Summer Romance Boxset - Weightless, Revelry, On the Way to You

by Steiner, Kandi

  Though it was unpaved, unmarked, and a little rocky at times, I knew in my heart it was the right one to walk.

  And I didn’t see an end in sight.

  With every book, this parts gets more and more difficult to write. It’s almost impossible to thank all the hearts, minds, souls, and hands that go into making a book come to life. So, just in case you want to save yourself from reading the short story I’m about to write in order to attempt to thank everyone I need to, let me start by thanking you—the reader.

  I know you have many choices when it comes to which book to read next. From the very bottom of my heart, thank you for picking mine. This story was important for me to tell for so many reasons, but the biggest one is that I truly believe there are many paths for love and not one of them is “right,” nor are any of them “wrong.” I hope you found love and acceptance within these pages, and I truly hope you will continue reading my work for many years to come. I also love to hang out with my readers online, so come find me! You can start by joining my reader group on Facebook here: Kandiland.

  Staci BRILLZhart, you knew you’d be first on this, right? Thank you is literally the worst expression to accurately convey what I really want and need to say to you. This book nearly tore me to shreds multiple times, and you were always there to tape me back together, slap me on the ass, and tell me to keep going. You didn’t just help me elevate my writing in the editing stages, you also helped me survive one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to go through as a human. You are honestly one of the very best friends I have ever had and I am forever thankful for your love and friendship. Please don’t ever leave me. #MoreThanTacos

  To my beautiful daily source of inspiration, Brittainy C. Cherry—you are such a light in my life. No one hustles harder than you and does it with as pure of a heart. I love our voice messages, our memes, our conversations where we recognize time and time again that we literally have the same soul. I don’t know how I did this without you before, but I hope I never have to remember. I love you.

  Sasha Whittington, my best friend and sister in everything but blood, thank you for always supporting my writing dreams and cheering me on—even when it meant I had to sacrifice Chinese food dates and nights out on the town. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you stand behind me and believe in me even when I don’t. Thank you. Now, let’s party.

  And, while we’re thanking the Whittingtons, HUGE shout out to Dale and Debbie Whittington for letting me stay in the cabin in Gold Bar to tap into my source of inspiration and for answering all my questions. This story’s setting wouldn’t be half of what it is without your support. I appreciate you both, and owe you lots and lots of wine!

  Sydney Grey, my forever #WCW and fellow lover of Instagram memes—thank you for your constant stream of motivation and love. You were a cheerleader even on my darkest days, and I can’t tell you in words how much your listening ear means to me. I cherish our friendship so much.

  Momma, AKA the original Momma Von, thank you for loving me and raising me with a writer’s heart and a dreamer’s soul. You’ve always told me I can do whatever it is that I set my mind to, and you’ve also reminded me time and time again that life is a journey and to take every day one step at a time. There is much of you not only in this book, but in me, and I love you for giving me that light.

  To my writing partner and toughest critic, Kathryn Andrews, thank you for reading and helping me shape Revelry when you had plenty going on in your own life. I love our writing dates and conversations so much, and I hope we have many more years of sprinting together.

  Kellee Fabre, there aren’t enough words in the English language to tell you how much I appreciated your thoughts as you read Revelry while I wrote it. You were often the first eyes to see the words on these pages, and you gave me clean and critical feedback that helped more than you know. From Tag Chaser to Revelry, you have always been there, and I hope I never have to do this without you.

  I have to give a special shout out to Monique Boone, who helped me sift through a lot of the muck in this manuscript to pull out the true messages I was trying to portray. Sometimes my heart gets lost in a lot of words, and you always help me scrape them away until everything makes sense. Thank you!

  To the rest of my fabulous beta team: Danielle Lagasse, Becca Mysoor, Ashlei Davison, Tina Lynne, Trish Mintness, and Sahar Bagheri—thank you for not only reading my fresh brain dump, but loving it, too. Your feedback is so important and every single one of you had an effect on this story. I can’t thank you enough for dropping things in your life to make time for my words. It means so much to me, as do all of you.

