Page 1 of The Havenport Collection

Prologue

CECELIA

I never intended to be a total failure. It certainly wasn’t part of my grand life plan.

But even with the best intentions, I still ended up back here.

Maybe I could become a motivational speaker?

Speak to high school kids about my failure to adult properly?

Launch some kind of self-help empire for the chronically underachieving?

I would think about that later. Now, I just had to breathe.

It takes a special kind of underachiever to wind up back in your hometown with no job, no boyfriend, and no apartment at age thirty-one.

It wasn’t as if I was ashamed of my recent breakup or layoff.

I knew deep down that neither was a good fit.

And I’d had enough jobs and boyfriends to know how to pick myself up and dust myself off when things went south.

But things were different this time. Because I was faced with the very unsettling realization that after thirty-one years on this planet, I had very little to show for myself.

I didn’t love my career as a pharmaceutical marketing executive.

I didn’t even like it most days. And I certainly had not loved Xavier, my creeper ex.

I didn’t love my harried, anxious life in New York.

My life was just devoid of passion and fun and excitement.

And that was a far bigger blow than losing a mediocre job and a mediocre guy.

So, in addition to being single and unemployed, I was also in the middle of a Grand Canyon-sized rut.

If I was capable of getting out of my own head, I would have seen the beautiful views, smelled the salty sea air, and realized that it actually was nice to be back. Instead, I was just living in my own doom spiral of shame.

My heart rate rose as I crossed the bridge over the swelling Haven River. The large “Welcome to Historic Havenport, founded in 1685” sign greeted me as my car crossed over into town.

So here I was. On the other side of thirty with not a clue what was going to come next. But I knew one thing for sure. I was done with men. For good.