Page 101 of The Summer You Found Me

I cross the room to him. God, everything about this sucks. The couple having lunch at the end of the bar is watching; employees’ heads are turning. I can’t believe I thought this was a good idea, coming here to let him reject me out in the open.

“I’m sorry.” My voice cracks. “I know I should have said it a long time ago, but I needed to get my life together.”

He’s silent, regarding me with that face of his, the one that gives nothing away. I saw through it once, could read him like no one else, but it’s closed to me now.

I swallow, trying to hold my shit together through the next bit—to say words that will clearly prove futile but that need to be said anyway. “And Caleb was never the person I was in love with. It just took you leaving for me to see it.”

“Okay,” he says, setting his book down on the counter.

I wait for there to be more, but no words come. He’s looking at me blankly, as if the conversation is over.

Of all the responses I expected to get,okaywas not one of them. The pain is so sharp and sudden I can’t breathe.

I pivot on my heel and walk back out the doors, tears already streaming down my face. I’m not going to Kent’s. I’m not going to use. But it really fucking hurts, and it’s going to take a long time to recover.

Somehow, I get to my car. I’m opening the door when I hear my name shouted, and then Beck is marching toward me, the same way I marched toward him a few minutes ago, with nothing conciliatory on his face whatsoever.

I sling my purse in the car and turn back toward him, bracing myself for pain. For him to put the final nail in the casket.

“Jesus, Kate,” he says. “Why’d it take you so long?”

His palms slide past my jaw and into my hair, and then his mouth is on mine—hard and insistent, as if this is something it pained him to wait for.

When he finally releases me, I take a weak swing at his shoulder. “Why the fuck did you let me walk out?”

His laughter is sheepish. His hand cradles my face, his long fingers brushing my temples, my chin at the base of his palm. “I have no fucking clue. I’ve been watching that door every day for three months, hoping you were going to be the next person to walk in. And then you did and it just...took me a minute. I was waiting for you to say it was me you wanted, and you didn’t.”

“I thought it was obvious.”

“Yeah, Mueller thought it was obvious too. If he hadn’t been eavesdropping, I’d still probably be standing behind the bar waiting. But Kate—”

No good sentence ever began with the words “But Kate.” My stomach ties itself in knots.

“I need all of you this time. I don’t want you here because Caleb isn’t an option. I want you to be here because I’m the option you want.”

I press my face to his chest, reveling in the warmth of him, in his smell and his size and all the other things I’ve missed. “You are. You always were. I want everything now. And I only want it with you.”

His smile is like the sun breaking through clouds. “Then let’s go home,” he says, “and get started.”

47

KATE

May

Inormally drive to Elliott Springs on Friday nights and stay for the weekend, but my flight from Tokyo got in late, so I told Beck I’d come out in the morning.

It is, therefore, a little surprising to wake with a man’s limbs wrapped around me, though not especially worrisome. Very few men have arms that size. It’s either Beck or Jason Momoa, and Momoa doesn’t seem like the breaking-and-entering type.

I snuggle closer. Certain parts of his anatomy make it clear that he’s most likely awake. “I don’t know who you are or why you’ve broken into my apartment,” I announce, “but it would be a shame to let an erection of that size go to waste.”

His sleepy laugh gusts over my hair. “I missed you. We aren’t usually apart this long.”

Normally, he comes to San Francisco mid-week and I go to Elliott Springs on the bar’s busier nights, but my travel schedule threw us off. I wrap my hands around his forearms. “I missed you too. What time do you need to get back to the bar?”

“I don’t. I figured they’d survive without me. Especially since it’s about to be someone else’s problem.”

The sale of the bar goes through in two weeks. He could have just hired people to manage it but decided it was best to make a clean break.

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