Chapter 42 Summer #2
A soft cough has me glancing at Parker. He’s still staring down at the scrapbook, throat working on a swallow.
I tuck my legs underneath me and face him. “Parker.”
“Seeing it laid out like that…” Parker’s breath shudders. He tips back his head to stare at the sky. I run my fingers through his hair, gently scraping at his scalp. “I can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
A tear trickles down his cheek. I wipe it and place a kiss in its place.
“I am so—” His breath catches and he clears his throat almost angrily.
Jaw clenching. A breath in. A breath out.
And then he looks at me with those deep blue eyes, tortured, beseeching.
“I’ve been so in love with you for so long, Summer.
And I’ve been kicking myself for months, thinking about how many years I wasted pretending I wasn’t.
Letting you think that I didn’t. Wondering how things could’ve been different, where we might be, and everything we’d have if I’d realized it sooner, but—” He places an open palm over the scrapbook, then over his chest, fingers spread wide.
“I wouldn’t change a single second of us.
I love you and I’m exactly where I want to be—exactly where I was always supposed to end up.
And I know that you’re not, and that’s…” His fingertips dig into his chest as though clenching his splintering heart, trying to hold it together.
“I guess I’m just hoping that whatever your life looks like for the next few years—wherever you are—there’s still a place for me in it. ”
Heart pumping hard, I lean into the cool leather back of the couch. Questions form, their letters scrambling into new ones so fast that I close my eyes, trying to keep up with it all. So in love with you. Years. Pretending. I love you. “Wherever I am?”
“I know about the tour.” My eyes fly open. The blatant hurt in Parker’s face is a kick to the stomach. “And I’m so pissed off you didn’t tell me. That you’d lie to me, and that I’d learn about something so important from someone so insignificant.”
“Who?” Parker tips his head in a look that says who do you think?
My shoulders fall. I reach for him, clasping his wrist. “I’m so sorry.
I wanted to make sure you were in a good place, and wouldn’t…
I wanted you to be better before I told you.
And then everything happened between us, and I didn’t know how to anymore. ”
Even now I’m torn on the conversation—want to backpedal several steps, start with a different question, examine a different angle. So in love with you for so long.
But Parker forges ahead. “And the solution was to… what? Sneak out of town this fall without a word? Send me a picture of yourself from across the world saying, Guess what, Park?”
“Of course not. I was waiting for the right moment.”
His eyes try to look through me. “Why are you leaving?”
“At first, I thought it might be a fresh start after everything that happened, between him and the people in town. But the longer I’ve been back in it, competing…
I’ve spent my entire adult life clinging to people and to this place.
And wanting to mean something to everyone, to the point where I lost the thing that meant so much to me.
I never planned to spend my whole life in Oakwood. At least, not until much later.”
“I know that—you should’ve left years ago.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like I’m going to qualify anyway.” I slide my hand into his palm. I love you and I’m exactly where I want to be. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
A line forms between his brows. Parker scans me, leaning back as though he requires a better vantage point. Nerves tug inside me because he’s holding my hand but not holding it. Less in that sweet way between lovers confessing their feelings. More like a man trying to hang on to a skittish animal.
“What’s going on with your barrels?” Parker asks abruptly.
I knew it wouldn’t take him long to figure it out. That the moment he had the full picture, he’d know.
He’d know, and he’d call me on it, and he’d try to talk me into something I’m not sure my heart is ready to take on. Maybe, if I’m really honest with myself, it’s why I kept the tour from him in the first place.
“Is that really what you want to focus on? You’ve just said all these really big, incredible things. Shouldn’t we talk about that?”
“We are talking about it. What’s going on with your barrels, Summer?”
Humiliation forces my face to heat. “There’s nothing wrong with them. I can ride a barrel in my sleep.”
Not a hint of surprise in his face. “So why aren’t you?”
“Because I can ride them in my sleep. And if I did…”
“You’d win. Right? You’d make the tour and have no more excuses to stay back in Oakwood. You haven’t been failing—you’ve been quitting.” When I don’t answer, Parker leans in, determined to press the issue. “Have you been falling off your board or jumping off it?”
My nose stings. “It’s not technically as simple as jumping—”
“Fuck,” he breathes, his fingers tunneling through his hair. I know he’s kicking himself for not seeing it sooner—every shred of evidence he’s probably adding up in his head now. “This whole time?”
“It’s stupid, right? Wanting something so badly and then making sure you can’t have it?
” I whisper, staring beyond him at the high branches of a tree on the street below, leaves dancing in the breeze.
I wipe my tears impatiently. “I can’t make myself do it.
I’ve been dreaming of that tour since I was a kid, but I’m alone enough as it is without adding several thousands of miles between me and the people I do have.
What’s going to happen when I’m not around to make sure no one forgets I exist? ”
Parker surprises me by laughing softly. He points at the scrapbook.
“How can you put this together, and still think like that? How can you look at me now and still say that?” He reaches for my hair, toying with the end of a braid.
“You cut me off earlier this summer. I came crawling back to you. You hid this from me, made me feel like a fucking fool, and here I am, telling you that I love you. You flinch every time I say those words—have you noticed? And still, I’m saying them again: I am in love with you.
