 by Lili Valente.jpg)
Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 113(@200wpm)___ 91(@250wpm)___ 76(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 113(@200wpm)___ 91(@250wpm)___ 76(@300wpm)
Ha! Trick Question. I get to do BOTH! Because when it rains, it pours.
First, I call Theo McGuire to tell him that I’ve always loved him and I always will–at least for the next few hours until Pippa Jane the Pig and I are swallowed by the floodwaters. Then, I open the second story window when Theo comes knocking in his kayak, in a likely doomed attempt to save us.
Soon, we’re trapped in the cabin where we had our first time fifteen years ago and all I can think about is how much I wish I could turn back the clock. If I could, I’d never let this fiercely kind and sexy-as-hell man go.
Since this could be The End, we agree to make our last night a night to remember.
But what happens when morning dawns, we’re both still breathing, and I can’t bear to think of a life without my favorite McGuire?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
MACY MALLARD
Of “Move This Way with Macy,”
a slow travel influencer learning
that you can’t go home again.
Or, that you can,
but you might die there…
“Please, Pippa Jane. Just do your business on the puppy pad.” I thread my fingers together into a single fist, pleading with my sweet—but oh-so-flipping-stubborn—Kunekune mini-pig. “It’s the only option, buddy.”
Pippa snorts in response and plops down on her ample haunches on the wooden cabin floor, sticking her black-and-white spotted snout in the air.
“I know it’s beneath you,” I assure her, “but it’s too dangerous to go outside in the storm.”
I stroke her head, hoping my touch will relax her the way her nuzzles always relax me. This pretty girl has been my roommate in my VW camper van since I adopted her from a rescue farm in West Virginia four years ago. She’s my snuggle buddy, my co-pilot, and my best friend.
I’ve met so many cool people on the road, but Pippa’s the only one who’s always there, no matter what. She never gets tired of my wandering lifestyle or asks me to hawk poisonous energy drinks on social media for cash or thinks I should “stop making racy internet videos and get a real job.”
My old-fashioned family disowned me years ago, embarrassed by the amount of swimsuit content on my channel—sorry, but I like to swim, and I’m not going to do it in a 1920s bathing costume—and rampant vegetarianism. They raise sheep for slaughter; I live with a pig who saved my life when I broke an ankle on a hike and couldn’t get a satellite signal to call for help.
Enough said.
Which reminds me…
I narrow my gaze on Pippa’s stubborn face. “If you’re smart enough to retrace our steps to the nearest ranger station and coax a ranger out to rescue me, you’re smart enough to know the river is too high to risk going outside right now.” I bend to gaze into her warm brown eyes with my most winning smile. “Come on, P.J. Use the puppy pad. It’s not a big deal. I’ll go into the other room and give you your privacy, take care of the mess right away, and we can pretend it never happened. No embarrassment or affront to your dignity required.”
She coughs politely into my face—her ladylike way of telling me to take my “signature charm” elsewhere, because she won’t be swayed—and waddles off to sit by the window, staring out across the waterlogged forest in the gray evening light like the heroine of a gothic novel.
“Fine,” I say, propping my hands on my hips. “But you’re not going out. That’s final.”
She lifts her snout even higher, a silent pillar of queenly defiance.
“And my signature charm is still charming,” I mutter as I cross to the opposite side of the open living space on the second floor of my uncle’s old hunting cabin. Leaning against the wall, I gaze out the sliding glass door that leads out onto the small balcony. “I’m up for two more Indie Content Creator awards this year.”
And I am.
And there was a time when I would have been really excited about that. Thrilled, even. Over the damned moon.
But that was before…
Before the internet became a toxic cesspool filled with bullies and scammers. Before the trolls learned to send bots after people they wanted to crush and had to actually post their “ur too fat to wear a swimsuit, gross, cover ur dimply ass, fatty,” comments on their own.
Before we were all reduced to algorithmic versions of ourselves that corporations use to sell us things we don’t need, propping up toxic, late-stage capitalism and speeding the destruction of our planet and society at large.
I miss the old days.
I miss my old self, the one who had a bigger life in the real world than in the virtual one.