42. Summer
Summer
My face is burning, my eyelids heavy, and my throat aches like I’ve been screaming for hours. I didn’t scream. I cried into Jace’s shoulder until his T-shirt was soaked through.
His arms are still around me; mine haven’t let go of him yet. I feel his breath in my hair, slow, steady.
The trailer’s quiet again.
After a long moment, Jace straightens. His arms drop and the air rushes in between us. He runs a hand through his hair and gets to his feet.
“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand.
He helps me up. My legs are stiff, my dress damp. I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
We step outside. After the fight, the video, Jace shouting on those rocks, my sobbing, the trailer is too small, the walls too close.
Flip is curled up on the little deck in front of the trailer. He lifts his head as we pass, wags his tail, but doesn’t make a move to follow us.
We cross the surf school yard without a word. The boards lined up on the racks are pale shapes in the dark. The sand crunches under our feet when we reach the beach. The night air is heavy with mist.
The waves roll in and break to a rhythm I know by heart: the one from summers past. The moon is high, not quite full, tracing a white path across the water.
We walk side by side toward the pier, in step, not talking.
To our left, behind the skatepark, the old Walker house sits higher up, outlined in the dark. Shutters closed, hedges too high, no light.
Jace doesn’t say anything, but his jaw tightens when he looks up at the front of the house, and he turns away, toward the sea.
I grew up thinking the Walker family was indestructible.
Tom, Maggie, Jace, Noah, Avery—that loud, tight-knit family where someone was always laughing, where there was always one board too many in the entryway, always an extra plate at the table.
I remember the day Grandma told me Tom was sick.
I was eight. I didn’t understand what that meant, or what the treatments were going to cost them.
He died a year later. Insurance didn’t cover everything.
The house was sold, and the Walkers moved into an apartment in town.
Jace was ten, Noah eight, Avery two.
We pass the house.
Our arms swing with our steps and our hands brush. I don’t move away. A dip in the sand throws me off balance and my shoulder bumps Jace’s, then the space opens up between us again. When our fingers touch again, Jace takes my hand without looking at me.
I don’t pull it back.
Finally, we step onto the pier. The wood creaks under our feet; water laps against the pilings. The lamp posts are out—either they don’t work anymore or no one bothers with them. The only light comes from the moon and the reflections on the water.
At the end of the pier, we stop. The ocean opens up in front of us, dark, vast. Off to the left, the black mass of the Star Park cliffs stands out against the sky. The park’s structures—the Ferris wheel, the top of the haunted house—are motionless shadows, barely visible.
I look up at the cliffs. Jace follows my gaze.
“Is that why Noah never went to college?”
My voice is hoarse, cracked from crying so hard. Jace takes a breath.
“Yeah.”
Without letting go of my hand, he leans on the railing, one elbow on the wood.
“After Dad died, we didn’t have much left. A year of treatment, the chemo, the hospital, the meds, the drives… But my parents had set money aside for us, in case we wanted to go to college. For Noah, basically.”
“And he wanted to study medicine…”
“Since he was eight, yeah. Since Dad.”
“And after the shark…”
Jace lets out a bitter laugh.
“The chopper, the surgery, the transfusions, the hospital stay. And after that, eight months of rehab, physical therapy, a shrink.”
He recites the list, eyes fixed on the water. A bill he knows by heart.
“The chopper alone cost us thirty-five grand.”
“Where’d they take you?”
“Stanford Hospital, in Palo Alto. It’s a level-one trauma center. For serious cases, that’s usually where they send you.”
I freeze.
“The helicopter…” I murmur. “The day I left Coral Bay with my dad, we saw one from the road. Dad thought it was for the girl who’d gone missing at Star Park two days before.”
Jace shakes his head.
“At first it was for me. But when the rescue crew got to the base of the cliffs, they found her too. She was a few yards from where I’d jumped.”
“Was she… dead?”
“No. In a coma. That’s what they told me.”
The dark blurs his features, but not the hard line of his jaw or the tension in his shoulders.
“That’s horrible… did she survive?”
“I don’t think so. I mean… I don’t know. Nobody ever told me anything. And Star Park closed right after.”
Jace shrugs one shoulder.
“Some people say you can see her ghost on full-moon nights.”
I stare at him. His mouth wavers between a grimace and a smile.
“Stop it, Jace.”
“I swear. Ask Evan.”
A small laugh escapes me, almost painful after all the crying. Jace gives a faint smile, the first of the night.
I look at the cliffs in the distance.
“All of it… I had no idea, Jace.”
“I know.”
He squeezes my hand tighter.
“Noah and I,” he goes on, “we tried to reach you after the accident. We called, we left messages… You’d blocked our numbers?”
I nod.
“Why?”
What do you think?
I focus on a knot in the wood of the railing.
“Because of your stupid bet.”
My voice comes out sharper than I meant it to. I don’t take it back.
Jace straightens and lets go of the railing. A crease forms between his eyebrows, somewhere between irritation and exhaustion.
“Yeah, it was stupid,” he says. “We were young. We were idiots. Sorry, okay?”
Offhand. Like it’s some teenage screwup you file away and forget.
I don’t say anything. Because after the shark attack, with Jace never going pro and Noah having to give up college, I’m not about to start a fight over the bet.
The bet, fine—I can maybe live with that. But “Sorry, okay?”—that’s not an apology. It’s a shrug. And you don’t trust someone who shrugs when they’ve broken you.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
“Okay,” I say, not looking at him.
The conversation is over.
We leave the pier. The walk back is slower. We’re still holding hands, and neither of us does anything to change that.
The sound of the waves follows us. The air has cooled and shivers run up my arms. I keep quiet so I won’t ruin the moment.
We pass the skatepark and follow the path to the lodge. When we reach my bungalow, Jace stops and lets go of my hand.
My fingers close on empty air, a stupid reflex. I loosen them. Too late—he saw.
The door is right there. Four digits on the keypad, and the night’s over.
“Summer.”
I turn around.
Jace is there, close, in the moonlight filtering through the trees. His hair is a mess, his T-shirt rumpled, stained at the shoulder with my mascara. He watches me, his mouth slightly open. Like he’s looking for where to start.
Nothing comes out.
We move closer at the same time—half a step each—and he kisses me.
It’s brief, a little clumsy: his nose brushes mine, his lips just graze mine. Then his hand settles at the back of my neck, our breaths mingle, and his mouth finds mine again with a softness that’s too familiar.
We break apart fast and step back. My heart is beating too hard. A disbelieving smile tugs at my mouth.
“Good night, Jace,” I whisper.
“Good night, Summer.”
I go inside and close the door.
In the dark of the bungalow, my back against the wood, I run a finger over my lower lip.