My Star-Crossed Summer (Jasmine Falls Love Stories #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

VICTORIA

T his is it , I think. This is how I die—utterly humiliated because of my mother .

I’ve been saying for years that she was going to put me into an early grave, but mostly I was kidding.

But now, because of her, I’m ten feet up in the air and grasping a massive oak limb for dear life. My fingers are slipping as my legs dangle below me, the skirt of my traitorous knit dress rucked up around my waist as the moon shines above me like a spotlight.

Okay, fine. This is not entirely because of my mother. It’s also because I’m a big fat chicken and refused to draw any more fire from her by walking out the front door like a woman with her dignity intact. But the walls of this house were closing in, and I was sick to death of her rubbing my nose in my mistakes, and those last words she said to me made me snap my champagne glass in half.

What you fail to grasp is that your bad decisions reflect badly on this whole family. I won’t always be around to fix your mistakes.

Honestly, that woman was born on a high horse. But in the Griffin house, you have to pick your battles. Sometimes, that means biting your tongue and climbing out the second-story window of your childhood bedroom.

Hanging by my fingertips, I grit my teeth and try once more to locate another limb with my foot, but it’s no use. My legs swing in the air as the bark bites into my palms.

Awesome.

Laughter erupts inside the house and I freeze, certain that Mom’s friends have spied me and are simultaneously clutching their pearls and whipping out their cell phones. This house, one of the oldest in Jasmine Falls, is a two-story Georgian with windows that stretch almost floor to ceiling—it’s a regal home. A historic gem that has survived a dozen hurricanes, two fires, and plenty of parties as awful as this one. As a teenager, I slipped out this way a million times—stepped out onto this limb, walked it as easy as if it were a balance beam, and then shinnied down the trunk like a squirrel.

Tonight, though, I’m not so limber.

The din inside the house rises again, but it’s only music and the usual gossip that always bubbles over once the champagne starts flowing. Tonight, my mother’s fancy spring soiree just happens to coincide with the implosion of my career—and that means Mom’s in damage-control mode. More than fifty people are crowded inside, and in the last hour, they’ve all heard my mother’s version of how I cancelled my wedding, broke off my engagement, and left my lucrative job at a top-ranked real estate firm.

For the record, I stand by those decisions. Mom, however, thinks they represent a string of unforgivable failures—and a personal attack on her reputation. Elaine Griffin holds herself to an impossible standard of perfection: perfect job, perfect house, perfect marriage. So, of course she’s always held my big sister Gwen and me to that same standard. I know perfection is an illusion, but our mother might actually die—burst into flames like a vampire in sunlight—if her flawless facade ever fell and everyone in town saw she’s just as imperfect as the rest of us.

That’s why she cornered Sheila Jenkins to insist that I’d make an excellent addition to Sheila’s real estate firm and would certainly bring some of my biggest clients with me. Mom’s trying her best to spin the news about me leaving my job and ex-fiancé so that it resonates like fiery independence and not a Titanic-sized disaster.

Some days, it feels like both.

I wriggle like a worm on a hook, trying to get my skirt to fall down enough to cover my backside—because the Jasmine Falls rumor mill does not need to know what my lacy undies look like—but the dress is caught on a branch and won’t budge.

Cursing, I struggle to walk my hands down the limb toward the trunk, but I’m losing my grip.

“Vic!” someone whisper-yells. “What the heck?”

In a blink, my hand slips and I yelp as I crash to the ground.

I land so hard in the grass that it rattles my teeth. My free fall was less than ten feet—but my backside will have an ugly bruise tomorrow.

My sister Gwen steps out of the shadows, her big blue eyes wide. “You okay there, champ?” she says.

I wince as she pulls me to my feet.

“How’d you know I was out here?” I ask.

She arches a brow. “I was hiding out in the study and saw your lily-white legs dangling out here in the moonlight. Thought you might need an extraction.”

I grunt, brushing the grass from my dress. “Mom’s dialed up to eleven. I’m done.”

Gwen grabs my hand, pulling me into the back yard. “Come on, before everyone comes out to see what crash-landed out here. Pretty sure they heard you clear across the county.”

“You’re hilarious.” I grab my shoes and follow her toward the treehouse, our hiding spot since we were old enough to climb.

It’s more like a deck than a house, with solid floors and waist-high rails. There’s no roof or walls, but the dense trees hide us from view. Once we’re up the ladder and sitting side-by-side on the floor, Gwen pulls a flask from somewhere in the folds of her dress and offers it to me.

“You’re like a cartoon character with impossible pockets,” I say. “What else do you have hiding in there?”

She shrugs. “All the essentials. Including Logan’s favorite scotch.”

“Can’t hurt,” I say, taking a big sip. “I feel like I’ve been hurled from a catapult.”

Gwen’s navy dress fans around her. She's effortlessly beautiful, all curves and soft edges. Her hair’s cut in a cute bob that makes the curls extra bouncy—something my hair will never achieve. Tonight, I coaxed mine into waves, but as I run my fingers through it now, I pull out a couple of twigs.

