Page 128 of Cruel Summer

“I do,” she said. “But I’m not afraid of it. Because I got to love him really, really well.”

She understood then why they said that. That it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Because she was changed by loving Logan in this way. She wouldn’t trade it for comfort. Comfort wasn’t the answer. Not always. Comfort was sometimes just a way to slide easily through the years without ever feeling them.

At least now she knew she was alive.

She still couldn’t quite bring herself to brag about her sexcapades, but she talked a lot about the trips, and the different things they saw, and she stumbled home and went to sleep, then woke up the next morning and FaceTimed the kids.

She should have brought them into all this sooner. But it had seemed like…why tell them when she’d been so certain things would go back to how they had always been?

She realized that she hadn’t given Will back the wedding ring. Was she supposed to?

It was hers.

But she dug through her things until she found a little jewelry box she got from her mother. Inside were a couple of family heirloom pieces. She took the ring out of her purse and put it carefully in there.

Because it was part of her history. Like this other jewelry. It also wasn’t part of her life. But she had no interest in erasing it or pretending it didn’t exist.

Samantha, the Samantha who had worn that ring, had been pretty darn happy.

But it didn’t fit anymore.

She heard the sound of an engine revving outside, and she went over to the window and looked down at the street.

There was a bright red Chevy Bel Air parked right out front, with aggressively large fins.

There could be only one man behind the wheel.

She frowned, because she was trying to keep herself from smiling. Because she was trying to keep her heart from leaping in her chest, even though it did it anyway.

Because she felt sixteen and forty-one at the same time. Desperately optimistic, but horrifically realistic.

She ran down the stairs to the front door and flung it open.

“Want to go for a drive with me?” he asked.

She was hurt. And she was pretty mad at him. But she was going to get in that car.

She opened up the passenger door and got in.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“This? This one is mine. Because there have to be some perks of this job.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“The car is not really the point, though.” He pulled away from the curb and started to drive up out of town, toward the hills.

“What is the point?”

“That I realized we didn’t have any more of these trips coming up. I’m going to miss them.”

“Whose choice was that?” she asked. “Is this a man thing? Being mad about your own choices?”

“Yeah. I take your point.”

“I asked Will for a divorce yesterday,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I may or may not have had a visit from him.”

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