Chapter 14 #2
“Don’t apologize. He’s heard worse,” Julia says.
“My dad says ‘fuck’ sometimes.”
“Henry!” Julia gasps.
Summer and I both fight to hide our smiles as he pulls his attention away from the TV to his mom.
“You said it’s good to tell the truth.”
“I didn’t mean…” She trails off, shaking her head.
“You ready?” I ask Summer.
“You haven’t told me where we’re going.”
I’m sure she found it strange when I texted her on a weekend inviting her to go somewhere with me that didn’t involve Quinn, but I wasn’t sure how else to swing this. I didn’t know if she’d even say yes. She tends to flee when it’s just the two of us.
“You’ll see.”
“Have fun, you two,” Julia says as we make our way to the front door.
“It was nice to meet you. Bye, Henry.”
He’s lasered in on the screen again, and I follow his gaze at the worst possible time—right as the wasp buries its bottom in the guy’s hand. I’d say the kid had weird taste if my own didn’t love bugs so much.
“Henry, say bye,” Julia prompts.
He waves his hand over his head without turning around. Julia rolls her eyes before offering her own wave and closing the door.
Everything heightens the moment Summer and I are alone.
The dark, the quiet, her proximity. It’s been a long time since I picked up a girl—woman—from her front door.
We’re not exactly young enough to be “hanging out” anymore, and I didn’t make my intentions for this evening very clear.
I’m concerned I should have offered more details.
Wondering if she typically brings that larger-than-a-purse bag slung over her shoulder to something that’s not a date.
“You look prepared.”
She holds out the bag to me. “They’re your clothes I borrowed. Julia washed them.”
“Oh.”
I haven’t stopped thinking about how she stripped in my room. That her bare skin touched my shirt. The same one she sure as hell wasn’t wearing a bra underneath.
She’s smirking when I take the bag from her outstretched hand, and if it wasn’t for the vibrating phone in my pocket, I’d be fumbling for more to say than a simple thanks.
The welcome distraction is a text message from Will.
WILL: Phillip is news to me. Kind of like the rest of Delilah’s life. Thanks for checking on her.
I send a laughing face emoji back.
“Coming?” she asks, opening her own door and climbing in my front seat.
It’s my turn to leave this woman at a loss for words.
“What are we doing here?”
We’re parked down the street. Summer’s back is glued to her seat, her eyes trained out the window at a modest house on a sprawling property. I’ll admit, it’s impressive for a principal’s salary, even one who works at a private school. The guy clearly knows how to invest his money.
A quick Google search told me where he lived.
A dog barks up the street, sending a crow scampering from the white picket fence out front. I don’t answer her as she takes the place in. I want to be the one asking all the questions. “Did you plant those?” I say when the first one comes to mind.
“Yes,” she confirms.
She said she wasn’t brave enough to come back here, but I know that’s not true. I’d never have noticed the pink peonies tucked behind the fence slats if there wasn’t a vase of them blooming in my kitchen. I moved them inside after Quinn’s box fort fell apart.
“They were my favorite part about this house.”
She’s more confident than she thinks, and stronger than she knows. Still, I didn’t want her to have to do this alone.
Her breath hitches as a flash of orange dashes across the sidewalk and dips under the cracked garage door.
“Do you trust me?”
If she said no I wouldn’t blame her. We’re both taking a risk by being here.
Her eyes are wide when she looks at me. The woman who has sky-dived and swum with sharks, yet she’s afraid to get her cat back. I won’t let her live without it.
“Do. You. Trust. Me?” I repeat, waiting for her to answer. She gives a jerky nod before I slip from the car and jog through the shadows to the garage doors.
It’s second nature for me to glance around for security cameras.
To my benefit, the only one this home has is by the front door.
For whatever reason, the crack under the garage looked a hell of lot larger from across the street.
I have to flatten my body against the pavement, skin grating on rough cement, to inch under it.
I’m well aware this is breaking and entering—the last thing I should be doing as a public figure with a career already on the line.
Not to mention, I’m putting Summer at risk with her ex.
For all those reasons I make quick work of it, scouring the garage.
My eyes adjust to the dim light leaking beneath the door when I spot her cat in the corner, lapping at a bowl of water.
She sees me and freezes. I take a careful step closer. She flees behind a cardboard box.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m a friend of Summer’s.”
What the hell am I doing? I’m speaking to a cat as if it knows what I’m saying.
