11. Jensen
JENSEN
The last of the daylight is nearly gone while I watch Sloane finish the dinner clean up from where I’m sitting on my sleeping bag, bare feet propped on a log like a border collie who was told to stay and chooses to pretend he likes it.
We shared two freeze-dried meals—chicken pad Thai and jambalaya—both of which tasted like a shit ton of salt sprinkled with a few other stale spices.
Sloane mixed in extra hot sauce from a tiny bottle she’d packed, which improved the pad Thai but couldn’t save the jambalaya.
It didn’t matter. I ate every bite and thanked her like she’d served me filet mignon.
She did all the work while I sat on my ass elevating my wrecked feet. I came out here to take care of her. To be the guy who showed up and made himself useful. Instead, she’s stuck doing the heavy lifting.
The irony isn’t lost on me. It’s a little on the nose, actually.
After the snack break this morning, when she pulled back the curtain on her life and then realized she’d shared too much—not for me, but based on the walls I know she wants to shore up between us—I expected her to go back to ignoring me.
To my surprise and soul-deep pleasure, she kept up the conversation once we got back on the trail.
Stilted questions and answers lobbed back and forth at first, but it slowly became easy, just like I remember from our first night at The Alcove when we’d spent hours talking in that back booth.
Today, she seemed especially curious about how I ended up babysitting a twenty-two-year-old breakout star with a penchant for brown liquor and career-torpedoing decisions.
“It’s a favor to a producer friend,” I told her.
She’d given me a look over her shoulder that called bullshit louder than any words.
So I admitted the whole truth. Told her Cody reminds me of my younger brother, who had a self-destructive streak wider than the Grand Canyon.
How I’d watched Jamie spiral for years, always half a step behind with the safety net.
I’d made a promise to look out for my brother and done a shit job, so Cody is my second shot at getting it right.
Maybe the thin mountain air was messing with me more than I thought because Sloane wasn’t the only one oversharing on the trail.
“The promise was to your mom before she died.” Sloane had interrupted me mid-sentence, and my stomach plummeted to my injured toes.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. My past isn’t classified information, and Nashville is basically a small town dressed up as a big one.
Everybody knows everybody’s sad backstory in country music.
I’d asked her about Cover to Cover and whether she was a Colorado native. I got the basics. She grew up on the east coast and followed a boyfriend to Colorado. He left, and she stayed, then bought the bookstore in Skylark with money left to her by her grandmother.
I managed to pull a little more from her with each mile, the way I coax a chorus out of a jumble of random thoughts in my faded notebook.
Her friends mean the world to her, which I already understood from seeing them in action.
The estrangement with her brother had been complicated, and she was glad they were close again because she didn’t have that kind of relationship with her parents.
“But they stepped up for you during treatment?” I’d asked, pissed on her behalf while knowing nothing about her family dynamics.
She’d changed the subject to the odds of running into a mountain lion so fast I nearly got whiplash.
We passed a handful of other hikers, and when the sun dipped behind the distant peaks, she stopped at a sheltered clearing tucked between a rock face and a stand of pines and announced that we were at our campsite for the night.
I’d wanted to argue when she insisted I rest. I mean, I have a healthy ego, but I also understand the difference between pride and stupidity.
And I had to admit that letting someone else shoulder the load was kind of nice.
Not having to be the one who holds everything together while pretending it doesn’t cost anything.
Giving Sloane another thing to manage isn’t fair or right, but she’s entirely in her element as she moves around our makeshift campsite, as if she were a survivalist in another life.
She reminds me a little of my mom before the cancer, making hard things seem easy.
I can handle a lot, but in my forty years on the planet, that’s a trick I never learned.
She approaches with a small first-aid kit and a travel pack of wipes, and the constellation of freckles spread across the bridge of her nose glows in the last of the fading light.
“I assume you also didn’t want Band-Aids weighing you down,” she says, kneeling on the dirt in front of me and unzipping the kit. Her tone is smug, which I’ll take in unlimited quantities if it means she’s about to hand me some potential relief.
