Page 19 of When Summer Returns

“Am I that predictable?” she asked as he lowered himself to the sand beside her, careful to maintain a respectful distance.

“Only to someone who remembers your favorite thinking spots.” The moonlight silvered his profile, catching on the planes of his face in a way that emphasized both how familiar and how changed he was since their youth.

“You have a good memory.”

“Some things you don’t forget.” His voice carried warmth rather than accusation.

“Apparently.” Jessie felt the smile tug at her lips. “Nice to know I was predictable even back then.”

He stretched his long legs toward the water, rolling up the cuffs of his cargo shorts to let the tide wash over his feet. “How are the dogs holding up?”

“The what?”

“Your feet.” His gesture encompassed her submerged ankles. “Industry slang. After a week behind the bar, most people can barely walk.”

“I spent fifteen years in four-inch heels on marble floors. My feet are basically industrial grade at this point.” She wiggled her toes in the water. “Though I admit, this feels like heaven.”

“Tasha says you’re catching on faster than any greenhorn she’s ever seen.”

“Is that a compliment or an accusation?”

“With Tasha?” Luke chuckled, the sound rich and warm against the percussion of waves. “Definitely a compliment. She doesn’t waste praise on lost causes.”

They sat in surprisingly comfortable silence, watching as the moon rose higher, casting a silver pathway across the water that seemed to lead straight to the horizon. The evening air wrapped around them like silk, carrying the distant melody of someone playing guitar on a porch farther down the beach.

“I always forget how quiet it gets,” Jessie said, her voice barely above a whisper, as if speaking too loudly might shatter the delicate peace.

“Too quiet after city living?”

“Different quiet.” She leaned back on her palms, tilting her face toward the star-studded sky. “Cities are never really silent—there’s always traffic or sirens or people. But it’s background noise, white noise. This is…alive quiet. You can hear everything.”

The whisper of palm fronds overhead. The rhythmic sigh of waves kissing shore. The distant call of a night bird. Every sound distinct and perfect, a natural symphony that made her chest ache with recognition and longing.

“I missed that in the city,” she admitted. “The sound of water.”

“So what did you do instead?” Luke shifted, angling his body toward her. “When you weren’t calculating other people’s millions in your corporate life.”

“Ate a lot of takeout. Took unnecessarily long showers. Bought expensive candles that were supposed to smell like ocean breeze but just smelled like chemicals.” She hesitated. “Worked. Mostly worked.”

“Sounds thrilling.”

“Says the man who practically lives at his bar.”

“Touché.” His smile flashed white in the darkness. “But at least my office has a great view.”

Another comfortable silence fell, broken only by the gentle percussion of waves against shore. Out on the horizon, a massive cargo ship moved with dreamlike slowness, its lights a cluster of man-made stars.

“You know what I thought about sometimes?” she said suddenly, surprising herself. “Thunderstorms. The way they sound here, with nothing to block them. In the city, storms get muffled by buildings, weakened by concrete and steel. Here they’re…” She gestured expansively.

“Primal,” Luke supplied. “Like the sky’s tearing itself apart just for you.”

“Exactly.” Their eyes met, a moment of perfect understanding that sent a different kind of electricity humming through her veins.

“So all those years in your fancy high-rise, during thunderstorms, you were thinking about Seeker’s Island?” His voice held a note she couldn’t quite identify—not quite triumph, not quite accusation, something more vulnerable than either.

“Not the island,” she corrected gently. “Just the storms.”

But it was a lie, and from the way his gaze held hers, steady and knowing in the moonlight, he recognized it as such. She’d thought about everything—the precise temperature of the ocean in April, the way sand felt between her toes after a rain, the quality of light through palm fronds at midday. She’d thought abouthim—the boy he’d been, wondering about the man he’d become.

---