Into the Woods

by Jenny Holiday

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Sports Romance

Synopsis

Summer camp just got a whole lot hotter in this enemies-to-lovers romance, perfect for readers of Tessa Bailey and Lucy Score.

Teddy Knight’s band has just broken up in spectacular fashion after his longtime bandmate and—he’d thought—closest friend decides to go solo. So when he’s offered a last-minute gig to fill in as an artist-in-residence at a summer arts camp—which comes with a lake cabin and lots of free time to work on a revenge album—he takes it. No matter that he knows nothing about nature, dislikes kids, and is generally a grump.

Gretchen Miller is having a mid-life crisis. Luckily, her summer job as the dance teacher at Wild Arts summer camp will allow her to drop out of society for a while. Having sworn off dating, she decides she’ll go into the woods and become a crone. She might skip the “luring innocent children to their death” part of cronedom, but she’s all for the “curse men” aspect.

Teddy and Gretchen clash from the get-go when he mistakes her for a fan, and she relegates him to the “entitled jerk” ash heap. Despite their determination to dislike each other, a wary friendship blooms as the magic of the woods starts to unwind them, and they spend long hours by the campfire talking about art, being stuck, and the idea of starting over. But woods are often filled with monsters, and Teddy and Gretchen will have to face their fears if they want to start over together.

Release date: January 7, 2025

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

Gretchen

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Gretchen Miller. Gretchen grew up to be a badass. She came from an OK family—nobody hit each other or screamed at each other. They liked each other well enough most of the time. But no one ever had any money. Gretchen’s mom worked at a diner, and her dad worked… sometimes. He wasn’t one of those stereotypical toxic men. He didn’t drink too much or yell too much. He didn’t cheat on Gretchen’s mom, and he attended Gretchen’s dance recitals—when there was money for lessons and therefore recitals requiring his presence. He just had trouble seeing himself as the kind of guy who made minimum wage doing general labor, or driving the shuttle at a car dealership, or assistant-managing a McDonald’s, or, or, or. When he’d drink—not too much, but enough to get maudlin—he would say, “Is this all there is?”

Is this all there is?

Every few months he would decide he was meant for better things. Bigger things. And then he would quit his job in favor of some vision only he could see. Unfortunately, often his visions involved pyramid schemes. Gretchen’s mom was a career waitress, but she didn’t bring home enough to float the household on her own, so when Gretchen’s dad was in one of his delusions-of-grandeur phases, things in the Miller household would get tight. Tighter. Gretchen and her sister, Ingrid, would get free lunch at school, which sounds great in theory but was in fact not great, as the school only served free meals to kids who qualified for them. Which meant Gretchen and Ingrid also qualified for a lot of cruelty from their peers.

But Gretchen, she didn’t let any of that stop her. Gretchen was the kind of person who watched and learned. She was a hustler. She scrabbled and saved, working through high school waiting tables and teaching at her childhood dance studio. Hell, she worked through middle school, babysitting and shoveling driveways and doing whatever anyone would give her money to do. She saved that money. For what, she wasn’t sure. For something.

All she knew was that she wasn’t going to be like him. Like them. She loved her parents, but she’d seen, from a young age, that the key to happiness, to peace, was self-sufficiency. To not need to rely on a man or the Man. To be your own boss.

And I am. Me. I’m Gretchen. The badass. When I was exactly halfway through my two-year community college degree in business and marketing, I sat myself down and said, Now. Now is the time to turn that something into an actual thing.

And so Miss Miller’s of Minnetonka was born. Tap, jazz, ballet, and hip-hop, ages three to eighteen. This is my seventeenth year in business. I own my own house. I have a retirement account. I don’t have to wear a suit or a uniform to work. I don’t have to ask my boss when I want to do something, because I am my boss.

I don’t need a husband or a boyfriend to chip in on the mortgage or the vet bills or the vacations I’m too busy to take anyway. If a boyfriend started mooching off me, it wouldn’t make any difference to my bottom line. Actually, if a boyfriend started mooching off me, he’d be demoted to ex-boyfriend.

So yeah: I did it. I’m a success. All those annoying memes you see about girlbosses are me.

