Chapter 35
SUMMER
“Whoa,” Capri said. “What is going on? Is your phone blowing up?”
I pulled it from my back pocket and saw the neighborhood Facebook and Instagram accounts were flooded with notifications.
“It’s a video,” she said. “Something about Colt.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping like hell he hadn’t changed his mind. Or worse, I hoped he hadn’t been the victim of more vandalism.
I looked at the frozen image of him standing on a sidewalk I recognized immediately. City Hall. Good god, that man was fine. He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that showed off that perfect chest. His sunglasses were pushed up on his head.
Capri pushed play. “My name is Colt Anderson,” he said.
“Oh, I know who you are,” Capri breathed.
“Shh,” I said.
She shushed and we both leaned in. I watched him talk, and because I knew him so well, I knew he was speaking the truth. He was talking to me. About me. My heart practically jumped into my throat.
Capri looked at me. I didn’t look back. I kept my eyes on the phone screen and pressed my lips together. Did I want to tell her it was me? Obviously she’d figured it out.
“Summer Banks,” Capri said softly.
“What?”
She pointed at the screen. “That man is talking about you. To you.”
The stream ended. I sat back in my chair and exhaled slowly.
“You okay?” Capri asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You look like you’re going to slide right off that chair.”
“I’m a little warm.”
She laughed. “Oh, you’re a lot more than a little warm. You’re radiating heat this way. So, that’s happening.”
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Uh, I do. You’re sleeping with him.”
“Shhh,” I hissed. “Let’s not announce that.”
There was a tingling sensation between my legs that had me wanting to run right out of the coffee shop and into his arms. I was going to be the one pounding on his window. Hell, I was ready to run through a wall to get to him.
I blew out a breath and tried to get my libido to slow down. I glanced over and spotted Lana rushing down the sidewalk.
“Hey, there’s Lana,” I said. “Where is she going in such a hurry? Lana!”
She stopped and looked back at me. One look at her face and I was immediately worried.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head quickly. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Lana.”
She stopped. Her chin did a small wobble that she tried to hide by pressing her lips together hard. She looked so young right then.
“Come here,” I said and steered her gently toward the narrow alley gap between the coffee shop and the print place next door. Out of the direct foot traffic.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I watched it,” she murmured.
“Colt’s video,” I asked.
She nodded. A tear slid down her cheek. She brushed it away with the heel of her hand. “Summer.”
“Lana, what’s going on?”
She had me genuinely worried. I looked her up and down, searching for an injury.
“It was me,” she whispered.
“What was you?”
Another tear slid down her cheek. “The car. Colt’s car.”
I froze when I understood what she was saying. I took a slow breath. “The car,” I said. “And the graffiti on the seawall.”
She nodded at the pavement. She looked up at me with genuine misery in her face.
“I know. I know, okay? I know it was wrong. I knew it when I was doing it and I did it anyway because I was so angry and I just kept thinking about what they were going to do to this place. I didn’t know what else to do with it. ”
I wasn’t going to pretend I wasn’t mad. It was wrong.
“Lana, that was not okay.” I kept my voice calm. “It doesn’t matter how justified the anger felt. What you did crossed a line. Vandalism is not protest. What you did to that car was personal and destructive and it didn’t help a single person in this town.”
She nodded. Her eyes were wet and she wasn’t fighting the tears anymore.
“You could have been arrested,” I said. “You could still be. That’s a real possibility, Lana. Criminal damage to property is not a small thing.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Do you?”
She looked at me then. “He said he was grateful,” she said. “He said it kept him accountable.”
“He’s being generous,” I said. “That’s who he is. But his generosity doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility.”
She nodded and wiped her face. I was pissed, but I understood her. The helplessness of watching something you love being threatened by forces that felt too large. Helplessness could make a person desperate.
My mother had thrown herself in front of a bulldozer once. She had not keyed anyone’s car, but she had put her body between a machine and the land she loved and dared it to move her. There was a version of Lana in that story. I rubbed the back of my neck and thought about my mother.
“You’re going to have to make this right, Lana. Not with me. With him.”
Her eyes went wide. “You’re going to tell him it was me.”
“I think you need to.”
She looked like she might be sick. But she nodded.
“He’s not going to destroy you,” I said. “That’s not who he is. But you have to give him the chance to respond. And honestly, I think it might do you some good too.”
She wiped her eyes again, pulling herself up a little straighter. “Are you going to tell him first?”
I shook my head. “That’s your secret to tell. Not mine.”
She breathed out slowly. The tears had stopped. “Okay,” she said.
I steered her back out of the alley and toward the coffee shop entrance. “Come on,” I said. “Come sit with us for a minute.”
She hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting anything.”
Capri looked up when we came back in. She took one look at Lana and immediately read the situation.
“Sit,” Capri said to Lana.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Capri asked.
Lana looked at me.
“It’s your story,” I said. “Your call.”
“I keyed Colt Anderson’s car,” she said. “And I did the seawall.”