“So what drove you to the emergency exit?” Gwen asks, sipping from the flask. “Usually, I’m the one who bails early.”

“First Mom tried to get Sheila Jenkins to hire me—after telling her a masterful story about how Theo bullied me out of Rayanne’s firm after I dumped him.”

“Ugh,” she groans.

“Agreed. I’d rather bathe in lava than work for Sheila Jenkins. Her sales record is amazing, but she’s about as fun to be around as a nest of angry hornets that have been set on fire.”

“Didn’t her partner just leave?”

“Yep. Opened her own firm in Florida. And she’s crushing it.” I take another sip of scotch, and it burns a path all the way to my belly. “Then Mom told Marcia Roberts that I dumped Theo because he left me—and I quote—unfulfilled.”

She snorts. “Well, that’s true. In a sense.”

“She’ll do anything to cover up my mistakes to save her precious reputation,” I groan. “Theo’s a jerk, but I don’t love having Mom go into jackal mode and use the rumor mill to spread lies.”

“If anyone deserves to see Mom reach her final form, it’s Theo,” Gwen says. “I’d argue he’s getting precisely what he earned.”

Gwen’s accustomed to being the target of our mother’s ire even more than I am. Mom expected both of us to be flawless: from hourglass figures and straight-As to impressive careers and trophy husbands. Gwen caught more scorn because she openly defied Mom’s wishes, whereas I caved because it meant less fighting. When Gwen opened a bakery, I let Mom push me into real estate. When Gwen dated guys with tattoos and scruffy beards, I went out with the boring sons of Mom’s friends just to keep the peace. Now that Gwen’s dating Logan and running a booming business, some of the heat’s off her. But that means it’s squarely on me.

“That’s how Mom works,” Gwen says. “She thinks if she pulls enough strings, she can fix what’s broken.”

I snort. “Yeah. Right now, she thinks the broken thing is me.”

“She’s wrong,” Gwen says, her blue eyes glittering.

“Maybe,” I mutter. My breakup was no tragedy, and I refuse to play the sad, wounded woman—a shell of a human at age twenty-eight. Mom thought Theo was my perfect match, but that’s because he shared her impossible standards for every part of his life—including me. And when I finally realized that Theo was resentful of my success and that his version of marriage meant me giving up my career—well, that made leaving him a no-brainer.

“Mom got me that job with Rayanne,” I confess. “They were sorority sisters at Vanderbilt back in the day.”

“But Rayanne kept you on because you’re excellent at what you do. Mom had nothing to do with that part.”

I shake my head. “It set a bad precedent.” I’d let Mom pull those strings when I was twenty-three because I was struggling in a dead-end temp job and wanted to stop living off ramen noodles and grilled cheese sandwiches. Back then, I’d thought she was truly trying to help me, but now I know better. She was embarrassed that I wasn’t making a name for myself fast enough. Mom’s always been controlling of both me and Gwen, but I’d assumed it would stop when we were out of college.

I was dead wrong on that one.

“I never should have accepted her…help,” I say, choking on the last word.

Gwen lifts a brow. “We both know how it would have gone if you hadn’t. She’d rather die than stop holding us to her impossible standards.” She smoothes a fold in her dress. “She thinks that molding you into a version of herself is going to make you a success and preserve her legacy.”

“That is literally my worst nightmare.”

She gives me a sad smile as the night birds twitter around us, the leaves rustling in the warm breeze. This is one of those perfect spring nights where the air’s losing its chill and the stars shine a bit brighter. Everywhere you look, there are blossoming flowers and new leaves, and the whole world feels alive with new growth. Spring always makes me feel hopeful and tenacious, like I can tackle anything.

At least, it used to make me feel that way.

“She said she didn’t raise me to be a quitter,” I grumble. “Told me I run as soon as things get hard.”

Gwen frowns. “Leaving a toxic relationship is not being a quitter. You know that.”

“I told her I was doing what was best for me.”

She points her finger at me. “That’s exactly right. And don’t ever forget it.”

I pick at a tiny hole near the hem of my dress. “What Mom thinks she knows about us could fill an ocean.”

Gwen snorts. “But what she actually knows might fill a teaspoon.”

For example, Mom didn’t know that Theo tried to mold me into his perfect image of a wife and constantly undermined me to preserve his massive ego. He hated that I outperformed him at Rayanne’s and that I actually made friends with my clients. He was manipulative in that way that narcissists always are: they make you feel cherished one minute, like you’re the best thing that happened to them. In the next, they’re making you feel like a villain for having the audacity to not give in to their demands. He made me feel bad for standing up for myself and communicating my own needs—whether that was wanting to take a weekend trip to the coast by myself or disagreeing with him on how we should handle renovations of our house. The longer we were together, the more his resentment of me grew. Once I realized he was never going to change, I bailed.

And the job Mom thought was so great? Staying at Rayanne’s firm made me feel comfortable (mostly) and meant I wasn’t Mom’s primary target anymore. But it meant that I had to keep working with Theo—and that was a hard no.

Once Theo was out of the picture, I felt free. Now I want to cut out all of the other parts of my life that are a mismatch, too.

