Sneak Peek!

We have the first ever sneak peek of Jenny Hale’s newest release, Where Are You Now!

Chapter One

It could be worse, Ava St. John thought through the piercing throb in her head, the beeping machines, and the blinding hospital light, I could be dead.

She had no time to be dead. She had people to see. There was work to get done.

The cool feel of the bedding under her was comforting for her sore body, and it would be nice to rest, but she couldn’t. A sense of panic set in: she had to get out of there.

Unsure how she’d ended up in a bed, she blinked, trying to get her bearings as quickly as possible. She was in the hospital. A private room. Looking for someone to call out to, she scanned the sink and counter that stretched along the wall beside the exitto the hallway. Across from her bed, a heavy bathroom door was cracked open, and on the other side, a window held thick, sturdy, light-blocking beige curtains. No one else was in the room.

Even though she was incredibly sore, she had to know what was going on with the rest of her life. Through blurred vision, she did what she did best: She checked the numbers. While she wasn’t versed in reading an electrocardiogram specifically, the data seemed decent—all flashing in green. No loud alarms going off. She was sure she could plead her case when the doctor came in.

She squeezed her eyes shut to alleviate the pain wrapping around her head, only for the movement of her cheeks to cause more. Carefully, she lifted a bruised arm with IVs taped to it and touched her swollen face. What day was it? Was it still Wednesday? Her heart drummed. It had to be Wednesday. She needed someone to bring her a strong cup of coffee; then she could hobble out of there and get to work to extinguish whatever fires had cropped up due to this little leave of absence. She definitely hadn’t planned on this in her carefully orchestrated day. Waking up in a hospital room could wreck her tight timelines, and this was literally the worst moment to alter timelines.

While waiting for someone to come into her room, Ava closed her eyes and tried to recall the events that had gotten her there, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Wednesday had begun like every other day.

“We’re excited about the potential opportunity of working together,” she’d said into her phone that was wedged between her shoulder and ear.

Mark Bozeman, the CEO of Coleman Entertainment and Media, chattered on as, ever the multitasker, Ava bent over and slipped off her workout sneakers and set them on the floor of the locker room at the gym.

“We’ve tailored specific marketing tactics and a custom-built digital campaign strategy that will elevate the Coleman brand to the stratosphere.” She righted herself and took a pair of sensible walking shoes from her locker before setting them on the floor beside her.

“We’re eager to see what McGregor Creative can do for us. We really want to ramp up the emotion in this campaign,” Mr.Bozeman said.

“I’m your girl.” She checked her watch: 8:57 a.m. “We believe that with your vision and our expertise, we can create something truly exceptional,” she said.

A text from her mom pushed through her phone, but she had to dismiss it to finish her call. She’d catch up with her tonight.

She slipped on her trousers and put one arm in her blouse, stepping out of the way as two women in towels passed by.

“Looking forward to this afternoon,” Mark said.

“See you then.”

Ava ended the call and finished getting dressed. She was smug. Marketing wasn’t about emotion. It was about the skilled manipulation of people’s feelings that led to the all-powerfulnumbers, something she could manage like a champion. Even her well-ordered life was calculated down to the number of minutes she spent on the treadmill before taking her last sip of water. Her complete mastery of all 1,440 minutes in a day was how she’d become a powerhouse in business.

She’d gotten her work ethic from her father. He was the only person in her life who’d ever worked as hard as she did. Her dad had been a busy bee like Ava, unable to stay still, the two of them running all over the place together. She’d ridden shotgun on his trips to the hardware store, she’d spent hours with him out in the fields, and they’d gone fishing early every Saturday morning.

No one else seemed to understand how to live that way, including her ex-husband, David, who’d left because he’d said he couldn’t keep up with her daily grind and that it left no time for the two of them. He was right on both accounts. Her father had taught her how to work hard for things, and she admitted she wasn’t great at being a wife. She’d been a bit of a tomboy growing up, and she hadn’t spent as much of her free time with her mom as she had with her father. Perhaps she should have paid more attention to her mother’s gentle ways instead of fishing all day. Maybe she’d know how to be a better partner. Her mother and father had been together her whole childhood. How had they managed that?

She didn’t allow herself to think about the collapse of her marriage very often because getting emotional would only slow her down. Her disappointment over losing David wouldn’t bring him back, and it also wouldn’t move her forward in her career. But every so often she’d notice the silence in her Manhattan apartment that they used to share, and the tears would well up. Working helped to squelch that feeling.

She’d worked her way to the top of McGregor Creative, the third largest marketing firm in New York City, and with the Coleman account, she was about to blow past Scott Strobel, her rival for the prestigious title of partner. He was older and had been around longer, but she had killer instincts, an impeccable work ethic, and a fresh perspective that would crown her the youngest partner in the history of McGregor Creative.

