Six Summers Apart (The Summer Hearts #1)

Prologue

If you’d asked me what my life would look like today, this wouldn’t have been the answer.

I never imagined boxing up a life I thought I’d always wanted.

That itch—the one that had been quietly crawling beneath my skin for years—had finally made its way to the surface.

And now I was standing in the middle of a living room that used to be mine.

Ours. And yet, now, it was as empty as our love.

I’d spent six years pouring my heart into a boy.

Six years of growing up together. Half of my twenties.

And while there were happy memories, now, I felt nothing.

That used to scare me. But not anymore. I had loved Adrian—once.

I was the one who’d fallen fast and hard and first. But I was also the one who fell out of love slowly, painfully, and first.

I used to think that walking away would feel easier when you were the one whose heart had already left.

I thought going out with friends would feel freeing and it did, for a while.

But then I came home and found a dirty wine glass on the kitchen side (he never drank wine), the cushions askew on the sofa, our bed made in a way that it never usually was, two water glasses on the bedside tables, and a scrunchie on my bedroom floor that didn’t belong to me.

And that was the moment my heart finally cracked open.

We had only been broken up for twelve days.

Six years—two thousand, one hundred and ninety days together—and it took twelve for him to screw someone else. In our bed. The same bed I’d politely moved out of, sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the spare room while we sorted out the lease. That had been a fucking kick to the teeth.

And the worst part? I’d tried to be kind about it. When I ended things, I’d softened the blow. I’d told him it wasn’t about someone else; it was about me. About needing space. About us not being the same people anymore.

I thought I was doing the right thing. Being decent. And he’d gone and proved that decency meant nothing.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. A year ago, we were lying in bed when he’d said, completely out of the blue, “If we ever broke up, I don’t think I could wait more than two weeks to have sex again.

” He’d smiled as he said it, like it was a joke.

I’d laughed too, awkwardly, like it was nothing.

But looking back now, it didn’t feel like a joke at all.

It felt like foreshadowing.

“Cece, babe—” he reached for my elbow as I lifted the last of the moving boxes, trying to stop me from walking out of the house we’d just signed back to the estate agents.

“Is there nothing I can say to change your mind? I wish you’d told me how you were feeling before throwing our whole future away,” he said, voice laced with performative sadness.

I adjusted the boxes in my arms and looked at him. And I felt it. That slow rise of something bitter and hot and angry in my chest. I was so fucking tired of pretending this didn’t hurt. Tired of cushioning his ego. Tired of being the bigger person.

“I did tell you. You just didn’t want to hear it,” I said tightly.

His hand moved to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and I nearly leaned into the touch but I stopped myself. Not this time.

“We could’ve fixed this. I could’ve been better.”

I let out a short, humourless laugh. “You’ve been saying that for a year. We’ve been ‘fixing’ it for longer than we were ever happy.”

“Don’t do this,” he pleaded, eyes flicking around the empty room before landing back on me. “You’re not even giving us a chance.”

That was it.

The switch flipped.

I dropped the boxes to the floor with a dull thud and straightened up. My chest heaving, my vision narrowing.

“Would you just fucking stop,” I said, my voice shaking. “I am not your goddamn girlfriend anymore. Hell, I don’t even think I’ve been your friend. I’ve been blind. Completely fucking blind being with you. We are not a match. Maybe we never were.”

His jaw tensed, but I didn’t stop.

“We were young when we got together, and I outgrew you long ago. But I stayed. I kept trying. I shrank myself to keep the peace. I missed birthdays and weekends and nights out just to avoid your sulking. I apologised just to make you stop twisting things around. And you? You made me feel like I was always one step away from being too much.”

I stepped closer.

“And now, after everything I gave up for you, after every bit of myself I chipped away to keep you happy, you couldn’t even wait two weeks before sleeping with your fucking colleague. ”

His face dropped.

“That,” I said, voice trembling, “is the cherry on top of a very ugly cake. And the cake, Adrian? Is narcissistic-arsehole-flavoured.”

He didn’t say a word.

Couldn’t.

His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. He just stood there speechless for the first time in his life.

I took a breath, letting the fury settle back into something steadier. Something final.

“I should be going,” I said, gesturing to the car packed with my belongings.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” he muttered. “You’ll come back when you realise no one else will treat you like I did.”

“You’re right,” I said, bitterly amused. “That’s the fucking point.”

I turned, opened the boot, and slammed it shut with a satisfying crack. I stood there for a beat, the keys tight in my hand, grounding me.

Inside, he was still talking. Still spinning stories .

“You’re being cruel,” he said as I re-entered the house, now clutching a can of lager.

“No, I’m being honest. You just don’t like it unless it’s a version of the truth that makes you feel good.”

He scoffed. “Your mum said you’re going travelling with Siena. Thought we were supposed to do things like that together.”

I gave him a look. “Don’t ask if you’re just going to be spiteful.”

He always hated Siena. Always resented how close we were. He couldn’t stand when I did things without him. Couldn’t stand anything that wasn’t about him.

“I just find it funny that everything you wanted to do with me, you’re doing with her now.”

I rolled my eyes. “And I find it funny you told me not to sleep with anyone in our house and then went and fucked someone in our bed.”

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “Save it. I dated you for six years, Adrian. I know when you’re lying. So don’t stand there and pretend.”

He looked at me then like he didn’t recognise me. But maybe he never really had.

Because the version of me he’d known—the quiet one, the careful one, the one who apologised first—she was gone. She disappeared the day I found that scrunchie.

The distance stretched between us. He wiped his face, a tear slipping down his cheek.

“Cece, I love you. I wasn’t thinking. I—”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s not the kind of love I want anymore. ”

He turned away and busied himself with a shirt tossed into a packing box, pretending to fold it. Like that might fix us.

“Have a nice life then,” he said, voice flat.

“I will,” I said softly. And I meant it.

I stepped out, pulled the door closed behind me, and stood by my car with shaking hands. For a moment, I felt a scream build in my throat.

But I didn’t go back inside. I didn’t cry.

Instead, I turned the key in the ignition, reversed off the drive, and refused to look back at the silhouette still watching me from the window.