Spending every summer with his grandmother in the south of England isn't Ryan's idea of a good time, and when he finds someone his own age to hang out with, he doesn't much care who that is. Alex might not say much, but company is company when there's nobody else to choose from, and Ryan will simply have to make do. It isn't, after all, like he really needs a friend. But Alex is more than just a kid with a thing for smashing up greenhouses, and Ryan finds himself dragged further and further into a dark, uncertain world of alcohol, bruises, a mother's madness, and a father's anger. Worst of all, Alex is dragging Ryan into a world of lust, attraction, and midnight kisses that Ryan is struggling to keep confined to southern summers. This thing with Alex can't go further than summer -- but Alex, and the shadows that surround him, are not so easily forgotten. Ryan can't forget Alex, but the longer he hangs on, the more he discovers ... not just about Alex, but about himself, his future, and the things that really matter. But eventually, summer must come to an end.

Our Last Summer

As he goes further back, into April and March of the year she died, the posts multiply rapidly with expressions of shock and regret and loss. They are, again, unsurprising: so shocked, no idea you felt like that, if only you’d talked to me, you could have come to me, better place now, so sorry…


The usual platitudes. It seems that nobody knew she was going to go, nobody knew how she must have felt, and nobody knew what to do without her. She had been popular, it seems, but in the last two years, those friends had obviously moved on and grown up without her.


Alex Bexley had left a message on the page—short and chillingly detached: a simple bye liz that has almost been lost amongst the long-winded mourning of her friends.


Chapter 18