Page 42 of The Summer I Saved You

There is none.

Harrison thinks Caleb did it...because of me.

23

CALEB

“So that’s her, huh?” Beck asks, looking across the room to where Lucie and Harrison are deep in conversation.

“Don’t start,” I reply. “We’re friends.”

Beck grins. “Really? If you’re only friends, then why are the rest of us forbidden from talking to her?”

“I never forbid anyone from talking to her.”

He raises a brow. “Sweet,” he says, sliding under the bar. “I must have misunderstood. I’m gonna go introduce myself.”

I step in front of him, and he laughs, swinging a rag over his shoulder.

“I wasn’t going over there. I just thought I’d prove conclusively that she’s not merely yourfriend.”

I give him the finger and head back to where Lucie and Harrison are finishing up. The three of us walk out of the bar together and Harrison shakes Lucie’s hand. “Congratulations,” he says, “you’re about to be a free woman.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” she tells him, while I blink at them like I’ve taken a bullet to the chest.

Of course she’s about to be free...That’s why we met with him.

But I didn’t think it would be so soon. I’ve gotten used to having her and the kids next door, to seeing them out on the beach. I’ve been cutting out of work early in the hopes of finding them there, and while I knew it would end one day, I suppose I thought that day would be off in the future, some distant point after I was gone.

She’s quiet on the way back to work. Is she planning how she’ll move forward once Jeremy’s in the rearview mirror?

“So I guess you’re about to be single again,” I finally say.

She shrugs. “I guess. I’m not sure a divorcee with young kids is a hot commodity these days.”

My teeth grind. Lucie could be raising an entire busload of orphans and she’d still have a line down the street of men who want to be near her. Wyatt, Hunter, that asshole who grabbed her this morning...If I already know of three men who’d cut off a limb to take her out, how many more must there be? “I’m sure you’ll do fine.” The words are bitten off, angry. I sound jealous when I meant to sound ambivalent. “You should be getting out there,” I add, just in case she heard the jealousy too.

My eyes are on the road, but I feel the way she stiffens beside me.

“I do have a date, actually,” she says. “It’s not for another few weeks because he’s traveling.”

Is it Hunter or some other asshole at TSG? And, whoever this guy is, does he have any chance of being her fairy-tale prince? “What does he do?” I ask. It sounds more like a demand.

She shrugs. “He’s a physicist in Molly’s lab. I don’t know much about him, but she says he’s sweet.”

I’m angry and relieved at once and I can’t explain either of those emotions to myself. “That won’t work for you,” I say too quickly.

“Just out of curiosity, how are you so sure that a man you’venever met won’t work for me basedsolelyon his occupation and the fact that he seems nice?”

Because you don’t want candlelight and rose petals, though you clearly think you do.

You want someone so fucking eager to be inside you that he can’t wait long enough to take you home, to light those candles or scatter rose petals.

You want someone who’s going to devour you, who’s going to sink to his knees and eat you out with your skirt bunched around your waist, who’ll have you soaked before he finally bends you over a desk and pushes inside you.

You want someone who’ll defend you with his life, but demand everything of you when you’re alone.

And Jesus Christ, I want that person to be me—except I’d fail her. Anyone she winds up with will fail her occasionally. But me? I’d fail her all the time.

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