  Elaine York, thank you for whipping my manuscript into shape and then making it pretty with your amazing formatting skills. I always appreciate your kind editor notes in-between the lashings (lol) and I value our relationship so much.

  Most of you probably one-clicked this book because of the stunning cover, and for that I have to thank Lauren Perry of Perrywinkle Photography. Your photography literally makes my job as the designer easy as pie. Your talent is absolutely astounding and I love how you bring every single vision I have to life in a way that’s even more incredible than I could ever imagine. Thank you!

  Angie McKeon, my sweet little bumblebee, thank you for reading Revelry early and for all your sweet voice messages as I wrote. You are such an amazing friend and you put such heart and passion into everything you do, whether it’s writing, blogging, momming, or friending. I am so happy we found each other in this world.

  Erin Spencer and Nina Ginstead, thank you both for promoting Revelry as if it was your own baby. I couldn’t reach half the readers I try to without your help, and I appreciate your time and effort on this project more than I can say. Thank you for everything!

  Last but certainly not least, thank you to the two groups who keep me going when I feel like giving up: Tribe and Kandiland. I’ve always believed we should surround ourselves with people who lift us up and cheer us on, and y’all are those people for me. Let’s cuddle up in our corner of the interwebs forever.

  Oh, and to Macallan 12. Couldn’t have done this one without ya. ;)

  To the voyagers, looking for answers in the shadows of the darkest of nights.

  May the promise of the sun on the horizon always bring you back home.

  What makes you happy?

  Those were the words he said to me the day I met him. He asked me a simple question, one I should have been able to answer easily. There were plenty of answers, after all.

  My books made me happy, and my dog, Kalo, made me happy, too. Yoga made me happy. The way the sun always manages to come back, no matter how dark the storm, made me happy. I was the happiest girl in the world.

  Or so I thought.

  That day had started just like any other. I woke up with the sun, dragging my yoga mat out of my closet with a yawn to start my Friday. I fed Kalo and took her for a walk, ate breakfast alone, and checked to see if my parents were still alive. Referring to them as my “parents” is kind of a stretch, though, because that would imply they did some kind of parenting. In reality, I’d been taking care of myself since I was old enough to pour my own cereal. I was still amazed I’d managed to make it to see my twentieth birthday.

  Daryl, my father, had made it to work by some miracle that Friday morning and was already gone by the time I was packing up my backpack to head to work. Cindy, my mother, was doped up but breathing, which was a win in my book. She was sprawled out on the old, dingy, sunken-in couch in the living room of our trailer, and I didn’t say a word to wake her before I pushed through the creaky metal door and out into the fresh Alabama air.

  Well, it would have been fresh, if we didn’t live in the Longleaf Pine trailer park.

  Still, I had a smile on my face as the morning dew settled on my skin. With one last wave at Kalo, who was looking at me through the hole in my bedroom blinds, I hopped on my bike and started the short ten-minute bike ride to Papa Wyatt’s Diner, the resta
urant I’d called home ever since I could remember, and my place of employment since I was sixteen.

  “I hate Alabama,” Tammy said as soon as I pushed my bike through the front door to a chime from the small bell above. Orange and black streamers hung from the door frame, each of them sticking to my forehead a bit as I passed by. Sweat was snaking its way from my damp hair down the back of my collared uniform shirt, finding a rather uncomfortable home where the sun doesn’t shine, but it didn’t matter.

  Alabama was hot, but Papa Wyatt’s Diner was exactly the same as it was every day. I found comfort in that, in the fact that I was able to work there at all, to get out of my house and do what I needed to do to make ends meet. I had plans to get out of Mobile, and I was so close to making it happen I could taste it.

  “No, not you!” I joked with a feigned shock face as Tammy helped me situate my bike in the back storage closet. “I just can’t imagine you hating anything, Tammy.”