So what’s the problem?

I’m having a fucking midlife crisis, that’s the problem.

Is this all there is?

My best friend, Rory, stood and clinked her spoon against her glass even though it was only the two of us at dinner.

“I’d like to make a toast to—”

“Shh!” We were at Suz’s, an ice-cream parlor and diner in the same strip mall as my studio. It was often full of my students and their parents, and the news that was about to earn me a toast was not public yet.

“Oh, shoot, sorry.” Rory put her hand on her belly and sat back down. I didn’t know why she was holding the bump. She was barely showing at seven months—she was one of those cute pregnant ladies who look like they have a miniature basketball under their shirt but are otherwise physically unchanged by the process of growing a whole other human inside them. It would have been annoying if I didn’t love her so much.

Rory said, under her breath, “I get the need for secrecy, but if you think I’m not cheers-ing you, you’re crazy. Here’s to you and your growing empire,” she whispered. “May Miss Miller’s 2.0 be as awesome as the original.”

I grinned. “Do you think I need a new name? Miss Miller’s works for a kids’ dance studio, but does the new building, with the addition of yoga and Pilates stuff, need a name that’s less cutesy? More elevated?”

That’s right: new building. The badass was expanding her empire. After almost twenty years renting in a strip mall, I was buying a freaking building and doubling my square footage.

The answer to the Is this all there is? question had been no. Miss Miller’s of Minnetonka and an extremely shitty dating life that was slowly chipping away at my self-esteem were not all there was.

“Grow with Gretchen?” Rory suggested, laughing when I made a barfing noise.

“Elevated but not crunchy-granola.”

I wasn’t one of those woo-woo types, but I did do Pilates a couple times a week. It helped with the dancing aches and pains. Beyond that, it’s good for your brain. I believed in it—and yoga—as a force for good in the world. And like the dance studio, I wanted the yoga-and-Pilates side of things to be welcoming to all. But also as with the dance studio, I wasn’t in this just to do good in the world. What can I say? People who say money can’t buy happiness have never been poor.

So yeah, I did deserve to be toasted, even if it had to be on the sly. I was on my way to a whole new phase of life. Midlife crisis? I don’t know her.

“I say lean into it and straight-up call it Granola with Gretchen,” Rory said.

“Ha ha.”

“Well, whatever the name turns out to be,” Rory said, “I’m proud of you.”

“I’m proud of me, too, but to be honest, also slightly terrified.” Even badasses get scared sometimes. “It’s a lot of money.”

A ginormous mortgage. A hell of a lot more than my monthly rent payment for the existing studio. Which I wasn’t even going to be able to get rid of right away, because I was keeping it open while I renovated the new space.

And I was going to have to hire teachers. I wasn’t certified to teach yoga or Pilates, so unlike in the early days of the dance studio, I couldn’t just teach everything myself. And beyond the cost of the reno, I had to buy scheduling software and expensive Pilates machines, and, and, and…

Granola with Gretchen—or whatever—was a whole other level.

I reminded myself that even badasses get scared, yes, but the key point about badasses is they don’t let their fear stop them from doing shit.

Enough introspection. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“OK, how’s Ethan?” Rory asked.

“Oh, Ethan’s history.” She was referring to my latest Tinder dude.

“Yeah?”

She wanted me to elaborate. She liked my stories from the trenches of dating. She wanted to live vicariously through me, I guess, which was funny because I wanted to live vicariously through her. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted the perfect domestic package she had—adoring husband, awesome stepkid, bun in the oven, gorgeous house on Lake Minnetonka. But I guess I had wanted it, once upon a time. So it was interesting to watch it all unfold for her, after the two of us had spent so many years as the main characters in each other’s life stories.

“I do have a date tomorrow, though,” I said.

“Oh! Who?”

The last man. My last date ever. Because Midlife Crisis: Averted had two pillars. Pillar One was the new studio. The empire expansion. Pillar Two was my retirement from dating. I wasn’t going to tell Rory about Pillar Two, though. She’d try to talk me out of it, give me the whole “hope springs eternal” speech. Nope, I was just going to quietly let that part of my life disappear.

