Page 43 of The Lost Book of First Loves

It’s a lousy system and it’s wrong. I want to say things are changing, but any progress is far too slow.

He had sounded genuinely upset about being unable to prosecute Robin’s boss.

She understood entirely too well about the hard choices that sometimes had to be made. As a top-level executive at a tech company with thousands of employees, she sometimes had to make decisions that still kept her up at night.

All that stress. How was she going to return to it?

Her chest felt tight again and she tensed, somehow not at all surprised when she felt the little jolt from her ICD that was becoming painfully familiar.

She sank down onto the nearest chair, her fingers automatically pressing against her heart while she caught her breath and fought for calm.

She was mortified when she lifted her gaze to find Beck watching her with concern.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“It’s nothing.” She forced a smile. “Just the device in my chest shocking me back to life.”

He looked aghast and she instantly regretted her flippant response.

“I’m still breathing. Don’t worry. I’m not going to croak right here in front of you. Probably.”

She muttered that last word in a much more bitter tone than she intended, which earned her a careful look from the entirely too perceptive Beck Hunter.

“At some point in this journey, I expect I will learn to be grateful I’m still alive and be able to focus on being a medical miracle instead of another statistic. I’m not quite there yet.”

“Understandable.”

Her eyes suddenly stung at the compassion in his expression and she furiously fought away tears.

“I would tell you that the tough things we all have to face only make us stronger, but personally I know that’s BS. Sometimes life deals us things that would crush even a champion bodybuilder.”

What did Beck Hunter know about life’s crushing trials? she wondered. She wanted to ask, but he turned away before she could, as if he regretted opening the door into his life even a crack.

“I’ll grab those diaries for you,” he said, heading into Carson’s office.

Grateful that he wasn’t focusing on her momentary pity party, June followed him. She had to admit she was curious about Carson’s office.

The room was exactly as she might have envisioned, with more of those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a huge desk made of timber and a gorgeous oil painting on the wall of a red-rock mesa in the setting sun.

“Wow. This is beautiful.”

He looked around as if seeing the space for the first time. “It is. I still don’t know why Carson didn’t work here more often. I can probably count on one hand the times I saw him at his desk. He mostly preferred working at the kitchen table, in his armchair by the fire or outside on the porch.”

She loved picturing him at work, pen in hand and a pensive look on those rugged features.

“More often,” Beck went on, “he would pack one of his notebooks into a bag and head off into the mountains, either on foot or riding one of the horses. He wouldn’t come down until past dark some nights.”

Her mother would have loved learning these insights into the writer she had admired so very much.

“I wish my mother had been able to meet him. She would have been over the moon.”

His expression tightened briefly before relaxing again. “I thought your mother had a signed first edition of his debut novel. So she must have met Carson at least once.”

“She did, though she didn’t talk about it much. I meant she would have loved to meet him here, in the surroundings where he was most comfortable and creative.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, he didn’t let many people see his space here. I guess you should consider yourself lucky.”

“I do, actually. About staying here, anyway. And I feel extraordinarily fortunate that I will have the chance to look through some of his personal writings.”

---