“What’s really going on with you?” Gwen says. “The Victoria I know would stomp right over to Mom and tell her where to shove her spin before she dropped the mic and flounced out of that party Real Housewives -style.”

I let out a heavy sigh because she’s not wrong. Stifling my own needs has become my default, and I don’t want that anymore.

“I’ve been wasting my life,” I mutter. There’s a hollowness in my chest that I can’t explain, but I’ve been feeling it for months.

“Whoa,” she says. “Big leap. Back up, sweetie.”

I shake my head. “Mom’s been trying to reframe all of my missteps to everyone here—and I gotta say, Gwennie, laying them all out like that just makes it super clear that I’ve been on the wrong path for a long time.”

Like, since the second I let Mom get me that job with Rayanne’s real estate firm.

Gwen sighs. “You’re a force of nature. Don’t let Mom convince you otherwise.” She reaches over and taps her finger to my temple. “Don’t let her in here. You’ll have to burn a truckload of sage to get her out.”

“You know the worst thing?” I say. “I don’t think I even like real estate anymore. Maybe I never did.”

She nods but doesn’t look surprised.

“I’m good at it, but it doesn’t bring me joy.” I stretch my legs in front of me, feeling defeated. “I want what you have. I want to do something that truly makes me happy.” I sigh, feeling this envy, this want, deep in my bones—and then instantly feel a wave of guilt because my sister deserves to be happy, and I love that she’s built this amazing life for herself. “I want to be passionate about something, the way you are with the cafe. I want to do something that has purpose.”

“Oh, honey,” Gwen says.

“I just wish I knew what that something was.”

She slides closer to me and places her hand over mine. “I have no doubt you’ll find your happy,” she says. She means well, but her words are a knife in my chest because I’m not sure of anything anymore. I feel like I’ve been doing everything wrong. I’m so far off my path, I can’t even see it anymore.

“I’ve been looking at job listings everywhere since I left Rayanne’s,” I confess. “but nothing appeals to me. It’s like I don’t know myself the way I thought I did. I feel unmoored.”

“To be fair, you’ve had a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time.”

She’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. When I broke off my engagement with Theo back in December, it blew up my whole life. I moved out of our house the very next day. A week later, I left my job with Rayanne, in part because Theo had convinced everyone in the office that I’d entered my villain era. He could be charming when he wanted, and he had all of our colleagues under his spell.

Theo didn’t respect me, and he’d never truly seen me as his equal. He’d been threatened by my success and expected me to sacrifice my career for our marriage. It wasn’t until I saw Gwen with her new boyfriend Logan that the truth really sank in. And that moment galvanized the fact that I wouldn’t just be settling with Theo—I’d be sacrificing my identity and squeezing myself into this mold he’d made for me. Realizing that on the day of our wedding wasn’t the best timing ever, but leaving him was my only option.

After the wedding debacle, I moved back into my house at the lake, next to Gwen. I’d been renting it to Logan, but once I broke things off with Theo, Logan ripped that lease in half and insisted I come back to my home. Gwen won the lottery with that guy, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous of that, too. Everything in Gwen’s life seemed to be falling into place while mine felt like it had been blown to smithereens.

“I have to find a job soon,” I mutter. “I’m burning through my savings.”

“My offer still stands,” she says matter-of-factly. “You can be the cafe’s marketing strategist and social media wunderkind. Logan would pay you an obscene amount of money to do it.”

“And I do appreciate it,” I tell her. “But I can’t let you do that. I have to do this on my own. I have to find what lights me up.”

She nods in agreement. I could do the job she offered—easily. But I know it’s not my path. I didn’t blow up my life just to settle again.

That dwindling savings, though. It’s a beast with big teeth.

“What about that job your friend Roxy called you about?” Gwen says.

I laugh. “Director of a kids’ camp? Come on. I don’t know what to do with kids.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit. Kids would love you. Your skill set extends way beyond real estate and marketing.”

“Please. I don’t know the first thing about teaching kids. Mom’s dead right on that one—I’ve got zero maternal genes.”

She sips from the flask and frowns. “You need to stop letting other people define you, babe. Screw that noise.”

“Scotch makes you sassy,” I quip. But she’s not wrong. The problem is, now that I’ve let go of everyone else’s expectations of me, I don’t recognize myself. I’m not sure what I want.

“Sometimes getting out of your comfort zone is the best way to shake something loose. No one ever grew from being comfortable. Ask me how I know.” A chime splits the air, and she digs through the pocket of her dress to pull out her phone.

“It’s not fair,” I say. “You got all the curves and all the brains.”

“One hundred percent false, and you know it.”

“You’re a good sister, Gwennie.”

“Giddy up,” she says, pulling me to my feet. “Logan’s here to break us out for real. He’s parked across the street.”

“He really leans into the knight in shining armor thing,” I tease.

The tiniest blush touches her cheeks. “He likes to be protective,” she says. “Even though he knows I don’t need rescue.” She smirks, but I know she loves having a partner who makes her a priority.

I hope one day I’ll have that, too.

But right now, it’s time to make myself a priority. It’s time to find my happy.

I just need to know where to look.