After tomorrow.

“Just some guy who’s visiting the Twin Cities.” I shrugged. “He seems fun.” I wagged my eyebrows. “And hot.”

“Oooh, look at you. Getting some.”

Yes. Getting some. One more time.

One more time, I repeated to myself twenty-four hours later as I pulled into the parking ramp at LaSalle and Tenth. It was a gorgeous summer night, the perfect setting for my farewell to dating. And I’d picked a doozy this time. It was probably because I could see the end in sight. Why not go out with a bang?

Hopefully a literal bang. Ha.

Usually when I swiped right on men it was because I thought they had potential. And I don’t even mean I could see myself settling down with them for the long term. Just that they seemed like decent guys. They could spell, they didn’t display any overt signs of misogyny in their profiles, they were age appropriate. Boyfriend material, if you will. I’d long since let go of the whole marriage-and-kids thing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted the kids part anyway. But I did want… a partner. I felt like a dork admitting that, given how much I’d constructed my sense of self around my independence and my low threshold for bullshit. But I don’t know, sometimes when I got home from a long day at the studio, I wanted someone to be there, someone who knew who Sansa’s mom was and understood what I meant when I flopped on the couch and said, “Sansa’s mom is objecting to the recital costumes.” And then maybe that someone would hand me a drink or even, I don’t know, rub my feet. Gah. It’s excruciating to cop to wanting that shit, but I do.

Did—past tense.

I’d been dating as long as I’d had the studio—longer—and no one had ever stuck, not for more than a couple months. I had no shorthand and no foot rubs. Apparently I was not a girlboss when it came to love.

I was so, so tired of dating. Way-deep-inside-my-soul exhausted. I was not the kind of person who took shit from anyone, least of all men, yet when I faced my midlife crisis head-on and took a good hard look at my life, I had to admit that I’d recently started… bending a little on the dating front. Giving the benefit of the doubt where it wasn’t warranted. Censoring what I said so as not to dent any fragile male egos. Sleeping with guys I wasn’t sure about yet to buy time until I knew for sure I wanted to cut bait.

The stupid part was that it didn’t even work. The past couple years in particular had featured so many mediocre men, followed by so much ghosting. I was utterly tired of the men of the internet.

Or forget the internet: I was tired of the men of the world.

I had to face the fact that happily ever after wasn’t going to happen for me. And, more than that, trying so hard and so continuously to make it happen was turning me into someone I didn’t recognize. I didn’t give false compliments. I didn’t laugh at jokes that weren’t funny. I didn’t get my undies in a bunch when a middling man ghosted me. None of this was me. I believed that. But I feared that if I continued along like I was, I might end up at a place where I didn’t.

Just as bad, dating was increasingly making me sad. I was, by nature, a glass-half-full person. Sometimes people called me bubbly. Which I kind of hated, but I got it. I taught dance to kids, and my hair was usually dyed some candy color or other. I was a bubbly badass, I guess. The point was the dating grind was just that—a grind. It was grinding me down. Sanding away my natural optimism. Which sort of felt like it was sanding away me.

No more.

Well, one more: Scott. A dude in town for two nights for work. Not my usual type of match—not boyfriend material whatsoever.

So one last hurrah with Scott, and then it was going to be all Granola with Gretchen and embracing my forties solo. Midlife Crisis: Averted: Pillar Number Two—complete.

“Gretchen?”

There he was, standing outside the pub at which we’d agreed to meet. He actually looked like his picture. He looked better than his picture. The image on his profile had been blurry, but on-purpose/artistic blurry. In person, he had a lovely, symmetrical face and appealingly unkempt ash-blond hair, and he was wearing a huge smile that made his blue eyes twinkle.

“Yes, hi. Scott?”

We shook hands, and my stomach did a little flip. He had a good handshake. A big, warm hand that would probably be good at foot rubs.

I reminded myself that that was not the point here. The point was to swipe on someone I’d never see again, have a fun last date.

“I like your hair,” he said, tangling his fingers in a hank of it. I was used to people complimenting my hair—it was my signature thing—but I wasn’t used to people I didn’t know touching it two seconds after meeting me. That was the first red flag.