  She glared at me, hands hanging on her hips. “It’s Halloween and it still feels like the inside of a sweaty jock strap out there. Fall doesn’t exist in this town.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with that,” I said, a longing sigh on my lips. “I’d kill for some sweater weather right now.” I pulled my long blonde hair into a quick braid and let it hang over my left shoulder, retrieving the orange hair tie from my pocket to add a little holiday spirit. My thick, black-framed glasses had slid down my nose in the Alabama heat, and I used one finger to push them back into place.

  I craved a true fall season, too, and I knew I’d find it in Seattle. It used to be if I made it, but now I knew it was when. I’d been saving for years, even after having to help my parents with the bills. I could have already been out of that town if I would have told them to shove off when they asked for rent or grocery money, but the truth was that I needed a place to live, too — and food to eat.

  Lily, my best friend, used to let me stay at her house all the time. Her mom didn’t even bat an eye if I was there when Lily wasn’t, because they knew my home situation. But Lily went to college right after we graduated, just like everyone else, and I stayed back, attending our local community college and saving for my dream school.

  If it weren’t for Tammy letting me crash on her couch on the nights when my parents’ fighting got really intense, I probably wouldn’t have had enough sanity left to joke with her every morning.

  “Yeah, well, at least you’ll get it soon. At Bastyr.” Tammy smiled, punching her log-in into the register as I prepped the coffee machines. “But for now, you get summer in October.” She glanced over my shoulder at the front door. “And weirdos who still want hot coffee, anyway.”

  I didn’t even need to turn to know Mr. Korbe was standing on the other side of the glass, hands resting easily in the pockets of his worn, brown dress slacks and what little hair he had left swept over his freckled head. I threw him a wink and a wave before smiling back at Tammy.

  “Just a few more months.” The words came out airy and light, riding on a fantasy I’d had since I was twelve. My dream school was three thousand miles away on the Pacific Northwest coast, and after years of saving, I was almost to the point where I could make the move.

  Almost.

  “Did you get your acceptance letter yet?”

  I swallowed, dusting off the front of my apron before heading for the door. “Not yet. But it’ll come.” I paused when I’d almost reached the lock, eying Tammy who was bouncing a little now, biting back a smile. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Something big is going to happen today. I feel it.” Tammy was older than me by thirty-two years, the dark bun at the nape of her neck peppered with hints of gray. Her eyes creased with laugh lines as her smile widened.

  “Uh-oh, did you read your tarot cards again this morning?”

  “Nope, but you know my gut feelings. My intuition is never wrong.”

  I laughed, because as much as I wanted to argue with her, it was true — she always had a feeling when something was coming, good or bad. I’d believed in her psychic abilities ever since I was a thirteen-year-old dirty kid with my feet hanging from the barstools in front of the cash register. She used to buy me a grilled cheese and a slice of pie out of her own pocket, and when I turned sixteen, she got me a job so I wouldn’t have to go hungry ever again.

  “Well, then, maybe my letter will come today.”

  “There’s my optimistic girl.” She whistled, hollering into the back kitchen. “Door’s opening!”

  “Strippers locked away!” our cook, Ray, yelled back.

  Tammy rolled her eyes and I chuckled, unlocking the door to welcome Mr. Korbe inside.

  And so the morning went. I refilled coffee and served up plates of scrambled eggs and pancakes to the same faces I’d seen day in and day out for years. I took a picture with little Sammy Jones, who was dressed up as an “Army guy GI Joe,” in his own words, and listened to Mr. and Mrs. Boone tell me about the new vegetables in their garden. I helped Tammy top off the ketchup and mustard when breakfast faded into lunch, and tried not to cringe when the old man known affectionally as Scooter checked out my ass as I passed his booth — it was hard to do, since I’d sat on his lap when he played Santa every year until I was ten.

  Yep, it was a completely normal day.

  Until it wasn’t.