She went over to the mirror and pulled her comb through her chestnut waves, then applied eyeliner under her doe eyes that seemed to convey a sense of honesty and control. She finished with a swipe of lipstick—the last thing to do before walking out into the gorgeous fall weather.

New York City streets in autumn were her favorite. The leaves on the trees in Central Park showed off the warmth of the season with their bright yellows and burnt oranges; the coffee shop chalkboard signs lining the pavement were full of cinnamon lattes and pumpkin cappuccinos; the flower beds littered with mums in cranberry, yellow, and white. On Saturdays she walked through the High Line, an elevated public park that connected to Chelsea Market, where she could grab lunch and finish up her week’s work at a little tucked-away bistro. But today was all business.

With her workout clothes now in her bag, her walking shoes on, and the gym café’s signature kale protein smoothie in hand, she slid on her jacket and made the brisk journey to her apartment’s private parking garage. While she usually carried onwalking the couple blocks to the office, today she had to drive across the bridge. She was headed to Spire Distribution, one of the firm’s associates for trade publications and media outlets, to have a mid-morning meeting before noon before heading into the office to set up subcontractors for a start-up bike brand she was building.

Once she got to her car, she called Rachel Bronson, Spire’s COO. While they never saw each other out of work, Rachel was the person closest to a friend Ava had at the office. They both operated with the understanding that at their level of career, friendship had to happen while working.

“I’m on my way,” she said to Rachel as she tossed her gym bag in the backseat and set her high heels on the floorboard. “Traffic’s a nightmare downtown this morning—the map on my phone nav looks like a bowl of spaghetti with all the red—but the highway seems decent.” She started the car.

“What’s your ETA so I can have Shelly make us some coffee?” Rachel asked.

Having her assistant, Shelly, do anything for anyone other than Rachel was a privilege—the perks of being on Rachel’s A-list.

Ava climbed into the car and set her laptop bag beside heras she got on the West Side Highway. “I should be there in a little over an hour, but we can chat while I drive.” She put the phone on hands-free, then maneuvered through the jammed streets, filling in Rachel on the latest before entering Interstate 95.

She merged onto the highway and checked her rearview mirror. She’d managed to pull into the only clog of cars. So much for the highway being decent.

“If I hadn’t been so efficient getting out of the gym, I might have actually had an easier drive,” she said to Rachel.

The lanes behind her were more open. Except . . . She squinted, her gaze darting from the car ahead of her back to her rearview.

On the other end of the line, Rachel began telling her about getting behind a cement truck this morning that delayed her trip into work. But Ava wasn’t listening anymore. The confusion had already set in, and Ava was busy trying to make sense of her surroundings.

It took a minute for the scene to register: A car weaved in and out of traffic, and then headed straight for her at incredible speed. She put on her blinker to get out of the way, but another car was at her bumper to the left, blocked in, so she couldn’t get over. The entrance ramp was full of cars merging onto the highway, pinning her in her lane.

The speeding vehicle closed in.

He’s not going to slow down. Does he see me?

Rachel was still talking, but Ava’s entire attention was in her rearview mirror as the bolt of blue lightning zoomed right up behind her.

“Holy . . .”

As if she’d gotten stuck in quicksand, her foot tried and failed to floor it so she could attempt to get out of the way—besides, there was traffic ahead of her as well. Everything moved at both a hundred miles an hour and at a snail’s pace. Through the manic silence, Rachel asked if she was okay, but Ava couldn’t answer, her mind completely clouded with terror.

The car was going to hit her, and if it did, at that speed, she’d never survive.

And then, everything went black.

She had no idea how long she’d been out, but the next thing she experienced was a floating sensation. There was no pain, though, given the impact, she should be in agony. She was separated from the horrifying collision, peacefully gliding.

In the movies, people could look down and see their bodies, but she couldn’t see anything—just darkness. It wasn’t terrifying, though. It was almost like someone lovingly covering her eyes for a surprise. She moved her limbs and sensed they were intact, yet she felt nothing—no car, no shards of glass, not even air. Had she been killed in the crash?

She’d certainly died.

If the car had been going, say, one hundred miles per hour, undoubtedly, she had. And there was no way she’d feel this comfortable and relaxed if she was still in the car.

She widened her eyes, but she couldn’t make them work.

Ava had always assumed she’d arrive in heaven after she took her last breath. She’d imagined it over the years. She’d even marked a verse describing the new heaven in her Bible after her father died: Revelation 21:11–12, where it explained the twelve gleaming gates and the city as pure as transparent glass and wondered if her dad was in a place like that.

