tension in his jaw doesn’t budge.
I want to grab his face and tell him to stop turning ordinary human behavior into a symptom, but I don’t.
I know where that impulse comes from in him.
It’s the same place my brother’s hovering comes from.
And my own middle-of-the-night terror when I wake up sweating and can’t tell if it’s my lousy AC in the summer heat or something worse.
He grabs our packs from the back while I thank Darren, and then we walk into the motel without speaking. The same woman who sent me across the street for a burger my first night here is at the reception desk, and she lights up when she sees me.
“You made it,” she says, like I scaled Everest. I’m oddly moved that she remembers me at all. “And you made a friend.” Her gaze travels over Jensen in a way that would be inappropriate if it weren’t also completely fair. “You need one room or two?”
He shifts beside me, but I answer, “One. For one night. I’ll be heading out tomorrow.”
“Back to Colorado?” She winks at my surprised expression. “You wrote down your address on the form, hon.”
“I’m visiting a friend in Tahoe before I head home.”
At that, Jensen goes completely still. We still haven’t talked about the future. Not because I’m a coward but…yeah, I’m totally a coward.
She gives me the room key and checks the computer monitor. “I’ve still got your credit card on file.”
“I can pay,” Jensen offers, reaching for his wallet.
“You’re my guest,” I tell him without meeting his gaze.
“A kept man.” The older woman leers at Jensen with undisguised appreciation. “I like that.”
At that, I glance up at him and choke on a laugh at the horror on his face.
“It’s one night,” I say as I pick up the key. “Your ego will survive.”
“Debatable,” he mutters, following me down the narrow hallway toward our room. Our now familiar back-and-forth wraps around me like a favorite blanket.
The room is a carbon copy of my previous one and totally what you’d expect from a motel in rural Montana. A queen bed with a floral comforter that’s seen better decades takes up the majority of the space, surrounded by wood-paneled walls and carpeting the color of dirt.
I drop my pack by the door and excuse myself to the bathroom. When I come back out, Jensen has one hip propped on the ancient dresser, arms crossed. His ocean-after-a-storm gray eyes settle on me with their usual intensity, making me feel like I’m the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
“Tahoe?” he asks.
I nod like it’s no biggie. “If Kristen’s there, I’m going.” I pull off my boots and flex my toes on the worn carpet. “This is my bucket list challenge, and I’m not failing.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I shrug. “Maybe you aren’t invited.”
“You told the receptionist I’m your guest,” he says. “Sounded like an open-ended arrangement to me.”
“It was room-specific, and I feel like you know that.” I stretch my legs out and lean back on my hands, trying to look more relaxed than I feel. The truth is, I want him to come so badly it scares me. That wanting is what I need to keep in check.
He studies me but doesn’t appear the least bit offended by my rudeness. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s figured out my attitude is a sad attempt to distract him from the real issue.
“I can’t figure out why she matters so much to you,” he says finally, and there you have it, friends. “You’re clearly cooler than she is.”
“Cooler?” I laugh. “Like this is high school?”
“I bet you were prom queen.”
“I didn’t go to prom.”
He shakes his head, casual, like we’re discussing the weather. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
“I was a rebel.” I say it with mock gravity that usually makes people laugh, but Jensen just raises one thick brow. “Rebels don’t go to prom.”
“What kind of rebellion are we talking about? Let me guess—you drank under the bleachers?”
“I drank everywhere,” I tell him with an eye roll. “Which is why I didn’t make it to prom. I got so drunk beforehand, I ripped my dress climbing over a chain-link fence running from the cops. Completely shredded it beyond repair.”
I keep my voice breezy. It should be a funny anecdote after all these years, not a memory that still stings when I poke at it.
Me as a seventeen-year-old girl, standing in her ruined dress in someone’s backyard at midnight, mascara running, date long gone, knowing she’d just confirmed every low expectation her parents had ever set for her.
Jensen is quiet for a beat, and I know he heard all the things I didn’t say. He’s infuriatingly good at listening to the silence between my words and finding the real story hiding there.
“What about your prom?” I need to redirect before he can dig any deeper. “Were you too cool for school?”
He shrugs, but his expression shutters. “Junior year, my mom was in the hospital. Senior year, I was too busy trying to make it in music and keep my brother from falling apart to think about things like dances.”
Oh God.
I am an idiot.
What the hell am I doing, trying to deflect with a self-deprecating little tale about a ruined dress and teenage rebellion, while this man spent his prom nights at his mother’s bedside and parenting his younger brother because no one else was going to do it.
The distance between our versions of missing prom is so vast that I could fall into it and never hit the bottom.
“Jensen—”
“It’s fine.” The words are automatic and practiced, and I recognize the tone. I’m nothing if not fluent in the language of I’m fine when things are decidedly not fine.
“It’s not, though.” I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them, studying him across the small room. “You were a kid, carrying things no kid should have to carry, and that’s not fine even if it’s what happened to you.”
He’s still leaning on the dresser, but his stance isn’t casual anymore.
A muscle jumps in his jaw as I watch him deciding whether to let me in or keep the door shut.
Maybe it’s how much he already knows about me or the sheer exhaustion of the past few days that tips the scale.
His shoulders drop an inch as he lets out a long exhale.
“She was a good mom,” he says quietly. “She also had terrible taste in men, and it broke her heart over and over. Jamie and I had front-row seats to the whole thing.” He looks at the ceiling like an answer might be written up there.
“I promised myself I’d never let anything matter that much. Holding onto music is safe, you know?”
I think about using my grandmother’s trust fund to buy the bookstore so I could build a life around things I can control. Inventory orders, reading lists, and the comforting predictability of a well-organized genre section.
“I do know, but songs can’t wrap their arms around you.” His eyes snap to mine, and for a second I can almost see the invisible thread shimmering between us.
“No,” he agrees. “They can’t.”
That thread expands, pushing against the wood-paneled walls and the humming window unit, crowding out the emptiness we’re both so intent on hiding from the world. Even from ourselves.
“Can I come to Tahoe with you, Sloane?” he asks after a moment. “Please.”
I can’t refuse him. That one word—please—coming from him demolishes every one of my defenses.
It nearly demolishes me. Also, I don’t want to say no.
I want more mornings and miles and more of whatever this is, despite understanding it has to end.
And ending it will hurt in ways I’m not letting myself acknowledge. Not yet.
I wasn’t prom queen or one of the cool kids. I was the girl in the shredded dress who couldn’t stop running from things she couldn’t control. I might still be that girl, but right now the thing I’m afraid of is saying goodbye to this man before I’m ready.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “You can come.”
The storm in his gray eyes calms so suddenly it steals my breath. I want to press this moment between the pages of my golden notebook so I can keep it forever.
“Should I book flights, or are you borrowing your brother’s—”
“We’re driving.” I sit up straighter. “I want to experience every mile it takes me to find her.”
“Yeah.” He laughs softly. “I get that.”
I point at him. “Just so we’re clear. My car, my playlist.”
“Your car?”
“My rental car. Semantics.”
The smile he flashes deepens the lines around his eyes, and…cue the butterflies. It’s frankly unfair that wrinkles make him more attractive. I can’t think of one thing that could make him less, at least for me.
Maybe I don’t need Kristen Quinn’s carefully curated brand of courage anymore. I’m learning to build my own.
But I still want to finish what I started. I need to look her in the eye and ask if any of what she said about transforming your life—the words that guided mine—was real. Or if I have to figure out that part for myself as well. Although, I’m beginning to think I already am.