Page 22 of When Summer Returns

“I need to—” He gestured vaguely toward the bar with his free hand, still holding hers with the other.

“Go,” she finished for him, gently extracting her fingers from his. “We’ll talk later.”

Luke nodded, backing up a step before turning to jog down the beach. Jessie watched him go, silhouetted against the distant lights of Seeker’s Paradise, moving with the easy grace of a man entirely at home in his own skin, on his own island.

Only when he’d disappeared from view did she realize she was trembling—not from the cooling night air, but from the enormity of what they’d begun to uncover. Fifteen years of assumptions unraveling with a few simple exchanges.

Seeker’s Island kept its secrets well, it seemed. But not forever.

She stood a moment longer, letting the gentle tide wash over her feet, anchoring her to the present when her mind wanted to spiral through past misunderstandings and missed opportunities. The moon had risen fully now, casting its silver pathway across the water—an invitation, or perhaps a promise.

This time, when she walked away from the shore, she left footprints in the sand—not running away, but walking purposefully toward whatever waited on the path ahead.

* * *

Moonlight filtered through the gauzy curtains of the guest room, casting soft shadows across the space where Jessie slept. Or tried to sleep. She twisted in the sheets, her breathing growing more rapid as unconscious fear gripped her.

“You think you can just leave? Go where, Jessie? Who’d want you?”

Her father’s voice, the words slurred but the menace razor sharp. The familiar sound of his belt being pulled through the loops of his jeans. Her back pressed against the wall, nowhere to run.

“Nobody leaves unless I say so. Nobody.”

The first strike catching her across the ribs, stealing her breath?—

Jessie bolted upright with a strangled gasp, sheets tangled around her legs like restraints. For a disorienting moment, she didn’t know where she was—the guest room at Luke’s house or her childhood bedroom. Her hand instinctively went to her side, fingers pressing against phantom pain.

She sat there, heart hammering against her ribs as reality gradually reasserted itself. Island sounds filtered through the window—waves kissing the shore, palm fronds rustling in the night breeze. Sounds of safety, not fear.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she padded to the window, pushing it wider to let in the night air. The ocean stretched before her, silver-black under moonlight. He couldn’t reach her here. Not anymore.

A glass of water sat on the nightstand, and she reached for it with hands that still trembled slightly. The cool liquid soothed her parched throat but did nothing for the knot of tension between her shoulder blades—a physical memory her body had never forgotten.

She touched her ribs again, tracing the spot where the belt had landed hardest. No visible scar remained, but her body remembered. Fifteen years and hundreds of miles hadn’t been enough to escape that pain.

She’d run so far, built so much, yet here she was—back where it all began, still jerking awake from the same nightmares.

Jessie leaned her forehead against the cool window glass, watching the rhythmic pulse of the distant waves. There would be no more sleep tonight. Some ghosts were too persistent, too demanding of acknowledgment.

And some secrets, she was beginning to realize, couldn’t stay buried forever on an island where the tide inevitably exposed everything hidden beneath the sand.

CHAPTERSIX

Morning arrivedwith the particular golden brilliance that belonged exclusively to Seeker’s Island summers. Sunlight poured through the guest room windows like warm honey, creating pools of light on the hardwood floor that crept steadily toward the bed where Jessie lay, one arm flung above her head, caught between wakefulness and dreams.

For the first time since her return, she’d been granted a morning off. Miguel had insisted she take advantage of it, claiming that a proper islander needed to reacquaint herself with the rhythm of the place during daylight hours. Luke had remained suspiciously silent during this exchange, but the slight quirk of his mouth suggested Miguel’s campaign for her free time had received prior approval.

The bed was sinfully comfortable, the sheets smelling faintly of sea air and sunshine—Luke must have dried them outdoors on a line rather than in a machine. It was a simple pleasure she’d forgotten existed in her years of high-rise apartment living where laundry rooms were located in windowless basements.

Jessie stretched luxuriously, muscles pleasantly achy from a week of physical work that had gradually stripped away years of desk-job lethargy. Her body felt more alive, more present, than it had in as long as she could remember. Perhaps it was the island air. Perhaps it was something else entirely.

Something like the conversation on the beach last night.

They’d stripped away the first layers of misunderstanding, revealed the first hidden piece—Reece’s apparent betrayal with the note. But when Luke had asked why she’d been so desperate to leave that night, she’d been saved from answering by Miguel’s freezer crisis. Saved or thwarted, she wasn’t entirely sure which.

Outside, a mockingbird delivered a melodic declaration of territorial rights, cycling through its repertoire of stolen songs with the confidence of a seasoned performer. A counterpoint of waves provided bass notes to the avian soprano.

Jessie swung her legs over the side of the bed, toes curling against the cool wood floor. Today was for exploration, for reacquainting herself with the island that had shaped her earliest years. She couldn’t avoid the past forever, not when it surrounded her at every turn. Better to face it on her own terms, on a day when the sun shone brilliantly and the sky stretched endlessly blue.

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