Her father had been blue-collar, hardworking, a farmer. While she adored the sound of heaven, she’d wondered what he’d think of such a place. Maybe he’d find a little pond in the corner of that glittering world where he could sit and fish all day the way he used to with Ava.

But there were no streets of gold or family members cheering and welcoming her home the way she’d thought there would be. With the absence of the beauty she’d expected to encounter, she worried that she’d ended up somewhere else. Especially when she didn’t see her father. They’d been inseparable, and he’d be there waiting.

“Dad?” she called out, but there was no answer.

Instead of the stereotypical light at the end of the tunnel, she was in complete emptiness. But not exactly. Emptiness would imply a place without things inside it. This was more like nothingness. Absence. Not good. Not bad. Was she stuck in some cosmic abyss?

Despite the confusion, she was oddly calm, just sort of walking around aimlessly. It was only her, alone, yet she could almost swear she felt the presence of someone else. But perhaps she was mistaken. Ava was comfortable with being alone. She’d actually come to enjoy the freedom of it over the last eight years, since she and her husband David had split. She never really felt alone. She had her goals and aspirations to keep her company. But here, she didn’t even have that.

Where am I? she wondered again. Stuck somewhere between earth and the afterlife? Had her dad made it to heaven, and she wasn’t good enough to be admitted?

Ava combed back through her life, trying to find the places she could’ve improved. She wasn’t that bad of a person. While she could’ve spent more of her adult life focusing on her faith, reading the Bible, and she definitely should’ve attended church more, she believed in God and everything she’d been taught in Sunday school about Jesus’s sacrifice for humanity, even though she hadn’t made any of it a priority. Was that what she’d done wrong?

Was her dad so busy enjoying himself he’d decided not to come get her? He’d always been her protector. Why wasn’t he there to greet her? A shot of worry darted through her chest. Had he forgotten her on the other side? She pushed the question out of her mind.

“Hello?” she called.

Was this nothingness her fate? Would she have to hang around there for eternity? She’d go crazy in the silence. She considered that perhaps she’d blacked out in the accident, and she wasn’t anywhere but her broken car. But she patted herself and felt her body, even though she couldn’t see it. It was there, but it wasn’t. She was fully aware and thinking. Her thought process wasn’t clouded at all. She was completely confident like she always was, apart from the strange feeling that someone else was lurking in the nothingness.

“Jesus? God? Anyone there?”

As soon as the questions left her lips, a warm, adoring tenderness wrapped around her, embracing her in the strongest feeling of love she’d ever experienced. More love than she’d even had for her parents, which she couldn’t imagine was possible. She breathed in the affection as if it were more nourishing than air, as if the love pulsed through her veins, even though she doubted she had a real body anymore. She widened her eyes again, trying to see some sort of light, but it was as if her vision didn’t work in this place.

A gentle voice filled every space in the emptiness. “Find Lucas Phillips and live out the rest of your life, or pass peacefully—which will it be?”

“What?” Ava forced herself to make sense of the question, and when she did, a wave of peace washed over her.

“It’s an easy choice. Do you want to find Lucas Phillips and live out the rest of your life, or would you like to move on and not return to your old life?”

“Lucas Phillips? But . . .”

Lucas had been her best friend since childhood, one of the only kids who’d really understood her. In the days of her youth, she’d even have said she loved him. They’d found each other in the lunchroom at elementary school and had eaten together every day. And they’d spent the afternoons together after school. There wasn’t anyone better than Lucas Phillips, and growing up she couldn’t imagine spending a day without him. Little did she know, she’d have to. He’d moved from their town of Spring Hill, Tennessee to Charlotte, North Carolina when she was fifteen, breaking her heart.

When she attempted to sift through the many memories that were floating into her consciousness, a vision came back as clear as if she’d been watching a movie. Fifteen-year-old Lucas lying beside her in the grass after school as they talked about third-period chemistry. With her affinity for numbers and his love of science, they’d talked about it all afternoon.

“The one problem I could not get was to calculate the number of moles in eighty-eight grams of carbon dioxide,” he’d said.

“Well, first, you have to find just the molar mass of carbon dioxide,” she’d told him, trying to focus on the conversation while he played with a lock of her hair. “Then you use the formula to calculate the number of moles.”

He’d smiled at her, affection in his eyes, clearly distracted.

“Pay attention,” she’d said with a laugh, not really meaning it. She loved it when he looked at her like that.

Ava smiled in the darkness. She’d totally forgotten about that one random moment of her life until then.

“Go back? Or stay?” the voice asked as the movie in her mind shrunk to the size of a pinprick and disappeared, sending her back into emptiness once more.

