Since it’s summer and the beaches are still a hot spot for tourists at night, I drive a little farther up the cape to a place I know Charlotte will recognize. When I park the truck, and she turns to me in question, I offer her a guilty shrug.

“Did you…?” She clears her throat. “Did you know I used to come here?”

“Yes.” I stare out at the water, too afraid of the conflicting emotions I might find in her eyes. “I followed you out here once after school. That day one of the cheerleaders tripped you in the hallway.”

“You did?” she croaks.

“I wanted to make sure you were all right, but I didn’t know what to do to fix it. So I just sat here, watching you stare out at the water. You didn’t cry. You didn’t do anything. And that was the moment I knew I was going to lose you. When the opportunity arose, you were going to leave town and never look back.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she admits. “Whenever I had a bad day, I’d come here to think about how different my life would be when I made it my own.”

I turn to study the profile of her face in the moonlight. “Have you made it your own?”

She stares out the window and shrugs a dainty shoulder. “I’d like to think so. I’m happier now. I’m accomplishing what I set out to do.”

“And what is that, Lottie?”

Her gaze turns downward, and she doesn’t sound so sure of herself anymore when she answers. “I’m going to open my own division of the business in Florida. But first, I had to come back here and get some real events under my belt to convince my parents I could do it.”

“Or maybe they just want you back here,” I say, omitting the fact that I don’t want her to go anywhere either. “I think they missed you.”

“I know they did.” Guilt tinges her voice. “But I can’t live here. This town is—”

“This town is what you make it, Charlotte. Just like anywhere else.”

Her eyes flare, and she turns to me. “That’s easy for you to say. You were the boy who had it all.”

“Far from it,” I scoff. “I didn’t have the one thing that mattered most.”

“What could that possibly be?” she argues. “You were practically royalty in this town.”

“Maybe,” I concede. “But I didn’t have you.”

When she falls quiet, I want to know what she’s thinking, but I’m aware there’s only so far I can push her before she shuts down on me again. So I exit the cab and walk around to open her door for her instead. I brought her here for a reason, and I want to explain.

Charlotte takes the hand I offer her hesitantly and steps down from the truck. Her delicate fingers feel like velvet against my calloused palm. A reminder that she’s fragile even after she created a fortress around her heart. She’s probably the strongest person I know, but she’s never allowed herself to believe it.

We walk down to the beach together, removing our shoes and tossing them aside at the bottom of the steps. The sand is cool beneath my feet, but my skin is on fire. Being so close to her and smelling her scent has brought back so many memories that I’m having difficulty processing them all. I wonder if Charlotte feels the same, or if she can only remember the bad.

“Do you remember the time you got your hair caught in that tree out in the front yard of your parents’ place?” I ask her.

“Oh, God.” She giggles. “How could I ever forget? Just another ordinary day in Charlotte’s world.”

“That was the first time I was ever so close to you.” I grin as I recall the image of her panicked face while she desperately tried to untangle herself from the tree’s grasp.

“You saved me.” Her lips tilt up at the corners. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been home. Or if you’d just chosen to walk on by.”

I reach down and squeeze her hand. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

She lowers her gaze, staring at the stretch of sand beneath our feet. “But you did, sometimes.”

I stop walking, and by default, Charlotte stops too. “I know you won’t believe this, Lottie, but I defended you more than you knew. I defended you all the time, and I copped a lot of shit for it, but I didn’t care. That was never the problem.”

“Then what was the problem?” she asks.

My chest expands, and a frustrated breath escapes my lips. “I kept waiting for the day that you were going to defend yourself. I knew you had it in you. Sometimes, you came close, but you always backed down. I just wanted you to show them that they didn’t matter. That nothing they said or did could get to you. But sometimes, it seemed like you wanted them to win.”

I brace for the fallout that my words are probably going to cause as Charlotte’s eyebrows pinch together while she considers what I said. I want to know what she’s thinking, but she isn’t giving anything away.

“I think maybe sometimes I did,” she finally admits. “I just let them win because I thought they were right. I didn’t have enough confidence to believe I could change the situation. But if I had to go back and do it over again, I know I’d do things differently.”

“You still can,” I tell her. “You’re here now. You can show them who you really are. High school is over. All that shit is in the past, and if anyone wants to dredge it up again, they need to know you aren’t going to put up with it. And neither will I.”

When she turns to me, her eyes are glassy, and her face is so full of emotion it hits me right in the chest. But it’s the good kind of emotion. She’s never looked more vulnerable than she does right now. I can’t hold back anymore. I can’t let this night end without at least tasting her lips just once in my life.

I reach out and drag her into my arms, holding her against my chest as the waves crash against our feet. She smells so good I want to bury myself against her skin. It takes everything inside me to go slow as I stroke her hair and lower my face to hers. Her body melts into mine, soft and pliable against me. And when my lips drag over hers, sparks shoot between us in anticipation of the kiss that’s been a decade in the making.

“Charlotte,” I groan.

When she closes her eyes and nods, it’s on. My lips crash into hers as my grip tightens around her waist. I want her body smashed against mine as I drink her in and taste her sweet essence. I want to breathe her in and leave her so thoroughly kissed she’ll never remember any other.

Her small hands curl into my shirt, and she presses against me, narrowing any distance between us. I kiss her until neither one of us can breathe, and even then, I’d be willing to drown so long as the last thing I tasted was her.

“Fuck,” I growl as my forehead falls against hers, and we both pant for air. “I want you, Charlotte. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”

She looks up at me with eyes so bright I would swear the sun was still shining down on us. And then she says the words I never in a million years thought she would.

“I’m yours.”