Chapter 19
SUMMER
Icame awake all at once. Going from fantasy to reality in the span of a second was a little jarring. I lay there on my back, staring at the ceiling fan turning slow lazy circles above me, and tried to remember how to breathe.
What was that?
I pressed both hands flat against my stomach like I was trying to keep something from escaping. The sheet was twisted around my legs. My hair was sticking to my cheek. My entire body was covered in a sheen of sweat.
I untangled myself from the sheet and sat up on the edge of the bed. I sat there for a moment and tried to shake off the erotic dream. And damn, had it been a good one. It had been so real. It felt like there had been actual hands on my body.
And of course, I couldn’t forget the star of the show—Colt Anderson.
I pressed my palms hard against my eyes as if I could scrub the images from my head. It didn’t help. The second I lowered my hands, it all came rushing back.
The two of us on the sand under a sky that was blanketed in the brightest stars I had ever seen. The sound of the waves coming in slow and even. His hands had been everywhere. And his mouth… hot damn.
His voice low against my ear saying things that were probably a combination of things he actually said and excerpts from the spicy books I read.
I stood up. I needed air and cold water. I crossed to the window and opened it. The morning air came in, salty and cool. I inhaled the familiar scent, closed my eyes, and let it move through me. It immediately made me feel better.
The dream wasn’t about to let me forget a single detail. The way he’d looked at me. Smirked at me. Kissed me.
I told myself not to look toward the Anderson property but of course I did. I couldn’t see anything. That was the goal of the tall shrubs and strategically placed fencing. It ensured they had plenty of privacy.
I needed coffee and a cold shower. I pulled my hair up off my neck and held it there for a moment, letting the breeze wash over my damp skin. Unfortunately, the heat I was feeling came from the inside. The cool breeze was doing very little to help cool me down.
I turned on the water, running it lukewarm before stepping in.
I let the water run down my spine until my skin was covered in goosebumps and the last traces of that dream had been rinsed away.
Or at least that’s what I told myself. The images were still there, burned into the back of my eyelids every time I blinked.
His hands. His voice. The way Dream-Colt had looked at me like I was that mermaid he’d been drawn to that first time he saw me.
Seven years and my subconscious still hadn’t gotten the memo. I wrapped myself in a towel and stood at the sink, studying my reflection. My cheeks were still flushed.
I brushed my teeth thinking back to that first summer with Colt.
It had been the worst. Or the best depending on how I looked at it.
I’d been twenty years old. He’d been twenty-seven.
That gap had felt enormous and also completely irrelevant because when we were together the math didn’t matter.
It had felt like standing too close to the sun.
It was hot and a little dangerous. And completely worth it.
I’d known who he was before I knew him. Everyone in Surfside knew the Anderson family.
Their house was impossible to miss, especially next door to mine.
They arrived every summer like royalty and departed the same way.
I’d been too young to care about them when I was a kid.
By the time I was old enough to notice, I was too busy surfing and working and generally not paying attention to the rich neighbors.
And then there was that night on the beach. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before. I walked away from him because I never imagined I had a shot. Why would someone like him be interested in me?
But then he’d shown up at the bonfire two nights later. We talked and talked and then talked some more. We were sneaking off together. I’d told myself it was nothing. The typical summer fling that I didn’t tell anyone about.
The secret had been half the thrill at first. Dad had been going through so much that year.
Mom had been gone three years and he was still figuring out how to be a single father to two girls.
He didn’t need to come home and find his twenty-year-old daughter sneaking out to spend the night with a twenty-seven-year-old Texas billionaire. He would have lost his mind.
So we kept it quiet. Colt had understood without me having to explain it. He didn’t push me to define things or make it official or anything like that. It worked for us. At the time, I’d called it freedom.
Looking back, I understood it had also been incredibly convenient for him. I made it too easy. I dried my face and reached for my moisturizer, working it into my skin.
The second summer had been even better than the first, which was saying something.
We’d known each other by then. The early awkwardness was completely gone.
We’d fallen right back into it the night he arrived, like no time had passed at all.
You didn’t feel that way about something casual.
You didn’t lie awake listening to someone breathe and feel like everything was exactly right with the world if it was just a summer thing.
