The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)(83)

I stop moving, and Luke turns, already wrapping a protective arm around me when he has no clue what’s happening. And then he recognizes Cash—and that arm tightens.

“Cash?” I whisper. “What are you doing here?”

He raises an eyebrow and folds his arms across his chest. “I thought I was here to surprise you.”

His head jerks toward Luke. “Who the fuck is he?”

Luke is still and silent, and then the arm that was wrapped around my waist releases me as he steps forward, his fist striking Cash so hard and so fast that Cash can’t even brace himself.

He stumbles backward, into the crowd, knocking over dancers, but Luke isn’t done. He dives at Cash and knocks him to the ground while the dance floor turns into chaos. People scatter, and Cash’s bodyguards spring into action, grabbing Luke from behind and pulling him away. Beck steps in as Cash climbs to his feet to make sure the fight ends…but the damage is already done.

Luke just hit Cash with no provocation and there were many witnesses, including Donna, who stands a few feet off the dance floor. Her eyes are wide, confused, and then her shoulders sag as if she’s finally figured out what’s been so obvious to everyone else.

“Call the cops!” Cash yells.

“No.” I step forward. “Let’s just go.”

Luke reaches for me. “Where the fuck are you going?” His fingers are on my skin for the very last time. Memorize this, Juliet.

“Let me handle it,” I reply, shaking him off.

“Juliet, if you leave with him, we’re over,” Luke says.

I swallow hard. These weeks with him have been thrilling and painful, and I think maybe I’ve stored up enough memories to get me through a few more years.

“I know,” I reply softly. I mean to sound careless but I don’t. I sound like I’m on the verge of falling apart.

I cross to where Cash stands and slide my arm through his. God, his timing couldn’t be worse. I’ll get him out of here and then figure out how to fix things with the police. “Let’s go elsewhere.”

“Fuck that,” he says. “I’m pressing charges.”

I raise a brow. “Cash, you’re not the only one who can press charges. The whole world saw you dragging me off an elevator by my hair, and there’s so much more I can say. So should I call the cops on you or should we start walking?”

He stares at me, dumbfounded. For all the dozens of times he’s hit me or thrown me against a wall, I’ve never once suggested I’d turn on him. “You wouldn’t.”

I laugh. I never said I loved him. I never even said I liked him. He just assumed it was true and took my silence as proof. “Watch me.”

A vein throbs in his temple as he grudgingly turns toward the ballroom’s exit just as the doors open and my stomach drops farther than I thought it possibly could.

Two uniformed officers are making their way toward me. Four others are heading toward Luke.

“What on Earth?” Donna asks, walking up beside me. “It was just a little fight.”

Except they’re not here because of the fight.

They’re here because Grady told them everything.

They keep walking until they’re nearly to where we stand, and then one of them turns to the security guards surrounding us and holds up a piece of paper. “We have a warrant,” he says, and nods to the guys behind him. Several of them walk to Luke, and one of them comes to me.

“Luke Taylor and Juliet Cantrell,” he says, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Daniel Allen.”





34

THEN

JUNE 2015

I startle awake to find every light in the room is still on, and Danny is not beside me. The house is silent for the first time, which means it must be late. I rub my eyes as I look at the clock. It’s 3:30.

Would he have…left? Would he have gone home? Is he back in Rhodes right now, telling Donna everything? I don’t know how I’ll face her again when this all comes out.

I go to the front deck to look for his car, and it’s still there, right where we left it.

Upstairs, the living room is an absolute disaster, a wasteland of red plastic cups and beer bottles, but there’s no one up here. I search the decks, the couches in the basement, the hot tub. I even look inside the bed of Danny’s truck. I call and he doesn’t answer.

Where the hell is he? I walk out to the beach, using my phone’s flashlight once I’m down there. In the distance, I see a blanket I recognize from the basement couch, someone moving inside it.

He’s out here with another girl?

My shock turns into relief in seconds. If he’s out here with another girl, so be it. I want it to be him. There’s a reason I’ve still got my ring on, after all. If he’d come back to the room begging me not to leave him, it would have bordered on the impossible to do it. Finding him with another girl right now would give us a clean end.

The huddled figures startle and blink into the light as I approach.

“What the fuck?” Ryan demands a voice, sitting up.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “Sorry. I’m looking for Danny.”

As I lower the flashlight, the figure beside him, scrambling to pull the blanket overhead, is illuminated: Grady.

I stumble backward in shock.