The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(82)

tables, but she’s nowhere to be found, which is exactly why it’s a bad idea to entrust personal friends with important roles.”

I’ve fucking had it. I take a step forward but Luke beats me. “Donna and I will see if we can find her,” he says. “And, Hilary…alienating the people who pay your salary isn’t a great move.” His words are polite, but his tone and the chill in his eyes send a clear message. He takes one last look at me, a too-long look, before he leads Donna off in search of Libby.

“I’m sorry,” Drew whispers. “Was he not supposed to know?”

I shake my head. “It’s okay.” But I feel like it’s all spilling out, one secret after the next and, really, there’s only one left. The worst one. “Let me see if I can find Libby.”

I walk away, pulling out my phone and looking for Libby’s name. When our text chain appears, I feel sick all over again about how one-sided our friendship became: it was always her reaching out, her congratulating me, and me replying every third or fourth time with a heart emoji or something similarly distant.

One more person I disappeared on.

Hey, just making sure you didn’t go into labor. Hilary is looking for you. Is everything okay?





LIBBY


No, not really. But I’m nearly there.

She walks in the door a minute later, and I cut across the room toward her.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She looks over her shoulder. “Here, walk with me,” she says under her breath. “I’m supposed to be working in the auction part of the room.”

We start walking. The air seems to whistle out of her chest, and with it, she deflates. I hadn’t realized, until now, just how tired she looks.

“Grady got a call this afternoon and said he had to go back to talk to the police,” she continues.

“The police?”

She nods and looks around her quickly. “Some reporter gave them all this new information about the night Danny died. She’s suggesting they reopen the investigation.”

I grip the table closest to me to stop the room from spinning. “What?”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have broken the news to you like that. I just…they’re making something of the fact that Grady and Danny argued. And I guess Grady was seen coming back in the middle of the night—I didn’t even know about that. I mean…they can’t possibly believe Grady would kill someone, would they?”

The room is too loud and too bright. My knees begin to shake.

If the police even suggest Grady was involved, I know exactly what he’ll do. The very thing I’ve dreaded for the past seven years.

He’ll tell them the truth.

“I need to—” I whisper weakly, moving away from her without even finishing the sentence.

I walk blindly toward the other side of the room, hands pressed to my stomach, my heart beating wildly. I don’t know how to fix this but I’m still desperately hunting for a solution. I think of Luke so many years ago at Harrison’s house, glancing up at the cliff and saying, “You ever try jumping off that?” Right now, I’m looking for a way he can jump and survive. I don’t think there is one.

I have no idea what Grady and Danny argued about, but it hardly matters because Grady does have an alibi for those hours on the beach. And Luke doesn’t.

That fucking reporter. I should have known. I never should have come back.

“I can’t wait to peel that dress off you later tonight,” Luke says from behind, leaning down so I’m the only one who’ll hear.

I turn, looking around us before I answer. “We can’t. Donna’s going to be in the suite.”

“You think she’d care at this point? She just wants us to be happy.”

He tugs me toward the dance floor. It seems like a bad idea, in front of all these people, and an especially bad idea when I should be figuring out how the hell to get him out of this mess I made, but I can’t resist. The clock’s been ticking for us, ever since we arrived, and it’s moving faster by the moment. If the cops are talking to Grady right now, this might be my last chance to be near Luke at all.

“I didn’t figure you for a dancer,” I tell him, stalling. “Or a guy who’d own a tux, to be honest.”

His mouth twitches. “I’m full of surprises, sweetheart.”

His hand slides from my hip to the small of my back. People will talk if they’re watching, and I should probably back away, but I can’t seem to. I should probably tell him about Danny’s case getting reopened and I don’t do that either. I suspect he’ll just make things worse. He was always too goddamn honest. I’ll have to solve it on my own. Somehow.

“Are you going to tell me why you were at Pipeline?” he asks, tugging me closer.

“I just was.”

I start to pull away from him and his grip tightens around my hip, pressing me against him. “Can you just, for once in your fucking life, tell me the truth? You didn’t just happen to be there.”

“It doesn’t matter why I was there,” I whisper, but my voice cracks.

It doesn’t matter that I was in Tahiti for the Tahiti Pro and in Australia for the Pro Gold Coast, and that I have gone to as many of those as I could possibly attend and hidden it so he wouldn’t know. It’s all resting there, right on the tip of my tongue, but then he turns me…and I stop dancing entirely as Cash walks toward us. Cash, who never made any effort to see me, is here, cutting across the dance floor, in a tux. He’s smiling, but there’s a dangerous look in his eyes I recognize. He hasn’t seen me in six weeks but still thinks he’s got the right to be angry that I’m dancing with someone else.