  I heard the faint chime of the bell as I cashed out the Boones. “Welcome to Papa Wyatt’s, just grab any open booth and I’ll be right with you,” I called without even looking up from the register. One finger pushed my glasses back up my nose as I popped the register closed and hurried back with the change, offering the Boones one last smile and letting them know I’d see them on Sunday. Which I would.

  I always did.

  My eyes were on my hands as I pulled the notepad from my apron pocket and the pencil from behind my ear, feet moving on autopilot to the newly occupied booth, but when I looked up at the person sitting in it, everything stopped.

  Everything.

  Time, my heart, the greeting that was two seconds from leaving my lips.

  We had plenty of travelers stop in the diner on their way through town — hard to escape that when we were less than two minutes from I-10 — but those travelers usually fit a code. They were the spring break road trippers on their way to the beach, or lonely truck drivers with sad, weary eyes, or a family of four with kids bouncing in their seats and throwing apple sauce while the parents begged me for more coffee. None of them, and I do mean none of them, looked like him.

  His sandy-blond hair was tussled, one hand absent-mindedly running through it as he looked over the menu. From the view I had of his profile, I noticed the deep dent of his cheeks, the smooth squareness of his jaw, the long slope of his nose, bent just a little at the top, like it’d been broken before. He was dressed like the men on the magazines lining the grocery store checkout lane, sporting a cerulean blue sweater over a button-up, plaid dress shirt, the sleeves of both shoved up to his elbows. My eyes followed the fabric down to where it gathered above the light brown belt around his hips. When he dropped the menu to the table, I snapped my attention back to his face.

  Which was now angled straight up at me.

  His eyes were deep honey pools, bright and intense where they lay sheltered by thick, dark eyebrows. And there were two, small, perfectly symmetrical lines creased between those eyebrows as he looked up at me, like he’d asked a question I hadn’t heard, like he’d been asking questions his entire life without finding a single answer.

  In a whoosh, reality sucked me back into the restaurant and I blinked in rapid fire, clearing my throat as I flipped to a new page in my notepad. “Can I start you off with a drink? Coffee, tea?”

  I tried to keep my eyes on the notepad, waiting for his response, but he was still staring at me. I lifted my gaze to his, tracing those two creases right above his nose. He wasn’t necessarily scowling, but he certainly wasn’t smiling.

  “Sir?”

  He blinke
d, but his eyes never left mine. “Coffee. Black.”

  His voice was low and modulated, like a smooth pour of the drink he’d just ordered.

  I nodded, rolling my lips together. “I’ll give you a minute to look over the menu.”

  When I was back behind the counter bar, I refilled the two customers there before pouring a steaming cup for Mr. GQ, massaging my thigh as I did. It was more out of habit than pain, but Tammy eyed me with concern from where she was piling plates on her arm in the kitchen window.

  “You okay, Coop?”

  I was still in a fog, and I stopped pouring the coffee just before it tumbled over the lip of the small, white, porcelain mug. “Huh?”

  Tammy nodded to my leg, and I looked down at my hand still massaging the muscle. It looked normal, under the corduroy black fabric of my work pants, but beneath it was the scar of my loss, the muscle weak and small in comparison to my other leg. Phantom pains still made themselves present from time to time, reminding me of what once was there — before the accident, before life as I knew and understood it had been altered beyond recognition.

  “Oh.” I stopped, smoothing the same hand over my apron before carefully balancing the saucer and cup, already heading back to the booth. “I’m fine. Phantom pains, I barely even notice them anymore.”

  She forced a smile. “Okay. By the way, what’s the story on that tall glass of water in booth nine?”

  I shrugged, pretending like I hadn’t noticed how attractive he was, the blush crawling up my neck betraying me. “Dunno. He likes his coffee black, that’s about as far as our conversation has gone.”

  “You should ask him where he’s from.”

  “And you should deliver those pancakes.”

  She grinned. “You think he’s cute.”

  “I think he’s hungry.”