1. Sloane
SLOANE
This Summer
Tracing my thumb over the wolf shifter on the cover of Taylor’s latest book club pick, I tilt the paperback and wish the shirtless man with abs that could grate a block of Romano could give me the pep talk I so desperately need right now.
Realizing my friends have gone silent, I glance up. Six pairs of eyes focus on me, each of them a little too knowing. Which is completely my fault. I am one hundred percent responsible for surrounding myself with women who can call bullshit without uttering a single word.
I set the book face-down on the heavy table in the community meeting room of Cover to Cover, the bookstore I own in Skylark, Colorado, population— Well, I’m not sure how big we are. Large enough to keep local businesses booming, but small by most standards, and overwhelmingly friendly and kind.
Which fits my personality—the one I shaped after realizing broody and rebellious weren’t a fit.
Sunshiney is how my overbearing brother describes me, with a healthy dose of smart mouth, so I don’t veer into toothache-sweet territory.
It’s true for the most part. The trouble is that people don’t know what to do with me when I show up overcast. Even I feel the pressure to always find the silver lining, and sometimes it’s fucking exhausting.
The past year has definitely tested my penchant for sparkling, and through it all, the bookstore remained my sanctuary.
There were nights during treatment when I’d come down from the apartment after hours and sit in the dark with the books.
I’d run a fingertip along the spines until the nausea ebbed, inhaling the scent of the pages mixed with my lavender lotions.
The shop didn’t care about my hair falling out in clumps or about the weeks when my labs came back ugly.
The books were just there, ready to let me decide who I wanted to be when I picked one up.
I’d pull a romance off the shelf and press it flat against my body like a compress.
As if the heat of someone else’s love story could reach the parts of me that felt cold all the time.
Because dying wasn’t what scared me the most. It was how easy it had become to picture life going on without me.
Even at this stage, when my future is more certain, I can’t shake the feeling that my friends have their lives mapped out in bright colors, while mine is growing paler in comparison.
At the moment, I’d like to be on the receiving end of a wolf shifter’s intense gaze rather than the curious stares of my found-family friends. “Who knew alphaholes could be so endearing?” I ask brightly.
“Several of us, in fact.” Avah arches one delicate brow. “But the official meeting is next week. So unless you’ve called an emergency summit to debate whether we’d survive a wolf shifter’s knot, we’re here for something else.”
Right. My sharp-tongued friend—who recently also became the love of my brother Jeremy’s life—knows something’s up.
I kind of gave it away last weekend when I attended the final day of a cancer caregiver retreat with her and my brother.
I grabbed her arm at the start of the closing-night concert and told her we had to leave.
Right then. No questions asked. And for Avah, who’s never met a question she didn’t want answered on the spot, the level of restraint it took to honor my request was its own kind of love letter.
But a week is a long time to sit with a secret in my world, and I’m pretty sure every one of these women can smell my avoidance the way the wolf on Taylor’s book cover sniffs out fear.
Taylor, our dedicated local librarian, leans forward, placing her elbows on the table, and tucks a lock of auburn hair behind one ear. “For the record, I think I could manage the knot.” I choke out a laugh as she continues, “But you did summon us.”
“Summoned feels soooo….dramatic.”
Iris Dixon, Skylark’s former mayor, pops a bite of one of Avah’s brownies into her mouth. “You texted ‘emergency meeting’ in all caps.”
I open my mouth to downplay the text. “But—”
“With three exclamation points,” she adds.
“Fair.” I take a breath and press my palms flat against my thighs under the table, willing them to stop sweating.
“I’ve chosen my bucket list item,” I say and watch Avah’s expression flicker with surprise.
She had to think this meeting was about country music legend Jensen Grant, and why seeing him at that concert made the blood drain from my face.
But I’m not ready for that conversation yet. Maybe not ever.
“I’m going backpacking in Montana,” I tell them, thinking about the initial arrangements I’ve made.
“Four days and three nights on the trail until I get to the cabin where Kristen Quinn is currently on a writing retreat, surrounded by nothing but mountains and silence—her words, not mine—as she finishes her new book.”
“You’re WHAT?” Piper asks, all caps audible.