I inch closer until she’s cornered. If I can just… reach…
She springs in the air, latching onto the cardboard box, and claws her way up the side.
She leaps, nails digging into my shoulder through the sleeve of my shirt and launches off me.
I clamp down on my bottom lip to keep from letting out a hiss of pain.
A yowl fills the space as she scampers underneath the garage door.
Great. I bring Summer all the way here and I can’t even catch this pet. I don’t know what I expected—purring maybe?—but I just got taken advantage of by a cat.
Back to an army crawl, I shimmy into the moonlight.
“Who’s there,” a voice booms from the front door. I don’t have time to react when Summer grabs my hand.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she chants. The cat is already clutched in her arms, bobbing up and down as we dash back to the car.
The engine revs—so much for a subtle exit—as I start up the vehicle and flip a U-turn.
“Go! Go! Go!” Summer is bouncing up and down in her seat, tapping the dashboard, eyes glued to the rearview mirror.
She’s still grinning and laughing, and I’m drunk on the sound, barely keeping my eyes on the road.
I need to pull over before I hit something.
We whip around a corner on a random side street and I park against the curb.
“Did you see that?! Did you hear him?! That was incredible! That was—”
Summer launches herself across the center console and crushes her lips to mine. I hardly register she’s kissing me before she pulls away.
Her hand lifts to her mouth. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have done that. I got swept up in the moment and… oh my gosh, Everett, your shirt!”
I’m still trying to figure out what just happened when she draws my attention down to where a jagged stretch of fabric flaps open on my sleeve.
“It’s nothing,” I tell her.
Well, actually, it was your cat. She’s a vicious little thing. Or was. Now she’s purring and relaxing in Summer’s lap.
“It’s not nothing. Here…”
She reaches into the back seat for the bag she brought and pulls out my T-shirt, but I know it won’t make a difference. It’s what’s underneath that’s the problem.
She sucks in a gust of air when she sees my bare shoulder.
“What happened?”
The damage is not as bad as it looks. Three deep scratches lance the skin, but the blood is already dried. “Your cat doesn’t like men,” I joke, using the ripped shirt to wipe away the burgundy spots. I meant it as a funny statement. She looks anything but amused.
“Is there a first-aid kit in here somewhere?” She bends in half to look under her seat.
“The glovebox.”
The compartment falls open when she tugs on the handle. A little white box with a red cross is what she opens, shuffling through the contents and tearing at the packaging of an antiseptic wipe.
“When was your last tetanus shot?”
I hiss when the alcohol-soaked pad comes in contact with my torn flesh.
“They made me update everything before I went on tour.” I’m not worried about it.
“I really am sorry,” she says, squirting a line of Neosporin over the wounds and covering them with an extra-large Band-Aid.
“Really, it’s nothing.” I pull the new shirt over my head so she’ll stop worrying.
“Okay.”
It sounds like she doesn’t believe me. The mood in the car is tense for a lot of reasons now.
I don’t know if she wants to continue talking about everything that transpired in the last ten minutes, or if she’d rather pretend it didn’t happen at all.
I can’t even dissect it in my own head because I’m still reeling.
Wishing it hadn’t happened so fast. Wondering how she would have tasted if I kissed her back.
Disappointed that I might never have the chance again.
While she stows away the emergency kit, I pull onto the road. I hadn’t made plans to take her anywhere after this, so I guess we’re driving back to Julia’s.
I’ve never seen Summer this quiet. I don’t know what to think or say or do. I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable now. She’s been so good for Quinn, and I can’t screw that up.
I park the car and kill the engine in the same spot we were thirty minutes ago. Everything feels different though. For a moment I’m afraid she’ll take her cat and I’ll never see her again after this.
“Thank you,” she says instead. “Getting Millie back was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“I don’t know that I did much more than get in her way.”
She giggles when she finally looks up. “I’m sorry again about…”
“Summer, it was nothing. Really. I’m glad you’re Quinn’s nanny. She really likes you.”
It wasn’t nothing, but her commitment to my daughter feels like the only thing I should be salvaging right now.
I try to read her face. It’s impossible with her usual smile plastered across it. “Of course! I’ll see you tomorrow!”
I reach into the back seat, dumping my pants out of her bag and handing it to her. She takes it. With her cat cradled in one arm and the empty canvas tote in the other, she struggles with the door handle. I reach across her lap, our arms brushing, and push it open.
Another thanks is the last thing she says before she leaves my car for good.