Page 102 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak enough to say that one little syllable. I was afraid that if I punctured the thickness in my throat, everything that was bottled up inside me would come pouring out.

“But you don’t love me.”

“Brett,” I gasped. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His hands clasped mine, a warm pocket closing over my fists as I sobbed all over him. I had no way of knowing what I was crying for—for his sake or for mine, for the little girl who was only just starting to realize what she’d lost—but it didn’t matter. As he let the tears pour and my incoherent sobs wash over him, he gently tugged the ring from my finger. The moment I felt it slip off, it was as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I could suddenly stand on my own two feet again.

“I think you’d better get up there,” he said with a smile. For all that I was a sobbing, heaving mess, he looked remarkably in control of himself. “If only to relieve the poor nurses for a few hours. Take it from me—they work harder than anyone else in the medical field. They’ll appreciate the intervention.”

“But what are you going to do?” I asked as I pulled out my handkerchief and blew liberally into it. Maisey had picked the embroidered flower out of the corner, but the holes where the needle had gone through would always carry its shape. “About your family, I mean? And Boston and the wedding and—”

“I’ll take care of it, Sloane. I might not be able to make you happy, but that much I can do.” When he touched a finger to my cheek this time, he made full contact. He traced away the path of the tear and stared at the pad of his thumb, as if surprised to find it had come away wet. “And as for the rest, well…there isn’t much, is there? I imagine you’ll slip out of my life as easily as you slipped into it.”

It was true. Other than a toothbrush and a few hair scrunchies, I kept very few of my belongings at his condo. I’d never wanted to intrude on a place—on a life—that had never really felt like mine to begin with.

I slid out of the car before Brett could say any more nice things to me. My heart and my newly unshackled shoulders wouldn’t bear it. I had no doubt that he’d have sat there with me for hours if I asked him to, soothing me with his bland, no-nonsense approach until I could face my future with clear eyes and a clearer heart, but that was why I couldn’t accept it. The smooth, unbroken path wasn’t the one I wanted to tread anymore.

With a resolute breath, I turned my step in the opposite direction and headed into the hospital. In there, I’d find anger and passion, irritability and wrath. In there, I’d find my friend.

In there, I’d find myself again.

35

I could sense trouble the moment I tiptoed up to the door of Room 418. None of the nurses had been able to tell me the exact nature of Arthur’s illness, but I knew that he’d been admitted under observation for the next twenty-four hours. That was much longer than his last stint at the hospital had lasted, and I had no doubt he was taking it just as hard.

Which was why the unprecedented silence behind that door scared me.

“You can go on in, hon.” A friendly nurse popped her head out of the nurses’ station and waved for me to enter. “The rest of your party is already there. I’m sure they won’t mind.”

“My party?” I echoed, my hand flat against the wood-grain door. I couldn’t hear anything, but vibrations seemed to indicate thatsomethingwas going on in there.

“I’ve had to tell them to keep it down three times already. They say laughter is the best medicine, but this is still a hospital.” She winked. “You look like you might be able to keep them in check.”

Since inanely repeating everything she said wasn’t going to get me any closer to answers, I gave the door a push. The scene that revealed itself on the other side wasn’t, as I’d expected, Arthur in the middle of crafting a rope ladder. It was Arthur cackling on his bed as the entire book club sat around him, all of them holding copies ofAnne of Green Gablesin an animated discussion of its contents.

As terrible as it was to admit it, the shock of seeing them so happily occupied without me hurt more than the break of my engagement to one of the best men I’d ever known.

“Sloane?” Greg was the first to notice me. He jumped to his feet so quickly that his copy of the book slid to the floor. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh no,” Maisey wailed. “She wasn’t supposed to find out.”

Mateo tipped his head back with a groan. “Ugh. Sloane, you’re the worst. Aren’t you supposed to be apartment shopping with Brett or something?”

Even Nigel, a man Arthur professed to hate, had been invited. He was gently folded in a chair near one corner. At the sight of me, he raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Oh dear. This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

I had strong words for each and every one of them, but it was Arthur I turned to, Arthur who was on the receiving end of my sudden, overwhelming wash of emotion. After everything we’d been through, all the breakthroughs we made together, this was how it ended? With me kicked out of my own book club, cut out as easily as Octavia had removed me from the library?

“Arthur, how could you?” I cried in a voice that I felt sure the nurse outside would be sure to admonish. “When I heard you were in the hospital again, I dropped everything to get here. And I meaneverything.”

“Now, Sloane—” he began, but I cut him off.

“I was determined that you wouldn’t be alone this time around. Even if I had to use all my powers of coercion, I was going to sit here by your side until you were discharged. Because that’s what friends do. They come running. Theycare.” I glanced around at the shocked faces of my so-called friends and started to sag. “But you don’t need me, do you? You called everyone to your bedside except me.”

Greg had one large hand wrapped around my waist and was leading me to a chair before I’d finished. “Sloane, I think you should sit down. This isn’t—”

“My business?” I asked, shaking myself out of his grip. I wasn’t about to sit down for this. “My concern?”

“I know how it looks, but it isn’t a regular book club meeting. We’re working on a special project.”