“It’s not going to happen again.”
“If you say so.”
I pick up my pace because the alternative is risking him seeing how the memory of waking up draped across him has been playing on repeat in my brain.
After another thirty minutes, with dark clouds ominously gathering above us, we reach a spot that offers some protection from the weather. A thick canopy of pines that smells like Christmas morning provides shelter on one side, and a natural rock overhang on the other promises dry ground. The timing is perfect as the rain starts falling in earnest, fat drops that splatter on the brim of my hat and run down my waterproof jacket in rivulets.
“Feels like it’s a granola bars for dinner night,” Jensen says as we unfold the tent poles.
“Yeah, the rain doesn’t seem like it’s going to let up anytimesoon.” I thread the poles through the grommets as the rain picks up, and we work together in coordinated silence. He holds the fly while I stake the corners, then toss him the rain cover so he can secure the guy lines. We’re not a bad team, which is annoying. Being good at something together makes it harder to pretend there’s no together happening here.
We unroll our pads and sleeping bags, and there’s barely any room to maneuver once we stuff the packs inside the tent to keep them dry. I grab the first-aid kit out of mine.
“How are your feet?”
“They’ll survive.”
We each unlace our boots, keeping them under the rain fly but out of the tent. “You need fresh bandages.”
“I can take care of it tonight.”
“Suit yourself.”
He nudges my arm. “But I wouldn’t say no to a couple more ibuprofen.”
“Honestly, same,” I tell him and reach for the bottle. “My shoulders have reached their limit.”
“Want a massage?” he asks casually.
“No,” I chirp, convincing no one that I mean it, and his low chuckle vibrates across the space between us.
I leave him to the first-aid kit, pull out a protein bar and my journal, then turn to sit cross-legged, facing the opposite direction as I uncap my pen. I’ve made an entry—sometimes multiple—every day since my diagnosis. This is my ninth golden notebook, and it’s already half-filled.
A lot of the early entries were me working through the pain and fear of an uncertain future. A level of unedited honesty I couldn’t afford to show anyone in my regular life because I’m Sunshine Sloane, the girl who rallied the book club and turned her cancer into a challenge instead of a defeat. That version of me is real, but she’s not the whole story. She’s not the woman whocurled into a ball on the floor of the shower too many times to count during chemo because her legs were too weak to hold her up.
Sometimes I make gratitude lists instead. Every day, I manage at least the basics. Thank you for hot water, thank you for a body that got me up this trail, thank you for the fact that my white blood cell count was normal at my last check. I now understand that hot water matters more than I gave it credit for when all I had to do was turn on the tap.
Behind me, Jensen rips open a packet of something, so I pop a bite of bar into my mouth. Although what I’m actually hungry for right now isn’t food.
He lets out a quiet groan as he stretches out on his sleeping bag. The innocuous sound reverberates through my body like he’s just begged me to call him daddy. For such a big man, he’s remarkably good at folding himself into tight spaces. Lord, I need to get a grip. No thinking about tight spaces and Jensen and—just no.
I keep writing because tonight there’s a lot to process, mostly around tomorrow and what it’s going to be like to finally meet Kristen Quinn in person. What she’s going to think about me tracking her down through the Montana wilderness. I’d like to believe thattracking downis a harsh term for what I’m doing. I’m fangirling. Authors love reader fans—at least all the ones I’ve ever hosted at Cover to Cover. Even Iris’s fiancé, Jake, who wrote mysteries under a pen name for years, was generous and appreciative with readers despite craving anonymity more than most.
Maybe Kristen has been impossible to connect with in real life because I expected her to come to me. Believing that if I sent enough DMs, she’d eventually show up in Skylark and validate everything her book meant to me.
Now I’m taking real action, just as she espouses in both herbook and her social media posts. The one I saw right before I decided to make this my bucket list challenge was about momentum and how the universe can’t steer a parked car.
The parallels of Jensen showing up here uninvited, the same way I’m showing up on Kristen’s doorstep, aren’t lost on me. I can’t exactly claim the moral high ground on the ambush front.
And Jensen knows me—or at least my body—which gives him slightly more standing than I have with a stranger whose book I read on repeat during months of cancer treatment. But the impulse is the same. A stubborn, irrational belief that some people are supposed to be in your orbit, and if the universe won’t arrange the meet-up, you do it yourself.
The truth is, I like having him here with me. I likehim. I like his laugh—the real one, not the stilted chuckle he gave to his super-fan trio. I like that he tries to keep me talking, asking questions to prove he’s been paying attention. I like the bits he shares about his life and his career and the musicians he’s played with, and how I can hear the affection for Cody in his voice even when he’s feigning annoyance at a twenty-two-year-old who doesn’t know enough to appreciate the gifts he’s been given.
I like who I am with him. On the trail with Jensen, I’m an amalgamation of all of my parts. The upbeat and responsible bookshop owner with an easy smile and aesthetically pleasing shelves. The cancer survivor who spent the past year plus some fighting the disease that turned her world upside down. And just a little bit of Sutton, the carefree woman who had no problem going to a hotel room with a man she’d met a couple of hours earlier and having the best sex of her life.
But as much as I like him and all my parts with him, a bigger truth coats the back of my throat like sand. I’m not sure I’ll ever know which version of me he sees. Is it the Sloane I’m trying to reclaim? Or a woman who survived something terrible and familiar to him that triggers every caretaking instinct in his body?
Yeah, I’ve spent the last year fighting, but now I’m ready to shake off that sick girl identity even if I have to do it one step at a time. I can’t go backward. Or be the woman a man loves because she’s fragile and he’s wired to fix broken things.
