Page 90 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

Rachel laughed again, but I was growing tired of her irreverence. Any other day, I might have been able to appreciate a young woman who was so quick to see the absurd in the world around her—Jane Austen and I had that in common—but this was too important. Sloane was moving to the other side of the country? She was leaving?

The room started to spin, my lungs tightening so suddenly that it felt as though a metal band had been wound around my torso and clamped into place.

Before I could break free of the cage, a cushion appeared underneath me. When I glanced around, I was surprised to find myself on the couch with Sloane seated next to me, her hand rubbing warm, soothing circles on my back.

“In and out,” she soothed. “One breath at a time. It’s going to be okay.”

No, it wasn’t. Everything was wrong, and I didn’t just mean that I was wishing for my bed and my oxygen tank.

“What. Are. They. Talking. About?” I wheezed. Sloane tried to shush me, but I drew on every ounce of strength left in me to keep talking. “Where. Are. You. Going?”

Instead of answering, Sloane cast an accusing glance around the room. Her hand was still on my back, still patting me like I was a child who’d woken up from a terrible nightmare. I didn’t shake her off as instinct warned me to. It was too nice to feel that press of her hand, to know the comfort of a sympathetic touch. One of the things they never told you about growing old alone was how desperate you’d get for that simple human right—or how hard you’d cling to it once you found it again.

“I told you to let me talk to him on my own terms. I warned you he wasn’t back in full health yet.” Her face appeared in front of mine, lines of worry crisscrossing over her forehead. “Arthur, nothing has been decided yet. It’s just something we’re discussing, okay?”

“Still discussing?” came the echo of Francine’s voice. “Brett, honey, is that true?”

“Leave the kids alone, Francine,” said the man who’d been introduced to me as the fiancé’s father. “They know their own business.”

The fiancé coughed. “We’re working out the kinks, that’s all.” He appeared next to Sloane, and I’d never hated the sight of a face more. Not content with shoving Sloane down the narrow confines of the altar, he was now purporting to carry her off against her will and inclination. “He looks fine to me. A little tired, but that’s no surprise. Remember what I told you the other day, Sloane.”

When Sloane didn’t answer, I forced myself to speak again. I was pleased to find that my breath—and my voice—came a little easier this time around. “What did he tell you?”

“See?” the fiancé said. “He’s coming around already.”

“What did he tell you?” I demanded again, my eyes scanning Sloane’s face for signs of distress. Most days, they were easy enough to find; her pinched, white face was as easy to read as a book. Sure enough, her eyelashes started fluttering like a kidnapping victim pleading her case from afar. “Sloane, tell me, or I’m going to keel over and have a heart attack right here and now.”

The fiancé coughed again, this time with heavy emphasis.

“It’s not a big deal, Arthur,” Sloane said in a voice that felt—to me, at least—like a big deal. “Brett thinks you might be exaggerating some of your symptoms as a way to keep me around longer, that’s all.”

There were so many things wrong with this statement that I felt a thousand fiery spikes forcing me to an upright position. Admittedly, this gave credence to the fiancé’s claims, but I didn’t care.

“My health has nothing to do with this,” I said, turning toward him. “Sloane is organizing my book collection, remember? She’sworking.”

The fiancé snorted like a horse about to break out of its stall. “You haven’t paid her a single penny since she showed up there.”

“The check is in the mail,” I lied.

“You’re taking advantage of her generosity, and you know it. Sloane is agoodperson, Mr. McLachlan. Better than anyone I know. Some men might be willing to stand by and watch as the world tries to crush her underfoot, but I’m not one of them. She put herself in my hands, and I intend to make sure she’s taken care of for as long as she stays there.”

Sloane’s lower lip quivered. “Brett?”

“What, Sloane? You know how I feel about you.”

Two things happened in the sixty seconds that followed this declaration. One of them was a complete overhaul of Sloane’s expression. There was such a softening about her mouth—and such a hardening around her eyes—that I thought I must have been imagining things, so incompatible with one another were they. The second was that the band around my chest started squeezing again, this time refusing to stop until it was encased around my heart.

“I think I need to lie down,” I muttered, but my voice had grown so faint that the words may have only existed inside my head.

I had no way of knowing how much time passed between my fainting spell and my unceremonious departure from the too-big, too-ostentatious house full of the too-big, too-ostentatious family that Sloane was purporting to marry into. It felt like hours, but I suspected I’d been carried out and deposited into Sloane’s car within minutes. People were always happy to see the back of me, but never like this—like I was a burden they were unwilling to bear, as if my very existence was an affront to them.

Goodbyes were said and apologies made on my behalf, but my heart remained tightly bound. Especially when Sloane didn’t start the car right away. Her hands tapped on the steering wheel, a random beat designed to irritate.

“What?” I asked as I closed my eyes and followed the instructions Mateo had given me a few days before. Breathe slowly and deeply. Focus on the way my lungs expanded and deflated. It felt an awful lot like mediation, but the kid must have known what he was talking about because it helped. “I thought we were leaving.”

“We are. Do you want to go to the hospital?”

“Of course I don’t want to go to the hospital.”