The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(36)

I force a laugh as I open my door. “Believe me, I no longer need the money if you’re feeling like you need to pay me back.”

His hand lands on my forearm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrug him off, climbing from the car. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. You looked like you were starving to death. No matter how evil you think I am, I’m not a fan of watching starvation in progress.”

“Then take a look in the mirror,” he mutters from behind.

Ha fucking ha, Luke.

I sigh in relief when we enter the quiet hardware store, taking in the empty aisles. Other than the guy at the register, no one even seems to know me. Luke gets the primer and I get more drop cloths.

He insists on paying though I probably earn more than he does.

We’re loading it all in the trunk when the click of a camera hits my ear. Some dumb kid has his iPhone raised, and he hasn’t even had time to lower his arm before Luke’s closed the distance and is towering over him.

“Delete it,” Luke snaps.



“You can’t make me delete that,” the kid replies. “We’re in a public place. It’s legal.”

I’ve got to give him credit…it takes balls or a rich father to stand there spouting off about your rights when a guy Luke’s size looms over you.

“I don’t give a shit whether it was legal or not. I’m not letting you take a picture without her permission. Delete it.”

The kid tries to move the phone to his pocket, but Luke is faster. He snatches it away and walks into the street, slinging it into a storm drain. “Problem solved.”

The kid mutters under his breath as Luke returns to the car.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I say quietly.

His shoulders sag, as if disappointed in himself. He can’t stop defending me, even now.

For everyone’s sake, though, I really wish he would.

THAT NIGHT, after dinner, Donna pulls us to the dining room table. “Look at these photos I found. I don’t know if you even remember, but the local paper did a story about the surfers at Long Point and gave me hard copies.”

In the first photo—the one they published—I stand between Danny and Luke, all three of us in swimsuits, the breeze blowing our hair. Danny is smiling at the camera, and I’m looking at Luke. I know exactly how I felt in that moment: that I couldn’t not to look at him, not step a little closer. I would capitalize on the moments when no one was watching, then inhale him in large, desperate gulps.

It’s how I still feel. When I see his arm reach for something, it’s a struggle not to reach out, too, not to let my fingers trace the veins in his hand, in his forearm. When he takes a seat, it’s a struggle not to press my lips to the top of his head and see if his hair still smells like salt and that shampoo he always used. When he walks into a room, I’m fighting not to walk straight to him, as if magnetized, and let my head rest against his chest.

I’m fighting every bit as hard as I did then to hide what I feel. I just didn’t realize until this moment that I used to be so…bad at it. I wonder if I still am.

Luke slides out a photo from beneath the top one, and goose bumps crawl along my arms. Danny and I are smiling at the camera, and Luke is looking at me—exactly the way I was looking at him.

Jesus, does Donna really not see it? Did Danny not see it? It’s so fucking obvious what existed there. If they’d just figured it out, this whole disaster could have been avoided. I’d simply be Danny’s teenage girlfriend, the one no one keeps track of anymore, the one he was well rid of.

And Luke and I…I don’t know. I don’t know what we could have been. All those could-have-beens—for Danny, for me, for Luke—they threaten to crush me, over and over again.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” I whisper, and Donna pats my hand, giving me credit for the wrong kind of

sadness.

I manage to brush my teeth and strip off my clothes before the tears start. In the darkness I weep and wonder how it is that after all this time, nothing has changed. I’m still crying over the wrong guy.

I’m still feeling like I will die without him.

I’m woken by my door as it opens. The wood floor creaks loudly beneath Luke’s feet as he approaches in nothing but a pair of pajama pants. I suck in air at the sight of him—at his well-honed muscles, broad shoulders, and the way his pants hang off narrow hips.

Our eyes meet and my heart hammers, but I can’t look away.

It was never like this with Danny, a burning in my veins. I feel stretched thin waiting for something I can’t allow to happen, and the burning continues, grows, making me feverish and blind with it. By the time he finally reaches the bed, I am so strung out, so needy, that I’m past saying no.

Incapable of it.

His nostrils flare as he takes me in, as if he hates me or himself for what’s about to happen.

I don’t care if you hate me, Luke. Just don’t stop. Don’t walk away.

He climbs onto the bed, caging me in—a forearm planted on each side of my head. And then his mouth lowers, hard on mine, as if no time has passed at all. His kiss is all heat, his tongue seeking, his hand threading through my hair.

He smells just like he always did, that combination of skin and soap and sand that was always his alone. I breathe deep, wishing I could save this forever, wanting everything to slow and also to move faster before one of us is stricken by our consciences.