I hold out my hand for the kit, but she ignores me and pulls out a wipe.
“You can’t touch my feet,” I tell her. “I’m serious. They’re disgusting.”
She rolls her eyes, her go-to way of dismissing me. “It’s the only part of you I’m touching on this trip.”
“That sounds like a challenge, Sunshine.” Speaking or singing, I know the power of my voice and what that gravelly tone does to women. The truth is, I’m irresistible when I want to be.
Sloane stares at me for two seconds and then laughs, no restraint in it this time. It’s a good thing I’m sitting down because my knees instantly turn to pudding.
“You’re in no position to try to sound sexy right now, Nashville.” She dabs the wipe along the edge of a blister on my right heel. “Weeping blisters are the opposite of sexy.”
“Fair point.” I try not to flinch at how badly it stings. “And we’re just friends.”
“Not exactly,” she counters, and I want to come back with something clever, but she presses the wipe against the burst blister on the ball of my foot, and I suck in a breath through my teeth, then close my eyes and grip the edge of the sleeping bag with both hands.
The vulnerability of having this woman tend to my wrecked feet with the same care she likely uses when shelving first editions is almost worse than the pain.
Running up the trail bare-ass naked in the dark would expose less than this moment.
But when she gently rubs the antibiotic ointment onto my raw skin, the relief is so immediate it has to be all in my head. My body doesn’t care. It takes the reprieve from the pain and runs with it, at the same time pledging its unwavering loyalty to Sloane Winslow. I’m here for that.
“Thank you,” I say roughly.
She doesn’t look up as she bandages the worst of the damage. I sit still and let this woman take care of me with her focused gaze and steady hands because I don’t know how to stop her. I’m also not sure I want to.
When the last blister is bandaged, she sits back on her heels and surveys her work with a satisfied expression.
A shiver moves through her, and she rolls her shoulders against the chill. “It’s going to be colder tonight,” she says, snapping closed the first-aid kit.
I’d be more than happy to warm her up. Except I’m not sure I can move without my feet staging a revolt. My shoulders and back would love to get in on this game as well.
“Maybe,” I agree, like the dropping temperature means nothing to me.
Her lips press together in a thin line. “You should be sleeping in a tent.”
“I’ll be fine, Sloane. Don’t worry about me.”
With a curt nod, she stands and brushes dirt from her knees. She takes a step away from me, then turns back, chin lifted, like she’s already regretting what she’s about to say.
“Bring your sleeping bag into my tent. If we leave the packs outside, there’s room for both of us.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m going to make the offer once, Jensen. Take it or leave it.”
“Take it.” I sit up straighter. “Absolutely take it.”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” She points at me. “You’ll keep your hands to yourself.”
“Scout’s honor.” I hold up three fingers, pretty sure it’s the wrong salute.
“You were never a Boy Scout,” she says with a snort.
“Well then, I swear on my mother’s grave.” The oath leaves my mouth before I realize what I’m saying. I haven’t invoked a promise that solemn since the day my mom died, and I swore to her I’d keep Jamie safe.
Sloane’s eyes widen, and the air between us sparks, but neither of us looks away. The expression in her blue gaze says she understands what I just put on the table without meaning to.
“Do you need help with your stuff?” Her voice has lost its edge.
“I’ve got it.”
“I’ll make room.”
I watch her walk toward the tent, her silhouette almost otherworldly in the shadows. I know I’ll write a song about this moment one day.
I pull on clean socks and force my feet into the boots, keeping them undone more because my trembling fingers might not be able to handle lacing them then because of the relief it brings me.
Gathering my pack and sleeping bag, I think about the promise I made to my mother, the one I haven’t honored.
Jamie’s troubled life is proof that I failed at the most important thing I was ever asked to do.
But I can keep my hands to myself and respect Sloane’s boundaries. I can be the man she needs, blisters be damned.
And I need to keep that promise. Because what I suspected all along—first during those two unforgettable nights and then in the months after, where her memory was the only thing keeping me company—is turning out to be true. As much as I want her, Sloane Winslow is too good for me.