The second red flag started flapping when we engaged the hostess. I’d suggested this place because it had a cool rooftop space with lawn bowling and a view of the skyscrapers of downtown. But when we were informed that there was no room on the roof, Scott said, “Oh, come on. I’m sure you can find something.”

“I’m sorry, sir. You’re welcome to wait. Or you can—”

Scott leaned in and aimed his twinkly-eyed grin at the woman, who looked all of twenty. “I hate to be this jerk, but do you know who I am?”

Wait, what? Did I know who he was?

The hostess smiled apologetically. “I do, and honestly I’m a big fan, but there simply isn’t a table available on the roof at the moment.”

A big fan?

Scott extinguished his grin. “Look. I’m sure you can—”

“You know what?” I interrupted. “Why don’t we go somewhere else? There are lots of places with patios on Nicollet. I’m sure we can find a good spot.”

Scott let himself be talked down, but not before asking if the hostess wanted him to sign anything. I was pretty sure she didn’t give a shit, but she feigned enthusiasm and handed him a napkin.

See? This is what I mean about bending ourselves to please men. Why do we do this?

Because it’s easier. We pretend to be who we aren’t or like things we don’t because it’s easier than offending a man. Or because even though we tell ourselves that a muttered-under-his-breath “What a bitch” or a texted “Whore” doesn’t affect us, maybe enough of those little barbs do eventually accrete into a weapon that’s big enough, and sharp enough, to start unraveling us.

“You want to come up to my hotel room for a drink instead?” Scott suggested when we were back outside. I’d changed my Tinder profile before my final round of swiping, making it vague and flirty. He had every reason to think I would be interested in going up to his room with him for “a drink.”

And hell, maybe I still was. I didn’t have to like him to sleep with him.

“Sure.” As we started the three-block walk to the Hyatt, I said, “I gather you’re some sort of famous person and I didn’t realize.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. I’m in a band.”

“Oh yeah? Would I have heard of you?”

“Probably. We’re in town playing the Target Center tomorrow.”

Wow. Sleeping with a rock star as my last hurrah: I could get behind that. I really would be going out with a bang. “What’s the band called?”

“Concrete Temple.”

I had heard the name, but that was it. Which was surprising, as I loved music and prided myself on following lots of genres. It helped in my line of work, where I was known for my inventive recital choreography. “What kind of stuff do you play?”

“Rock. Hard rock.”

That explained it. Hard rock didn’t really lend itself to kids’ dance recitals at studios in suburban strip malls. “Hmm,” I said vaguely, not wanting to offend him. Argh!—here I was, doing it again. I started over. “Don’t know you guys.”

“Really?”

Here we went. “Really.”

“We have a couple songs you’d know if you heard them.”

“Mm.”

We spent the rest of the walk talking about the band and the tour and him. Minneapolis was the second-to-last stop on a long tour. And “long” was saying a lot, because they were a “touring band,” whatever that meant. He was ready to get back to his house in LA. He missed his Range Rover. He used to lift weights, but it’s hard on tour; hotel gyms don’t have squat racks. The other thing that’s hard about touring is the food. The other guys had all this garbage food on the band’s rider, whereas he always asked for a Vitamix and the fixings for green smoothies. He was getting really into Buddhism. The middle way—had I heard of that? He was going to give me the names of some books I should totally check out.

I made vague murmurs of acknowledgment as he talked, but when he informed me that sometimes the universe gives you signs that you need to be open to, I decided to wrestle hold of the conversation. Since this was my last kick at the can, I didn’t have to worry if it seemed like I was interrupting. “I definitely believe in signs from the universe. I recently had one myself.”

“What did it say?”

It said to take all the time and energy—and money; bikini waxes were not cheap—I’d been spending on dating and invest it in myself. Invest it in my empire. But I didn’t say it like that. I told him about Granola with Gretchen.

