Our Last Time: A Novel

Willow Monroe and Kennedy Danes have been best friend's since drawings were assignments in school. They've been joined at the hip for years. They love riding bikes together, smiling for real, and laughing, even at the wrong times.

Once their senior year of high school rolls around, Kennedy becomes terminally ill. Though he has plans that don't involve sadness, he still needs to find a way to tell Willow he only has six more months to live.

Willow and Kennedy can never say the word 'goodbye'.They have this agreement to say Hello up until their last time spent together. The sixteenth of August in the year of 1997 is when Willow and Kennedy say Hello for the last time.


Nine years later finds Willow in the smallest hospital of Chicago, working as a registered nurse. There she meets Wyatt Blanquette, a curmudgeonly patient with untapped wisdom and heart, beneath a stony exterior. When they agree to be nice to each other instead of abundantly rude, Wyatt eventually shows the fact that he sees a light in Willow that cannot burn out. Everything changes once Wyatt reveals to Willow his heart-wrenching secret.

Willow's thoughts bicker, and she has to determine whether she should suppress the feelings she's afraid of reliving, or to let them be seen -- with her heart wide open.