The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(37)

Luke lifts himself just enough to pull away the sheet that separates us. His erection presses to my abdomen, his hard chest bearing down. His hand slides beneath my camisole, spreads itself wide over my bare skin, climbing upward, cupping one breast, squeezing and pinching my nipple, forcing a small cry from my throat.

He pulls the camisole down to expose me, and his mouth follows, tugging and sucking while I arch against him, silently begging for more but unwilling to ask for it.

I don’t need to ask; he knows me better than I know myself.

He reaches down and removes my shorts, grazing a single finger between my legs then slipping it inside. A rough exhale pushes past his lips at the feel of me, wet and tight, gripping him.

I shove his shorts down just low enough for him to spring free, and then he is against me, rubbing against my damp heat. I say nothing, just meet his gaze, and that’s enough. He knew the answer would be yes. It was yes from the moment he walked in the diner ten years ago, long before I realized it, and nothing has changed.

He thrusts inside me and groans. “Jules.”

It’s been so long since he called me that.

Pulling out, he then pushes back in, each thrust rougher and harder than the one before it, with his hands palming my ass, spreading me wide to take more of him.

God, I’ve missed this. His weight, his smell, the fullness of him inside me, the way it’s nearly too much. My hands go to his hair, dig into his back. I claw at him, arching to get closer, urging him to move faster. There’s no one to stop us but we might just stop ourselves. We should be stopping ourselves.

He complies, giving me everything, stifling his grunts against my neck, our bodies slick with sweat. I gasp hard as it clicks inside me, as my muscles clamp down on him and heat shoots through me.

“I’m—” is all I manage before I come so hard, so unexpectedly, that it makes the rest of the world go silent. I’m blind, deaf, mute, only vaguely aware of those few sharp thrusts he makes as he follows me, sinking his teeth into my shoulder as he comes.

His weight sags as he collapses, crushing me beneath him, and I relish it. I want this, I want the smothering wholeness of him. I want to stay like this forever.

Luke rolls to the side and pulls me into him, pressing my face to his chest and wrapping his arms around me. It’s all I’ve wanted for years and years, and this could have been us if I hadn’t fucked everything up. But I did, and none of it can be fixed now. I’m going to have to say goodbye to him all over again in a few weeks.

I thought it might kill me before. Now, I’m not sure how it possibly couldn’t kill me.

Tears slip down my face and my shoulders shake. “I think you should leave now,” I whisper.

He freezes, and there’s a flash of pain—pain I’ve seen in the past—before his expression turns absolutely flat.

After climbing from the bed, he leaves without a word.

I hurt him. It’s probably for the best.





16

THEN

MAY 2014

M y final months of school feel especially anticlimactic. Hailey isn’t going away to college either—the only school she applied to was in LA, to be near her boyfriend, and she didn’t get in—but everyone else is. They come to class in their college sweatshirts. Girls compare bedspreads they’ve picked for their dorm rooms and share rumors about what’s to come, and it’s as if everyone around me has an engine they’ve just started, but when I turn the key in mine, it simply clicks once, then dies.

I have failed to launch. Eighteen seems too young to be deemed a failure, but no one even asks what I’ve got planned. They already expected little from me, or nothing at all.

I’ve taken vocational tests online, and every single career choice sounds more dismal than the one before it. I like music, but I don’t want to be a music teacher. Symphony fundraising was another, but I can’t imagine enjoying either fundraising or the symphony. Even the tests themselves are grasping at straws, saying, “This girl isn’t qualified for anything…just make some shit up.” I’m hoping I’ll have enough saved by August to get a room somewhere, but that’s the extent of my plans.

“Not everyone goes to college,” Danny soothes when we talk. “Maybe you’re just meant to be a wife and a mom.”

The low rumble of Luke’s voice hits my ear like a gift. “She isn’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a wife and mom,” Danny argues.

“No, but that isn’t what she fucking wants from life. That’s just what you want from her.”

“That’s not true,” Danny replies before he clicks the door shut behind him.

I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll hear Luke’s voice until next fall, but only a few days later, Donna is all smiles when I walk into the house. “I’ve got good news,” she says. “Luke’s coming for the summer.”

The pastor is frowning, poking a tongue in his cheek. Only good news to one of them, then.

“That’s great,” I reply. My voice is muted, my smile forced, but it’s not because I share the pastor’s lack of enthusiasm. It’s because inside me a spark has blazed into a wildfire. I’m ecstatic, ebullient, joyful; my heart races and I can’t reveal so much as a hint of it without revealing it all.

I wonder what changed Luke’s mind.