Ten Summers

by S.J. Lane

For Ema Morgan, Camp Roselyn was more than cabins and campfires—it was the place where she met Beckett Hayes. Every summer from age ten to eighteen, they shared lake swims, secret dares, and the kind of inside jokes that never lost their spark. Each August ended with the same unspoken See you next year.

But then one summer, everything changed.

Seven years later, Ema returns to the lake for a friend’s wedding, certain Beckett will be nothing more than a memory. Instead, she finds him two doors down—older, broader, and wearing a wedding ring. With their shared past hanging between them and the weight of the lives they’ve built apart, they must navigate a week of stolen glances, late-night conversations, and the haunting question neither dares to

What if the one who got away was never meant to leave?

Ten Summers is a nostalgic, slow-burn romance about the magic of first love, the ache of growing up, and the moments that define us—year after year.

398 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 22, 2025

About the author

S.J. Lane is a storyteller rooted in the quiet strength of Mississippi, raised in a small farming town where life moves to the hum of tractors, porch swings, and the kind of values that never go out of style. Ageless in spirit, she’s a woman of many hats—but the ones she wears with the most pride are wife, mother, leader, and writer.

With twelve years of marriage built on faith, resilience, and a whole lot of laughter, Lane is also the proud mother of four beautiful children who fill her world with meaning and chaos in equal measure. Her family remains the heartbeat of everything she does, grounding her as she navigates the many roles she’s grown into.

Professionally, she has carved out a powerful path in the world of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), serving as a Sr. Operations Leader where she manages high-performance contact center teams with vision, precision, and heart. In a space where metrics matter and people matter more, Lane leads with a balance of grace and grit. She is the calm in the storm, the voice that steadies, the mind that strategizes. Her work is a testament to her ability to build, nurture, and deliver—whether it’s through process, people, or performance.

But beneath the structure of KPIs and coaching sessions, there lives a creative force that refuses to be silenced. Writing has always been her secret sanctuary—a sacred place where expectations fall away and stories rise in their place. For Lane, writing is more than passion. It’s escape. It's expression. It’s the place she goes to remember who she is, separate from titles and timelines.

Her stories echo with emotional truth, capturing the raw, often messy beauty of real life. She writes for the women who’ve been overlooked, for the girls who dream with open eyes, and for every soul who’s ever felt like they had too much heart and nowhere to put it. Her work blends romance and resilience, Southern charm and modern depth, with characters that speak in the voice of lived experience.

When she’s not balancing the art of operational excellence or getting lost in her fictional worlds, you can find her soaking up the quiet moments—coffee in hand, journal nearby, watching her kids turn everyday life into something extraordinary.

S.J. Lane invites you to step into her stories—stories born from love, loss, and everything in between. And if you listen closely, you just might hear the steady heartbeat of a woman who’s lived it all—and found a way to write it beautiful.