Page 51 of Summer of You

Nathan laughed as he grabbed her other bowl and filled it with water. She ran circles around the both of us. Her cries only halted when both dishes were on the ground and she could mash her face into them.

When Nathan rested his head against my back, I sagged in relief for the first time in days. Playing it tough the way I had at the hospital was exhausting. Drew was being transferred to Aberdeen, but would need to be monitored for a while until he returned to full health. Gabriella was going to stay at his place and watch over Max in the meantime.

The family had been shocked to realize who she was to Drew. Despite Drew being practically family to me and having a relationship with Nathan, I’d still felt like an outsider.

“Can we just crawl into bed and live there for a week?”

I chuckled and turned so that my arms draped over Nathan’s shoulders, and kissed the top of his head. His parents had put us up in a motel room in Olympia until we could drive back to the beach. Nathan had a long talk with his mom about his plans and he told her he still hadn’t made a decision. It bothered me, because his choice should have been easy. I was here. But then, there was no work here—not that there was any in Seattle, either.

“I think bed sounds amazing.”

He smirked as he leaned in to kiss me and then slinked his way toward my bed, peeling his shirt over his head in the process. Nathan was always sexy as sin, but sex was the furthest thing from my mind at the moment. There hadn’t been much sleeping over the last few days between going back and forth to the hospital and making arrangements for Drew’s transfer.

Once we were both in bed, it didn’t take long at all to drift off to dreamland.

Iwatched as Nathan paced the yard. He’d been on the phone for the last twenty minutes, arguing with his parents. With thembeing at the hospital, he’d officially told them about us. Neither of them seemed to be bothered. Nathan’s mom had just given me a big hug and said, “It wasn’t like you weren’t already part of this family.”

The words weren’t meant to hurt, but how had I been part of a family that had excluded me for the last four years? Well, all except for Drew. Except it appeared Drew had kept Casey in the loop about what had happened to me.

Nathan jammed his phone back into his pocket and I did my best to make it look like I hadn’t been watching him from the window. When he came in, I picked up the glass of iced tea I’d been drinking and held it out to him. He gratefully grabbed it from my hand and took a long drink, his throat bobbing and drawing my attention. We’d been back for three days and nothing felt back to normal yet. There was an emptiness that permeated everything. I either needed to start cleaning houses again or I needed my boyfriend to fuck me.

Something needed to give.

“Everything okay at home?”

Nathan huffed. “Mom wants me to convince Uncle Drew to move to Seattle. Like we haven’t been trying that for years. Gabi would probably move, she already said she doesn’t have any major attachment to the area...”

“Shouldn’t it fall on Gabriella to convince him, then?”

He nodded, setting the glass down on the table a little too hard. Little drops of condensation went flying and he winced at how loud it was. Oreo even went scurrying to hide under something.

“That’s what I said. I didn’t come out here this summer to be a middleman. I came out here because she was tired of me partying it up with my friends after school.”

It stung. I knew it would sting. Of course he hadn’t come back for me.

Nathan’s expression morphed from one of frustration to panic once he’d realized what he’d said. “Shit. Chase... that’s not...”

“It’s fine. You already told me why you didn’t come back, remember? It shouldn’t be a surprise.”

He nodded before reaching for my hand and pulling me from my seat at the table. “It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t insensitive.”

And that right there was why it was nearly impossible to stay mad at Nathan. He at least knew when he’d fucked something up. And he’d been trying to make it up to me all damn summer.

I nuzzled into his neck and playfully nipped at the skin. He chuckled and pinched at my side. “What are you doing now?”

“I don’t know. I think my boyfriend said something mean and he needs to make it up to me.”

It still felt strange, after all this time, to call him my boyfriend. That we were finally something real. Something tangible that I could grab ahold of and notlet go of.

“Is that so?” he asked as he pulled the hat from my head. His fingers threaded through my hair, pulling my face back far enough that he could slant his mouth over mine. I moaned into the kiss as his hips rocked into mine. His mom had made him get a haircut when we were in Olympia and I mourned that there wasn’t as much to grab a hold of anymore.

He looked so damn good, regardless of how long his hair was and I messed up the dark brown that still sat on top of his head before escaping his embrace and backing up to my bed. Before falling onto the mattress, I lifted my shirt over my head and waggled my eyebrows at him. He laughed before stalking across the camper.

Yes. This had been exactly what I’d been craving. To get back to us. To get back to the fun and forget that the last few days had been absolute torture on my mental health.

“Is that how it is?” Nathan purred as he stood over me.

I squirmed under his gaze. It was filled with so much heat my entire body felt the fire as it licked across my skin. My hand dove into the waistband of my sweats and wrapped around my cock. The pressure was amazing, and I groaned at the pleasure. “Yeah. I think you have a lot to make up for, honestly.”

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