Page 77 of Our Hearts Knew Better

The second was just minutes ago, when she walked out of that water like my own personal siren, set to kill me.

She wasbaredto me, radiant in the sun and unbelievably beautiful, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

I could feel the suction from my pockets as they trapped my hands from being a piece of shit friend, acting on a possession I don’t have a right to and trying to touch her.

My best friend’s girl.

My best friend, who told me he told her about my involvement with her father, when I asked him to let me tell her.

She hasn’t asked me herself yet, and Floyd’s already asking about her. How soon she’s coming to see him. He’s getting better at balance but needs more practice with patience.

But Adam giving her the bomb that detonated on us back there half makes me want to shove Summer baring herself to me in his face, if it wouldn’t just put more problems ontoherplate, and I’ve already been the bad guy in our story.

And she wasn’t baring herselfforme. She had to get her clothes. I didn’t offer them up, giving her privacy, like I should have. I was suspended in a moment, unable to even help myself from wondering, wanting to see her, making that momentourprivacy.

She loves Adam. She’swithhim. And I have to be a friend to both, which means shutting my mouth on everything I have to shut my mouth on.

Two reasons for the tone I did have. Both involving Summer but not aimed at her.

Two reasons my hands are white on the wheel, both of us bobbling over bumps in the road.

Two reasons I might be the one who kills us.

If she notices the terrible job I’m doing driving, she doesn’t say so. The photo of my dad swings from the mirror, a terrible time to get his thumbs-up encouragement, saving he’s ready for us to meet him on the other side.

I’m not.

And just imagining Summer. . .

I hit the brakes, quick enough to slow the truck but still smooth enough to ease us into the stop without jarring us forward. Much.

“Need me to drive?” Summer asks as an offer, as I start the turn onto the next street, a new tone I don’t like that divides my attention from her to the road, like someone’s trying to unscrew my head from my neck. It’s indifference, with just a tinge of worry, like she’s not ready for the other side, either, but she also wouldn’t try to escape the truck if I was speeding for a cliff.

I’m careful with almost everything. I’m careful behind every wheel, but she’s about to make me more careless with the depth her sadness shreds me.

I blow out a breath through another surge of my white-knuckled grip, but keep a secure handle on the wheel, my foot a light touch on the gas. “I’m good,” I manage to say, a little too late. We’re almost to my mom’s, and Summer’s now looking back out her window.

Adam once fixed what I broke. She hadhim. Now those pieces he fixed are broken again.

He’s broken.

My mom’s broken.

I’m—

Fuck.

I’ve always tried to keep everything together, just like my dad. Now everyone has been falling apart and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to stop it.

Summer runs her fingers over the photo of my dad once I’m parked in Mom’s driveway, my hands released to my lap and my key ring around my finger.

“I miss him,” she says low, her eyes shining with tears, and my hands do one last clench, my keys making an impression in my palm.

“Summer,” I say, a clog in my throat around her name, and I clear it, wanting the prod I’m about to give her, as I’ve given her over the phone, to be as clear as what I heard her saying without telling me the actual words back there on the road. “If youeverneed to talk—”

“About what?” She blinks the tears from her eyes as they meet mine, dried up and pointed. Every curve of her face is already memorized, but I reacquaint myself with her this close, as she shreds me once more. “The guy who’s continuously breaking my heart to the guy who already broke it? He’s your best friend who became my boyfriend because I couldn’t have you.” My swallow sticks to my throat at the questioning in her voice. But she’s having mercy, not asking me. I don’t know what I’ll tell her when she does. “We can’t talk about that,” she finishes, and I hear,we can’t talk.

She stares out the windshield, and I know what she’s studying and what she’s aiming for before she even climbs from my passenger seat.

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