Capri blinked. She looked at me, then back to Lana. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Capri picked her iced coffee. “Okay. I mean, I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand the impulse.”
“It was wrong,” Lana said immediately.
“It was,” Capri agreed. “But I get where it came from.”
“That’s what makes it worse,” Lana said. “Everyone keeps understanding and I just want someone to tell me I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I said. “You did an idiotic thing. Those aren’t the same.”
“Has he said anything?” Lana asked. “About the car.”
I laughed. “Um, yeah. It’s not like it’s not obvious. He hasn’t fixed it.”
She groaned.
“That might be your way of making things right,” I said softly. “I know it’ll be expensive, but I think offering to make it right would go a long way.”
Lana stared at me. “How much does that cost?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m such an idiot,” she said and buried her face in her hands.
“You’re not.”
“He’s out there fighting for us and I’m making his life hell.”
“Hey.” Capri reached over and put her hand on Lana’s forearm. “You didn’t know he was going to turn around. Nobody knew. We all thought he was the enemy.”
“He was,” I said quietly. “And then he wasn’t. People can do that. They can change course.”
Lana looked at me again. “Are you sure you’re not going to tell him?”
“I told you already. That’s your secret to tell.”
“I’m not ready. I know I have to. I know I owe him that and I’m going to do it. I just need a little time to figure out how to say it.” She swallowed. “Please.”
“Okay,” I said.
She let out a breath. “Thank you.”
It felt wrong the moment I said it, the same way it had in the alley.
Not because I thought she was lying about her intentions.
I believed her. I believed she was going to do it.
But I had just agreed to keep something from Colt, and after everything we’d spent the last several weeks building with each other, the idea of a secret sitting between us felt like a crack in new plaster.
Small enough to ignore. Not small enough to forget.
And if and when he found out I knew and didn’t tell him, I wasn’t sure how that was going to sit with him.
“Soon,” I added. “Lana, don’t sit on it too long.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I promise.”
Capri smiled. “For what it’s worth, I think the fact that you’re sitting here feeling terrible about it says something.”
“It says I have a conscience that showed up too late,” Lana said.
Capri shrugged. “Better late than never.” Capri drained the last of her iced coffee and set it down with a decisive thunk. “Okay,” she said, looking between me and Lana. “I need retail therapy and I think you both do too. Who’s with me?”
Lana looked uncertain. “I don’t know.”
“That means yes,” Capri decided. She stood up and grabbed her bag from the back of the chair. “Come on. Moping in a coffee shop only works for so long. After that you need a dressing room and a credit card.”
I laughed and pushed back my own chair. She wasn’t wrong. I needed to do something or I was going to embarrass myself by showing up on his doorstep in the middle of the afternoon begging for some afternoon delight.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not buying anything I don’t need.”
Capri winked. “Sure you’re not.”
We ended up at the little stretch of boutiques on Pelican Row that the tourists loved. Lana had stopped crying and was walking between us with her hands shoved in her pockets, quieter than usual, but I hoped she was better.
We went into the first boutique. I drifted toward the back where the sundresses were hanging in a row by color, lightest to darkest.
“This one,” Lana said from beside me, holding up a dress in pale green with thin straps and a low back. “You’d look incredible in this.”
I took it from her and held it up against myself. “It’s pretty.”
“It’s more than pretty,” she said. “Try it on.”
“I don’t need a new dress.”
She gave me a pointed look. “You might need another one. I’m seeing more dates in your future.”
I laughed and draped it over my arm. I kept moving along the rack and found a second one almost immediately. I pulled that one too.
Capri emerged from the dressing room in a yellow wrap dress that looked like it had been made specifically for her body. She spread her arms. “Well?”
“Buy it,” Lana and I said at the same time.
She turned back to the mirror with a satisfied nod. “Already decided.”
I tried on the dress and immediately pictured Colt’s face when he saw me in it. I was buying the sea glass dress.
We spilled back out onto the sidewalk with our paper bags. Capri looked at me with that smile that said she was up to no good and therefore I was going to be up to no good.
The shop was called something tasteful and vague, something about forbidden fruit. I’d been in there exactly twice in my life. I was a chicken and couldn’t imagine any of the locals telling my father I had gone in there.
But Capri was on a mission. Lana walked right in without hesitation, which surprised me. She picked up a hanger immediately and held up something black and delicate and shrugged at me like it was the most casual thing in the world. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just didn’t peg you for a regular.”
She grinned in response. I moved slowly, surveying the options. Everything in here was soft and beautiful and very much not the practical cotton I usually defaulted to.
I picked up something pale blue. Not unlike the dress. Soft satin with just a whisper of lace at the edges. Simple. Not trying too hard but definitely sexy.
I thought about Colt on the floor of my bedroom. I thought about the look on his face when I’d pulled my shirt off. And I made the decision to buy the little scraps of satin. I couldn’t wait to tease him. Or have him tease me. There would be lots of teasing.