The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(22)

I limp toward the table and Luke walks around to my side.

“Change places with me,” he demands. Because from his seat, on the far side of the table, it would be difficult for me to jump up and down throughout dinner.

I open my mouth to argue, and his eyes darken so dangerously that I do as I’m told.

“What was the car like?” he asks.

I glance up. Even if the Allens believe the world is fair, I know the truth and I suspect Luke does too. People lie. People will save themselves first, always. I could know the make, the model, the license plate. I could ID a mole on the guy’s inner right thigh and have his skin under my nails and he’d still say it was an accident or a misunderstanding and everyone would believe him.

“It doesn’t matter. Even if I knew who they were, they’d deny everything and say I fell off my bike on my own.”

“I know that,” he says. “I just want you to tell me what you saw.”

“It was a silver car. Small. I have no idea what make. Surfboards on the roof.”

“Did you see any of them?”

I close my eyes. “I only remember the one who grabbed me.” Another stain in my memory. His eyes were so…cold. He saw me bleeding, he saw my ruined bike and ripped shirt and he was still laughing. “He had a pierced eyebrow. A tattoo on his knuckles. That’s all I remember.”

The garage door opens, signaling the pastor’s arrival. Donna frowns. “We should stop talking about this.”

Luke’s head jerks toward her. “Why’s that?”

She blinks in surprise at his tone, then swallows. “Because I think Juliet would prefer this story remain…between us.”

It takes all of us a long second to understand what she hasn’t said: that if we tell the pastor, he’ll



work it into a sermon. He might even wait a few months, but then give just enough detail that no one doubts it was me. “A young girl, biking home from her job at the diner, ” he will say, and the whole congregation will shift toward me, remembering those weeks when I was bruised.

Most likely, they’ll think I brought it on myself, and I don’t know why I hate them for it when I’m thinking it too. Whether it’s logical or not, it still feels that if I was a better person, it wouldn’t have happened at all.

If I was the kind of girl the Allens think I am, would my father have left? Would my brother have died? Would I need to work at a diner to save money so that I’m not homeless once I finish high school?

If I was that other, better girl, would Justin still have done what he did? Would those guys have tried to grab me?

I can’t escape the feeling I somehow brought it all on myself.

“What state?” Luke asks. “What state were the tags?”

I shake my head. The answer isn’t going to help. “California,” I reply quietly as the door opens.

The pastor looks at me, sitting on the far side of the table. I’m not even sure it’s the scrapes that catch his attention so much as it is the fact that I’m in the wrong place and not being helpful. “What’s this?”

“Juliet took a little spill on her bike,” Donna says quickly.

Luke’s nostrils flare in silent argument.

“You fell?” the pastor asks me. “Were you wearing a helmet?”

I shake my head. Trust the pastor to find a way to make it my fault.

The pastor frowns at Donna, looking at the mess on the counter. “You shouldn’t have to do this all on your own.”

He’s not saying the boys should have helped. He’s saying, “Falling off a bike is no excuse. ”

I brace myself to stand but Luke climbs to his feet instead. “I can help,” he says.

But the look he shoots at the pastor’s back is lethal.

THE DAMAGE to my bike is deemed irreparable. I have enough saved for a new one, but I’m just not ready—there is never a moment when I’m outside now, even when I’m just walking nearby, that I don’t feel that rush of wind at my back, the whisper of warning that something’s coming for me. So I take the bus and it’s twice as long, and the pastor is slightly cool to me on those nights I haven’t helped Donna, as if it’s a choice I made on purpose.

Luke’s been going out without us since it happened, but when I get home from work a week later, he’s weirdly insistent that I come out.

“There’s a big party on the beach tonight,” he says. “We all need to go. I’ll drive us.”

I frown. There are frequently huge parties on the beach, and Luke’s never cared about going before, so I don’t know why this one matters. And he always drives separately since his evenings end very differently than mine and Danny’s do.

“Sure, whatever,” Danny agrees cheerfully, never questioning why Luke is changing the plan.

I get the feeling he ought to have questioned it.

When we arrive a few hours later, we find hundreds of kids. It’s a party that will definitely get broken up by the cops.

“Are we even going to know anyone here?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Luke replies, distracted. “Some of the guys from the line-up mentioned it.”

We move through the crowd. I assume we’re here for a girl Luke’s meeting, as if he doesn’t have enough girls down at Kirkpatrick, but he’s watching me more than he is the people around us. We’ve wandered aimlessly for ten minutes before I tug Danny’s hand toward the south end of the party, where music is blasting. He won’t want to dance, but I do, and I’m sick of just following Luke around so he can fuck someone new.