“So yeah,” I said in summation, “I close on August thirty-first, which also happens to be my fortieth birthday.” It didn’t “happen” to be my birthday; I’d done that on purpose, once I’d learned the seller preferred a late-summer close. I liked the symbolism of it. I would be closing on the building but also on the midlife crisis. “I’m going to have a party in the empty space. I was thinking I might make it a demo party—I’m doing a major remodel, so a bunch of stuff, including an interior wall, has to come out. What do you think? Would you be into a party where you could dance and drink but also take a sledgehammer to the wall?”

Scott wasn’t listening. I could tell by his glazed-over eyes.

I had lost my audience. I wondered why men never seemed to have enough self-awareness to realize when they’d lost their audience.

When we got up to his room, he took out his phone, and I had to listen to fifteen minutes of Concrete Temple—apparently my time to speak was over. I did recognize a couple of the songs, but only vaguely, and let’s just say I was not a fan. Let’s leave mumbled vocals and walls—nay, tsunamis—of guitars back in the 1990s where they belong, shall we?

When he stopped the music and looked at me expectantly, I was supposed to say nice things. Instead, I said, “I’m more of a pop person.”

“You would be,” he shot back.

“And you would know that how?” He hadn’t asked a single question about me. I felt certain he couldn’t have passed a pop quiz about the Granola with Gretchen monologue. When he didn’t answer, I said, “The cool thing is there’s lots of different kinds of music in the world. Something for everyone. You guys remind me of Nirvana. I’m a dance teacher, and I once tried to use ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for a semijoking—”

He cut me off with a rough kiss.

OK, no, turns out I did have to like a guy to sleep with him. And I did not like this one. I guess if signs from the universe are real, this was mine to skip the last hurrah and retire from dating effective immediately. Pillar Number Two: activate. I pushed him off me. “I should go.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You just got here.”

“I know.” This was the part where I would usually make up a lie about having forgotten something I had to do in order to make my desire to leave about some external thing rather than about him, but I kept my mouth shut.

“I have to say, Gretchen,” he said with a smirk, “you’re passing on an opportunity here that would at least give you a good story to tell your friends. Do you know—”

“Are you about to ‘Do you know who I am?’ me? Because I think we’ve established that no, I do not know who you are.”

He held his hands up in an exaggerated fashion, like he was the subject of a stickup in a silent movie. I knew that gesture. It was designed to telegraph that I was being difficult. Shrill. If there were an audience, he would have broken the fourth wall and looked at them like Can you believe this crazy chick?

And yep, just in case I hadn’t gotten the silent message, as I was making my way out the door, he muttered, “Bitch.”

So predictable, these mediocre men.

I stitched myself back together as I rode down in the elevator. Hardened myself. I was a bitch. I was a bitch who got shit done and didn’t take crap from anyone. Back in my car, I got out my phone and deleted Tinder. And all the rest of them: Hinge, Bumble, all of it.

I gave half a thought to getting out, setting my phone against my rear tire, and backing over it.

I was almost forty, and I was retired from dating. I had a successful business I had built from nothing and was about to take to the next level. I had family I liked and who liked me back, even if we weren’t close. I had friends I loved like family.

I had a good life.

Except that niggling refrain that had been wending its way through my consciousness of late was still there.

Is this all there is?

The phone rang. Rory.

“Am I interrupting the date? I’m probably interrupting the date. But it’s important.”

“You’re not interrupting the date.”

“Aww, really?”

“It was a bust.”

“Well, his loss. Next time will be better.”

I didn’t tell her there wouldn’t be a next time. For some reason, I hadn’t been telling Rory about my dating woes the way I used to. Maybe I was just sick of hearing myself talk.

“You know Imani Tran?” she asked.

“Of course.” Imani Tran was a legend of modern dance. “Do you know Imani Tran?”

“Not personally. But I went to ballet school with someone who went on to join her company. Imani was supposed to spend the summer at this camp in northern Minnesota called Wild Arts. She’s pregnant. She isn’t due until December, but apparently the pregnancy has just been deemed high risk and she’s been put on bed rest.”

“That’s terrible.”

“For her, yes. For you, maybe not.”

“Huh?”

“Imani felt bad pulling out so late, so she’s trying to find a replacement. She asked my friend, who can’t do it. My friend, knowing I’m in Minnesota, asked me.”

