Page 55 of Summer of You

“Yeah,” he said, as his sleep-warm fingers wrapped around mine.

His dark brown eyes showed nothing but promise. A promise that he intended not to break this time, and I needed to give him something in return.

“I’m scared.”

It was honest. In all my twenty-two years, I’d never left the coast. My parents had talked about vacations and wanting to travel, but we’d never gone anywhere. I’d never been to Seattle, even though it was only three hours away. It was sad, but there was a huge part of me that wanted to see what was beyond the Washington coast.

The kiss that Nathan placed against my lips set my nerves at ease. I knew that going forward, this man had my back. He meant every last word that he said and that our problematic past was washed away.

Chapter 38

Nathan

If I found one more pack hidden in this room, I was going to lose my mind.

To be fair, Uncle Drew only had a few packs of cigarettes stashed in random places. And it didn’t come across like he’d been hiding them. It was more like he’d put them somewhere and forgotten where he’d put them. Most of them were missing only a couple of the cancer-causing sticks, so it felt like a ton of money going down the drain as I tossed them in the garbage can.

Would he be mad at me when he got home tomorrow and found them all gone? Maybe, but I didn’t give a shit. This had been one health scare too many.

Gabriella stood in the doorway to the bedroom, holding up yet another half-empty pack. “Did you find any more?”

“Only a few. Thanks for helping me with this, Gabi.”

She grinned. “You know, when I was really little, my momma called me Gabi. No one has really called me that since. Grandma constantly insisted that a lady should always go by her full name.”

I snorted a laugh. “Your grandma was full of crap. You should be who you wantto be.”

A blush painted her cheeks as she came into the room and sat on the corner of the bed. Her skirt fanned out around her hips and she toyed with the edge of it. I quickly learned that she did it when she was either nervous or had something on her mind.

“How long did it take you to be comfortable with who you are?”

The question was loaded. I sat on the floor and looked at her. The more time I spent with her, the more obvious the family resemblance became. I sort of liked having a cousin to talk to. “It took longer than it should have. I made some mistakes because I was scared to be me.”

She nodded. “Was Chase one of those mistakes?”

I sighed heavily, crossed my legs, and shook my head. How did I go about explaining this to her? “I hurt him. But I think things are finally back on track.”

The smile that spread across Gabriella’s face was so blinding it could have lit up the entire house. “I’m glad. I think you two are so sweet together.”

The conversation seemed finished, and she offered her hand to help me up. We had to finish several more things to make sure the house was ready for Uncle Drew's return tomorrow.

Chase showed up halfway through the day to help. He’d taken over Uncle Drew’s computer and was able to check the properties and help people who were renting in his absence. It also gave us a job to do again. The houses weren’t going to clean themselves.

At the end of the day, we sat at the dining table for a home-cooked meal of steak with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. It all felt a little surreal; like we’d somehow become a little family unit over the last couple of weeks that Uncle Drew had been in the hospital. Gabriella refused to let us eat out most days and even Max was putting on a few pounds since she’d looked up a few pet food recipes and was making his meals from scratch as well. She’d even packed up a few containers for Chase to take home to Oreo.

“So what are your plans, Gabriella?” Chase asked her.

That blush was back, and she cleared her throat. “Please, you can call me Gabi. I think I like it.”

He smiled, looking back and forth between the two of us. “No problem, Gabi. Do you have any plans once Drew is back?”

She sighed as she set her fork down on the table. “Part of me wants to stay here with my dad until he gets a little more settled again. He shouldn’t overdo things right away.”

I nodded and agreed. “But you took care of your grandma for years as well, didn’t you?”

She shrugged. “I did, but I think that might be my calling. I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier about not being afraid of who I really am. I’m a natural helper and working at Homeport is nice and all... but it’s not me. Maybe I can look into nursing school.”

I could see her doing it, even if I didn’t know her all that well, but that meant leaving Uncle Drew by himself for a while. You couldn't do nursing school online. You had to attend a physical location. But maybe that was the push Uncle Drew needed to finally move somewhere his health could get some better attention.

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