The third summer had been the one that changed everything. By that point, I’d stopped pretending. I was in love with him. I never told him of course. That would have ruined the easy nature of it.
He’d sat with me the last night of that summer.
I still remembered every detail from the way the air smelled to the sound of the crickets.
He’d held my hand and looked out at the water and told me he didn’t know when he could come back.
He told me Texas had him. The family business needed him. He told me not to wait.
He’d been kind about it but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t told me before. We were a summer thing. And despite him telling me not to wait, I did. For two years I waited. And the third summer when he didn’t show up, I figured it out. I realized it was truly over. I moved on.
I didn’t stop loving him, but it stopped being painful. I knew he was dangerous to my heart. Unfortunately, my heart had no self-preservation. I was falling head over heels for him again.
I needed to get downstairs. I needed the normal things like cartoons on the TV with River and Ocean arguing. That would get me back on track. I could handle all the complicated feelings with a little normalcy.
The kitchen smelled like coffee. Becca was already at the counter in her robe with her hair piled up.
“Coffee?” she asked without turning around.
“No, thanks.”
I could feel her watching me as I pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it at the sink. I sliced a lemon from the bowl on the counter, squeezed it in, and watched the juice cloud through the cold water. I drank half of it standing there at the sink.
“Okay,” Becca said.
“Okay what?”
“Why are you drinking lemon water when there’s a full pot of coffee two feet away?”
“I’m dehydrated,” I said. “I’ll have coffee later.”
From the living room came the sounds of the television, and the low bickering of River and Ocean debating something filled the air. That was the sound I’d been looking for. That was the sound that said all was right with the world.
I grabbed a banana to go with my lemon water. I wasn’t a health nut like Colt, but some days I did feel a little dehydrated. I spent a lot of time in the sun and yesterday had been stressful.
“Come outside,” Becca said.
It wasn’t really a suggestion. It was code for we needed to talk without little ears eavesdropping.
I followed her out to the patio with my water glass.
She dropped into the chair nearest the railing.
The morning air was cool still, but it would be hot soon.
I sat down in the chair beside her and stared at the water.
“Talk,” she said. “Yesterday was wild and we didn’t get a chance to talk last night. How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Summer, I know you.”
“I had a dream,” I said. “It was nothing. I just woke up a little rattled.”
She waited.
I looked sideways at her. “About Colt.”
She laughed. “A dream, huh?”
“The kind of dream that sticks with you.”
“Oh, I bet.” She winked. “I’m divorced, not dead. I have dreams.”
“I can’t get it out of my head and I hate it. I hate that he’s been back for five minutes and I’m already losing my mind. It’s like four years didn’t pass.”
“You’re not losing your mind. You’re human. Sorry to break it to you but being human means falling in love.”
I groaned. “I’m in so much trouble.”
“You’ve been in trouble since the night he jogged past the bonfire.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I’d been in trouble long before that.
I’d been in trouble for seven years, if I was being honest. It didn’t matter if I dated great guys.
I went out with Bodhi, and as much as I tried to fake it with him, it never worked.
There was never going to be anyone that could make me forget Colt.
“I can’t do it again,” I said. “I can’t go through that again. You weren’t here for the worst of it. You were dealing with your own stuff that year and I didn’t want to pile on. But it was bad, Becca. It took me a long time to get right after he left.”
She was quiet. “I know it was hard,” she said gently.
“You didn’t say it, but I saw you going through it.
I wanted to help, but like you said, I was kind of caught up with having babies and dealing with an asshole husband.
But I know what it’s like to know what’s right for you and being unable to choose the right thing. ”
“So you understand why I need to stay away from him,” I said.
She sipped her coffee. “I understand why you think you need to.”
“Becca, I need to stay away from him. You have to tell me to avoid him.”
“I’m just going to say one thing,” she said. “And then I’ll drop it. I promise.”
“That is never true but go ahead.”
She smiled. “There were almost two thousand people at that protest yesterday,” she said. “He was being hit with eggs and tomatoes and he didn’t flinch. He was watching you. You are the only one he was interested in seeing.”
I shook my head. The thought of me with Colt terrified me. I had to stay away from Colt Anderson if I wanted to get through summer with my heart in one piece. He would destroy me. Surviving it once was hard enough.