Chapter 15

Fifteen Years Ago-Age Thirteen

In moments like this, I wished I had a mom. Most of the time, I told myself I didn't give a hoot whether that woman gave me away and ran as far as she could, that she didn't love me and left me wondering why. Or how there was a hole in my heart which couldn't be filled.

But when a girl gets her period for the first time, she just wants her mom. Though it left me feeling stupid and weak, I wanted her. I wanted my mother. She would tell me what to do, not to worry, explain things.

We'd gone over it all in school. I'd giggled from my lone perch behind the other girls and rolled my eyes. But now, as I sat on the floor of the bathroom, I wished I'd paid more attention in health class. Panic was threatening to take over, and I fought not to have another attack. My heart beated a mile a minute.

Should I tell Daddy? Did he know about this stuff? Maybe I could ask Mrs. Memmer. Ian's mama could help, right? Yes. What other choice was there?

I rushed to the phone and dialed the number with shaking hands. Oh God, please don't let Ian answer. Please! Please!

"Hello?"

"Um, hi, Mrs. Memmer." Maybe I shouldn't have called. I'd been on my own, just me and Daddy, for so long. I should handle the situation myself.

"Oh, hello, Summer. Ian's right here. Hold on."

"No!" I quickly looked around to make sure Daddy hadn't heard. "I mean, I'm calling to, um-"

"Are you okay, sweetie?"

Great. Just great. I had Mrs. Memmer thinking I was nuts. Just spit it out. "Um, I have a female thing."

"A female-Oh." She paused and I bit my lip. "I'll be right over."

I hung up, my cheeks stinging in hot mortification.

Lately, things had been different. Changing. I was liking boys, wearing a bra-though it was a trainer one and not a real one, but still. Now I got my period.

And here I was, motherless, with a carpenter father who probably didn't know about girly stuff. Like, what I was supposed to wear to the school dance. How to cut my hair. The proper way to shave my legs.

At the knock on the bathroom door, I let Mrs. Memmer in and left Ian in the hall, scathing he was left out of the loop. We may have been BFFs, but no way, absolutely no way, was I sharing this with him.

After his mom got me squared away, Ian and I walked down to the creek behind our houses and sat on the bank. Humidity made my shirt cling and Ian's brown hair curl at the ends. The sunlight had lightened it through the summer, but it was still dark. Like his eyes.

A lot of the girls were crushing on him at school. I'd never been in the popular crowd, but I'd heard them talking. I wondered what it would be like to be kissed, especially by someone like him. Ian was cute and self-assured. I bet he'd kissed lots of girls. I'd be sloppy and he wouldn't like it.

He looked over and did a double-take, catching me staring. The scent of moss and grass swirled around us, the mosquitoes active. Neither of us moved. He smelled like boy sweat and dirt. The heat from his shoulder seeped into my skin where we very nearly touched. I had the weirdest urge to lean against him.

Finally, he swallowed and looked away. "What was that about back at your house? You and my mom?"

I shrugged. "Girl stuff."

"Oh." He picked up a pebble and skipped it across the creek. "You're okay, though?" His dark eyes met mine, worried.

I smiled. "I'm okay."

He nodded. Fast. "Good. That's good."

Present-Ian

I was drenched from the downpour and shaking from frenetic worry by the time I shoved my way through Summer's back door. I'd called her seven times from the road and she hadn't picked up once.

Growing up, she hadn't had it so easy. Rivers and I had tried to be her knights in armor, protecting her from the ugly. But kids, they could be mean. Though Summer had acted tough and pretended her mother's absence didn't affect her, it had.

Her mother. I didn't know what to make of it. After all these years, what could the woman possibly want? And why try to take Summer's house, as Tim claimed? Had she come here, tried to talk to Summer? My stomach twisted and my temples throbbed. I swear, if that woman had upset her...

"Summer!"

No answer. Both her vehicles were in the carport. The kitchen was empty. So was the living room. Panic contorted from a mere sensation to an entity inside my chest.

"Summer!"

Horrific, awful images from the day after Tom's funeral pummeled my memory. Desperation carried me up her staircase, two steps at a time. My chest was so tight I could barely draw air. I had no idea if Sharon Quinn's presence would affect Summer, if it would wreck her or if she'd truly be impassive to Sharon's return. I might be overreacting, yet I couldn't shake the possibility that all those old feelings of abandonment Summer had harbored might shove their way to the surface. Might screw with her depression. Might...

"Summer!"

Not in her bedroom. A raw, wounded noise shoved past my throat. I opened her studio door at the top of the staircase and jerked short.

With her back to me, immersed in a painting, she bobbed up and down on her toes to whatever tune she'd cranked on her iPod. The earbuds would be why she hadn't answered the phone. Paintbrush in hand, she tilted her head to study the canvas on her easel. My gaze raked over her as if swallowing her whole, relief making my hands shake. She was wearing short cutoffs and a white tee, both splattered in paint. Her feet were bare, the norm, and her hair was up in a messy knot.

The last of my apprehension drained as desire kicked in. What I wouldn't do to be able to fist my hand in her hair, tug out that ponytail, and ravish her pouty mouth. Lay her out on her paint-stained floor, cover her perfect body with my own, and show her just what I'd fantasized about for years. I shook my head, sucking in a breath to control myself before other body parts got any ideas.

She didn't appear to be catatonic from her mother's reappearance. Jesus, she was fine. Just damn fine. Or appeared to be. She was damn good at faking it.

But I wasn't fine. Not by a long shot.

I rounded her easel, edging into her line of sight.

She screamed bloody murder, did some kind of seizure dance, and pulled out her earbuds. Cute, that. "God, Ian! You scared me to death."