Be here. Be across the world. Love me. Hate me.
I don’t care. You are what I want. You are where I belong.
I’ll keep crawling back to you, no matter where you go. ”
“A year is a long time away.”
“Twenty-seven years is even longer.”
“But it’s not the same anymore. This thing with us, it’s so new. Look how easily those twenty-seven years have flipped within a matter of months. Who’s to say it won’t flip all the way back over the course of a whole year?”
“Do you want it to flip back?”
“No. I love the way we are now. You’re everything I’ve ever hoped for.” I take his hand in both of mine. “I think I’m going to stay.”
“I don’t want you to stay just because you think we won’t last otherwise.
I’m telling you, we will. And it’s not just about us.
” Parker sits back, pulling out of my grasp and draping his arm over the back of the low sofa.
“Let’s take me out of the equation for a second.
Because for someone who loves love, you really go out of your way to deny you’re completely surrounded by it. ”
“My parents—”
“Your mother doesn’t even deserve to be in this conversation. And with all due respect to your dad, neither does he. It fucking kills me to see how hard you work for his attention, only to get scraps back.”
“That’s exactly my point.”
“That’s exactly my point—you’re so busy chasing those scraps that you don’t even see what’s in front of you: real, lasting love that’s begging for your attention.
My sister and our friends, who want to be involved in your life.
You’ve got people in town waiting for you to stop avoiding them.
My parents, who rushed back home from whatever-the-fuck naked wedding they were at, to show up for you last week.
“Summer, I’m sorry about your dad. Truly.
” He cups my cheek as though trying to pour his apology into me.
“I know it’s nothing like the relationship you wish you still had with him.
And it doesn’t even come close to what you deserve.
But you’re sitting here, telling me you’re worried about leaving town because you think no one will care, yet you’re the one pushing everyone away.
You’ve taken the words of a known cheater—who couldn’t possibly know anything about what it means to show up well in a relationship—and held them up as evidence that you’ll be alone forever.
And at a certain point, you need to decide: Are you ready to let yourself be happy? ”
I rear back, feeling gut-punched by his words. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
I take in the calm in his handsome face, the relaxed set of his body despite the tension sizzling between us. Parker, who’s always loved who I’ve loved, hated who I’ve hated. Blindly followed me through every flight of fancy. Now challenging me in a way he never has.
And the longer my brain scrambles to form a counterargument, the more I think he might be right.
I’ve known I’ve been pushing away my friends.
Not telling them about Parker or competing—none of that was an accident.
But maybe I’ve also been begging for attention in places there’s no longer any to find.
Like a dog clinging to a poisonous bone, despite its insides decaying further with every bite.
“You think I should give up on him?” My heart chips just thinking about it.
“Love, he’s your dad. I’d never tell you what to do there. All I want is for you to see what’s in front of you. What you’ve always had, rather than what you’ve been missing.”
I’m sitting so tensely that my shoulders ache. Parker beckons me closer with a finger. I hesitate, but when I lean in, he takes my chin between his fingers and kisses me softly.
It’s short, perfectly sweet. An everyday kiss you give someone you love before running out the door in the morning.
I can’t tell whether it’s the warmth of his fingers on my face, or the simple fact that he’s kissing me in the middle of an argument instead of building walls or growing distant.
Maybe it’s that he’s putting me in my place for the first time ever.
It could even be the way the string lights above us hit the blue of his eyes that’s made me realize it, but…
I’ve always been someone who falls hard. Lets my emotions sweep me offshore, pull me under. Throw me around like the harshest of waves, with no say in the matter. Until finally I surface, disoriented. Gasping for breath and paddling desperately for land.
Falling in love with Parker didn’t feel anything like that.
There was no earth-shattering moment, no cataclysmic strike of lightning that set my life ablaze.
Loving Parker feels like the fog clearing after a storm.
The stillness of the ocean after a hurricane.
It’s living through the worst day of my life and then slipping into a warm bed back home, with French braids in my hair and paper planes to make me smile.
The most natural thing in the world.
I love him back, and it’s everything I wished for through the bad dates and broken relationships.
But I have no idea how to let myself have us, and then leave him behind with only a hope that he’ll still be here waiting for me if I go chasing the other things I’ve wished for and gave up on too quickly the first time.
“I’m scared. I don’t know if I can have both.”
Of course, he understands. Parker gathers me into his lap, buries his face in my neck. “You already have me. Have had me from the moment we met. You just have to believe that you’re someone worth keeping.”
I hang my head. “How do you do that? Know exactly what I’m thinking?”
“I’ve always been fluent in Summer Prescott. It’s my favorite language.” He inhales deeply. “I think I was made for you.”
Made for each other. There’s not a doubt in my mind.
The door at the far end of the terrace swings open, a chorus of “Happy Birthday” breaking the delicate silence. Servers approach us with a candlelit cake, grinning wide.
Parker startles, blinking around our surroundings like he forgot where we were. I take his hand and press three kisses to his palm, hoping he translates that, too.
By the look of his dimpled smile, he does.