Taylor’s eyes go wide while Molly and Sadie share a concerned den-mother glance. Even Iris, who could maintain composure during a seismic event, looks flabbergasted.
I came up with the bucket list challenge shortly after starting the book club.
We read Kristen Quinn’s The Year of Losing It around the time I was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the cancer that’s ruled my life for the past fifteen months.
That book, part self-help treatise and part memoir, chronicled a year of challenges Kristen gave herself to overcome the ways she’d let fear run the show.
And I was so damn scared the day I walked out of my first appointment with the oncologist that I needed something—anything—to help me feel like maybe the universe wasn’t done with me yet.
I hand-picked the women—my ride-or-die friends—for this book club, and I pushed each of them to choose a fear and face it.
Sadie Hart (now Barlowe), who’d never opened herself up to romance or love.
Iris Dixon, who had forgotten how to have fun.
Taylor Maxwell, who froze at the thought of being seen.
Molly McAllister (now Calhoun) had been letting her late husband’s memory dictate her whole life.
Piper Hart (soon to be Barlowe—yes, sisters Sadie and Piper are about to become sisters-in-law as well), who needed to know she could stand on her own two feet.
And Avah Harris, who couldn’t remember what joy felt like.
Every one of my friends faced down the thing that scared them most and came out changed.
I cheered from the sidelines, which was simple even during the hardest parts of my cancer journey.
Beating cancer is the obvious answer for my bucket list, as if I’ve been participating in the challenge all along.
But I haven’t. Not really. I’ve been treading water.
And now I want—need—to choose my own direction instead of bobbing along wherever the current takes me.
Venturing alone into the wilderness would be proof to myself—to everyone—that cancer doesn’t get the final word on who I am.
Seeing Jensen last weekend, the reminder of who I was those two nights we spent together, has been the kick in the ass I need to stop letting cancer run the show.
I’m in the last stages of treatment, and my doctor signed off on the trip.
Which should be reassuring. So why are my hands sweating?
I’m convinced I can do this hike, and it would be nice to know my friends believe in me too.
Because there’s a voice gaining volume in my own head, whispering it’s too much for me.
Before any of them can begin vocalizing their well-meaning concern, we’re interrupted by a knock at the meeting room’s door.
The bookstore typically draws a crowd on Sunday afternoons, and my part-time employee, Suzanne, is out front on her own, so an interruption isn’t a big deal.
Right now, I kind of hope there’s a shop emergency that needs my immediate attention.
“Come in,” I call.
The door opens, but it’s not Suzanne.
Jensen Grant fills the doorway, all broad shoulders and corded muscles under his faded black T-shirt and dark jeans that hang loose on his hips.
I stare at him, not quite reconciling the man I’m seeing with the man I knew intimately for forty-eight hours.
Apparently my brain spent the last year whittling him down to a size I could manage, and now reality has entered the chat, bringing receipts to prove he’s so much more.
A year hasn’t changed the things I remember most about him.
If anything, it’s made them more impossible to ignore.
His hair is shorter than it was on stage last weekend, but with the same silver threading through the temples.
His jaw is shadowed with stubble, and the combination of broad shoulders, strong hands, and a mouth made for deliciously bad decisions make him the most dangerous mistake I’ve never gotten over.
He’s also looking at me like a man finally face-to-face with the answer to a question he’s been carrying for fourteen months.
My skin goes hot and cold at the same time, and it feels like I’ve lost the ability to form a single coherent thought.
Heat starts under my collarbones and travels both directions at once, up into my face, and down into the soles of my feet.
It’s the same thing I felt the day I got the cancer diagnosis, but this is terrifying in a different way.
Because it’s a second chance I’m trying to convince myself I don’t want.
And the lavender lotion I relied on to ground me through the hardest days of the past year can’t touch my nerves right now.
“Holy shit,” Avah breathes.
No one else knows who Jensen is, but I can feel the questions pressing toward me.
I can’t answer because his presence has nearly made me forget my own name.
And I don’t know what I’d say if I could speak.
How do I explain that two nights in a stranger’s arms changed everything I knew about my life as much as a cancer diagnosis did?
But explanations will have to wait, because Jensen doesn’t have eyes for anyone but me. And the part that undoes me the most is that I can’t look away either.