“And you can’t do it, as you’re about to pop.” Pregnant ladies everywhere. Maybe that was why I’d stopped confiding in Rory. I always used to be the older, wiser one, the one dispensing the advice. But now she was married and pregnant, so that just left me and my midlife crisis.

“Well, not till September twentieth, God willing. But yes, I’m not prepared to spend the summer in the woods. So I suggested you.”

“That’s nice of you, but I can’t leave the studio.” Could I? “And I have way too much going on with the new building.” Didn’t I?

For some reason, the idea of spending the summer in the woods was… appealing? Even though I was not an outdoorsy person. Growing up in a trailer had been, at times, a little too close to camping for adult me to have any interest in sleeping outside on purpose.

“Hear me out,” Rory said. “You always do the two-week closure in the dead of summer. The camp thing is two monthlong sessions. If you did the first session only, you’d really be helping them out. You’d only need someone to cover your classes for two weeks, and that someone is me.”

“Yeah, but it’s not just the teaching, it’s all the admin stuff. The boss stuff.”

Her silence let me know what she thought of that. Rory had been my second-in-command for years, and she ran her own ballet business, too. She was more than capable.

“Fine,” I said, “but what about the new place?”

“You don’t even close on it until your birthday.”

“Yeah, but I’m allowed two visits before that. I was going to take Justin through.” Justin was my contractor.

“So take Justin through now. Then go to camp. Or I’ll take Justin through.” When I didn’t say anything, she kept going. “This is actually perfect timing. You miss two weeks of classes, but you know I can cover those in my sleep. There’s nothing you can really do for the new place at this point. I mean, you don’t even have a name for it yet.”

I laughed. I could feel myself softening.

“I’m not trying to bully you into doing this,” she said, her tone growing serious. “I just… I don’t know, I thought you could use a break. A real break.”

She wasn’t wrong, and it kind of… choked me up to know that she had me so thoroughly figured out.

“The gig is formally called artist in residence,” she said. “It’ll be you, an actor, a writer, and so on. As I understand it, you’re not camp counselors per se, but more like mentors. The idea is that you do the gig, but you also get free time to pursue your own artistic aims.”

“I don’t have any artistic aims. Not beyond the next recital, anyway.” I had entrepreneurial aims. They were taking up all the space available for aims in my brain. I didn’t need to go to the forest to find my artistic soul or any bullshit like that.

But maybe they wouldn’t have Wi-Fi at this camp. I thought about Pillar Two. My commitment to it currently felt a little tenuous. I’d been tempted to run over my phone so I wouldn’t backslide on staying off dating apps. Being occupied teaching in the remote North Woods seemed like it would achieve the same thing, and I wouldn’t have to buy a new phone at the end of it.

It could be a cleanse, if you will. A man cleanse. And when I came out, I’d be clear thinking and ready to go on Granola with Gretchen. Hell, in the quiet of the forest, maybe the perfect name would come to me. Or maybe I’d be so cleansed and at peace that I would like the name Granola with Gretchen.

I had liked the symbolism of going on one last date before retiring from men, the ritualistic nature of a last hurrah, but another idea was forming.

“You know how in fairy tales, there’s often a wicked witch, or a menacing old lady?” I asked. “Like in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ There’s that lady who lures them into the woods and… I think she eats them?” I cracked myself up. “But she always lives in a forest, it seems like.”

“Yeah,” Rory said. “I think there’s lots of fairy tales like that. Doesn’t the witch in ‘Rapunzel’ lock her up in a tower in the woods? Why do you ask? Are you about to manifest a Brothers Grimm–themed recital?”

I ignored her questions. “All right. I’ll do it.”

Once upon a time there was a girl named Gretchen. Gretchen grew up to be a badass. And then she went to the woods to become a crone.

Teddy

It was possible that the reality of the North Woods was going to be different from my idea of the North Woods.

To begin with, it was ninety-two degrees when I got out of the van at the Wild Arts retreat that was to be my home for the summer. I knew because the driver, a gray-haired woman who looked like Paul Newman’s fraternal twin sister, announced as much as we drove through a giant wooden archway with a s. . .