Good. We were even then, considering she scared a year off my life. "Why did I have to hear from your attorney that your mother filed suit for the house?"

The light drained from her eyes, and she looked away. She turned to swirl her brush in a glass of paint thinner. Her hand, so beautiful, so delicate, shook with the movement.

My guard went right back up. Every ingrained instinct on red alert. "Summer, look at me."

Her mouth thinned, her gaze landing on my chest as if she were unable to meet my eyes. "She came by a week ago. My mother, I mean. That's when I found out. Tim is trying to fix it. I tried to tell you today at Rick and Dee's, but you had to go into the store."

I rubbed my neck. Damn, she had tried to talk to me. I'd blown her off, pissed as all hell about Matt and a stupid swimming suit. "Don't lie to me, because I'll know. Are you okay?"

Instead of answering, she walked to the other side of the room, grabbed a cloth, and wiped her hands.

Grinding my molars to dust, I strode over to her and took the towel, tossing it aside. "Talk to me." That was our code, something I said to her when I was on the brink of losing my shit. For whatever reason, she always had it stuck in her head she had to go it alone, bottle her emotions to not concern others. Thing was, that only made me worry more.

After a gale of a sigh, she looked up at me, those baby blues fathomless. Hurt seeped from her right into me. "I'm scared. Daddy forgot to switch the deed into my name and she's trying to take ownership. She came by, said some things. I don't know if I should believe her." As if noticing my tense posture for the first time, she offered a sad smile. "But I'm okay. I promise."

I nodded once. "What was she like?" Sharon was as much a nonentity in my life as she had been in Summer's. I'd wondered about her, about what kind of woman could walk out on her kid, but it had been years since I'd thought about it.

Her gaze went heavenward, not out of avoidance, but impatience. "She claimed she wanted to see me, but all she really wanted was the house. What else is there to say?"

Plenty. As if that woman hadn't hurt my girl enough, she had to add acid to the wound. Instinct had me pulling Summer to me, holding her against my chest. She wrapped her arms around me, a desperate quality emanating from the way she gripped tight. I rested my cheek on top of her head, breathing in the lilac scent of her. "You should have said something sooner."

"So we both could worry?" She pressed her face into my neck, muffling the words.

Christ, she felt so goddamn good against me. Slow, liquid heat built in my veins. "Yes. Now shut up and accept help. I'm here."

Leaning back, she inhaled deep. "You're wet. Is it raining?" Before I could answer, her defenses were rebuilding. "Go home and get dry before you get sick. I'll come over in a bit. I just have to clean up, take a shower."

There was no talking to her when she was like this, so I kissed her forehead and headed home.

After a change of clothes, I sat on a chair in my bedroom, thinking about Summer's mother. Though she hid it well, the little girl in Summer had to be wounded by the rejection. After Sharon finally came home, there would be no more illusions or hope. She didn't want a relationship with Summer, by the sound of it. I'd like to rip the fool woman's head off.

What Rick had said earlier about telling Summer how I felt seemed small now. I watched the rain beat against the window, contemplating how I would even go about spilling the truth. The thought of telling Summer I loved her-and not just as a friend-was something I'd played over in my mind too many times to count. I'd imagined a variety of responses from her, knowing the one I wanted would never be a reality.

She'd think I was crazy or just wanted sex. Oh, I wanted that, too. But she was the one woman I had any desire to make love with, to have children with, and grow old with.

To be honest, I'd never wanted kids until recently. In the back of my mind, I supposed my hesitation always came down to Summer's students. I'd witnessed the devastation and loss of what a terminal illness could do, and I was pretty certain I couldn't handle that. But a few years ago, my feelings had changed. What began as sexual interest in Summer as teenagers turned from curiosity to love in our early twenties and into I couldn't live without her now. She was all I wanted. And I'd give her anything, including the family she desired most.

I sighed, knowing no matter what, we would grow old together as friends if I would just keep my mouth shut. Carry on the same old, same old.

The dark night sky let out a flash of lightning and I frowned. She never could sleep through storms, not since the night her dad died. What a torrent that had been, and every time it rained, she seemed to be reminded of that day. As a girl, she'd loved rain, often danced in it like a fairy, but like so many other things, that had been taken from her, too.

Summer walked into my room moments later, dripping from head to toe, and stopped just inside the doorway. Her hair was drenched with rainwater and meshed against her pale face. Her navy nightgown was stuck to every curve of her as she stood there shivering. Those blue eyes were a deeper, deadly sapphire in the lowlight. Because I was an idiot, I glanced quickly at her nipples, the peaks taut against the cotton fabric.

Hell. I bit back a groan and rose from the chair, threw her an old shirt from my top drawer. Without saying a word, I turned away from her while she undressed. When she was situated, I grabbed a towel from my adjoining bath and dried her hair best I could. She stood there, letting me. In many aspects of our friendship, she let me take care of her. In others, she put up a wall, ever independent. After so many years together, I knew where the lines were drawn.

I put the book away in my nightstand to have something to do, give myself a moment, before pulling the covers away from the bed, letting her in.

She was still shivering when she lay next to me, curled up to my side, and formed her body to fit mine. This she didn't do often. Cuddled. We'd watched movies, talked long into the night, but rarely got this...intimate.

"I'm cold."

I rubbed my hand up and down her back to warm her, trying to conjure an idea for conversation that didn't involve how hard a certain part of my anatomy was becoming. "What are you going to do with all of us gone tomorrow night?" Rick, Dee, and I were driving to the coast tomorrow for our annual vacation. Summer had a work meeting and was heading down a day late.

"I could always call Peter for company." Her attempt at a joke was uttered through quivering lips, missing the mark.

What that jerk at the hobby store had said to her about me still rankled, but I tsked in good humor. "What would Matt say?"