Ava deliberated. She didn’t feel injured at all. While she’d most certainly missed the Spire meeting, she could probably still get to the Coleman presentation. If she landed the account the way she’d planned, she’d surely make partner, and that would be the ultimate in living out her life—in her opinion. Partner was everything she’d worked for. If she didn’t get back, Scott Strobel would inevitably have to do the presentation for her, and there was no way she’d let that happen. Plus, given where she was, the alternative was unknown. And deep down, while she did relish the overpowering love around her, she wasn’t sure she was worthy of it. She had more life to live to prove herself and her faith.

When she considered her reason to return, work had come to mind before anyone in her life had, and in this all-knowing, all-loving presence, guilt slithered through her because of it. She could’ve said she’d go back for her mom. Certainly her mother would be beside herself—they were the only two people remaining in her immediate family. She’d drifted away from her mother over the years, and she’d get to see her again if she went back.

She could also have returned for her friend Allison Bates. She’d known Allison since she’d arrived in New York when they’d moved into their apartment building on the same day. Allison was a content strategist for a technology company in the city. Her job involved complex, high-stakes decision-makingand strategic planning, which required intensive research that would send her away for months at a time. She’d lock herself in a chalet somewhere and work for weeks, then she’d show up out of nowhere and ask to pencil Ava in for coffee. Their friendship worked because they both understood the high demands of their careers. And as soon as her friend came home from her latest trip to Breckenridge, she’d be devastated to find out that Ava was gone.

“Go back,” she said. But then, a question occurred to her. “Wait! What if I can’t find Lucas? Then what? Will I die?”

In a snap, she was aware of the intense pain shooting through her body, the shuffling of feet in a hallway, the pulsing of hospital machines around her, and the red on the back of her eyelids.

The final events of the crash slowly came back to her through the pain: the twisting sound of metal, the shrill pierce of her scream, and the agony as the interior of her car folded in around her. She’d been pinned, unsure of where she’d landed on the highway or if anything else was going to plow into her. Then, after what felt like an eternity, the sirens came—low at first and then louder until they filled her ears. People were talking around her, and someone said they were going to help her.

The beeping in the hospital room increased as the events played out in her head. She focused on the calm that had come over her in the nothingness, all her thoughts swirling around like a multicolored pinwheel, and the beeping slowed. She still struggled for consciousness.

What drugs have they given me?

But in all her muddled thoughts, the void and the love she’d felt had seemed the most real . . . More real than where she lay now or any of the events that put her there.

For what felt like the next hour, she lay still while that all-knowing voice echoed in her mind: Find Lucas Phillips and live out the rest of your life. She tried to force the words out of her head, convinced the drugs were messing with her, but the message wouldn’t go away, like when her favorite song came on the radio and then stuck in her head all day. She wondered again if she’d ended up on the wrong side of the afterlife. Was she being deceived? But every time she considered it, that feeling of love washed over her again and those words whispered, “Find Lucas . . .” In an attempt to make it stop, she finally opened her eyes again to the blurry hospital room.

A kind male voice sailed toward her. “I’m glad to see you, Ms. St. John.” There was something about it that was almost as soothing as the voice in the void. “You’re already looking better than when they wheeled you in here yesterday.”

Ava strained her swollen eyes to see who was speaking. A handsome man in a white coat stood beside her bed. He was distracted by the laptop on the rolling cart beside him, his gaze moving from the machines to the screen while he typed. She blinked in an attempt to clear her vision. His hair was short—a sandy brown—and his wide shoulders made him seem confident. She strained to read his ID badge; the letters slowly coming into focus.

Dr. L. Phillips, Neurology.

Wait . . . L. Phillips? She was hallucinating now. Great.

Just then, the light of his ophthalmoscope pierced her sight as he checked her pupils.

“The doctor assigned to you had an emergency, but he’ll be back soon,” he said.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing would come out.

“Don’t try to talk. Just relax.”

Through yellow circles that were now floating in her vision, the sound of his typing was her only sensation. But then his tender fingers pressed against her wrist, and her tired mind slid back to a summer day on the grass in her yard, when she was about thirteen.

“You gonna stay around here after high school?” Lucas asked, turning his head toward her, a soft smile on his lips as they lay on their backs with an expanse of electric-blue summer sky above them.

“Definitely not.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

He said the words, but the twitch in his lips that only happened when he didn’t believe what he was saying told her he was lying.

His light touch found her wrist and then moved to her fingers, his intertwining with hers.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he said.

The beeping machines came back into her awareness and then faded out again as she fell unconscious once more.

That’s all for now! Where Are You Now will be available in all formats (paperback, ebook, and audiobook) on August 5th, 2025 - but you can pre-order the ebook today! Click the link below to learn more.