Chapter 20
Hunter
11 years ago
It never dulled.
Not even after eight months of not seeing her.
I should’ve forgotten all about Summer by now. There’d been others—maybe too many others in an attempt to forget her—but my attraction was still there the first time we crossed paths again.
It was Jayce’s graduation party at our aunt and uncle’s house. I was sipping a beer in the living room when she walked in. Our eyes locked, and I swear it felt like my heart started to beat for the first time.
Fuck. She’s gorgeous.
I watched as she walked over to Jayce and his girlfriend of two months and gave him a big hug. She said something that made all three of them laugh, and then walked over to the couch and parked herself right next to me. Without turning her head in my direction, she took the beer from my hand and brought it to her lips to drink.
She spoke before drinking. “Truth or dare?”
I smirked. “Truth.”
After she took a healthy swallow from my beer, she passed it back. “Did you delete the nearly naked picture of me on your phone that I sent forever ago?”
I turned my head and waited until she finally looked at me to respond. “Nope.”
Her eyes sparkled. “How often do you look at it?”
“More truth?”
She nodded.
“Every fucking day.”
We passed the beer back and forth again. “Seeing anyone?” she asked.
“I have someone I see once in a while.”
“Is see code for fuck?”
The corners of my lip twitched. “I was trying to be a gentleman. How about you? You seeing anyone?”
She lobbed my noncommittal answer right back at me. “I have someone I see once in a while.”
I was screwing someone else, hadn’t seen or spoken to Summer in eight months—not since the night at the party when I walked away after realizing she was the girl my brother was nuts about—and yet, I had the urge to rip the head off the nameless, faceless guy she was sleeping with. Yeah, time hadn’t dulled shit.
I stood. “Going to grab another beer. You want your own, or are you planning on just taking mine the rest of the night?”
Summer flashed an impish smile. “Planning on taking yours the rest of the night, unless that’s a problem.”
“No problem here.”
I took five minutes to sort out my head before returning to the couch. I glanced over at my brother with his arm around Emily—he looked happy. He’d pined over Summer for six more months after that party. Now that he’d seemed to move on, was the ban lifted? Jayce had no idea anything had ever happened between Summer and me—and truth be told, not much had. But was it ever okay to go for a girl your brother was once crazy about, even though she’d never returned the feelings? I wasn’t sure my moral compass always pointed me in the right direction.
Summer hadn’t moved from the couch when I returned. I sat, cracked open a new beer and took a sip before passing it to her. “My turn. Truth or dare?”
She took a long chug from the can. “Dare.”
The challenge exited my mouth without any real thought. “Text the guy you’re seeing and tell him you’re done with seeing him.”
Summer looked back and forth between my eyes before digging into her purse and pulling out her cell. She scrolled through her contacts and typed a message. When she finished, she turned the phone toward me so I could read the text she’d typed to a guy named Gavin.
Hey. Sorry to do this via text. But I need to end what we have going on. Have a nice summer break!
After I finished reading, she hit send.
I drank from the beer. “Gavin’s day just got shitty.”
We smiled at each other as her phone pinged with a response. I loved that she didn’t bother to open it and ignored the sound of a dozen new messages over the next half hour we sat together.
When the party was in full swing, Summer and I separated, each spending time talking to our friends and hanging out with Jayce. But there wasn’t a second of the day that I didn’t know exactly where she was. My eyes were like a magnet to her. And it didn’t appear I was the only one. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and we’d smile. Other times, one of us would look at the other, mid-conversation with someone else, and even though our eyes couldn’t connect, our hidden smirks said we were on the same page.
At one point I was talking to my brother when I felt her eyes on me. I still hadn’t worked out how anything between Summer and me would sit with Jayce, so I decided to feel things out.
“You and Emily look happy.”
“She’s great.” He had a bottle of seltzer water in his hand, and I noticed a shake when he raised it to his mouth, almost a tremor. Considering our mother had had Parkinson’s, it was something we both noticed.
“What’s going on there?” I lifted my chin toward his hand.
“Just a little too much to drink last night.” He tipped his bottle to me. “A little too much graduation celebration. Sticking to seltzer today.”
What college guy who lives in a frat house hasn’t had those nights? I thought nothing of it, seeing as I’d had shaky morning-afters myself. So, I went back to poking around.
“Emily going to grad school?”
“Not right away. She’s taking her nursing boards but wants to work for a while before doing a graduate degree.”
“How’d you two meet anyway?”
“Tutoring.” He smiled warmly. “She sucks at math.”
“Ah. Like Su…Pearl. How’s she gonna make it through her last year of college without you around to tutor her?”
Jayce looked over my shoulder. I knew by the look in his eye who he was gazing at. “I’ll make the time if she still needs help. I’d never turn down an opportunity to spend time with Pearl.”
Shit. “Better not let Emily hear you say that.”
He shook his head, still staring at Summer over my shoulder. “Yeah. No shit. No one likes to find out they’re second choice.”
***
I drank too much.
The party was winding down, and I wasn’t the only one who had overindulged. Jayce, who’d said he wasn’t drinking today, had just tripped over his own two feet, and his tipsy girlfriend laughed so hard, she fell down on the floor with him when she tried to help him up.
Needing some fresh air, I sat on the front porch alone, nursing a beer and licking my wounds. I’d done my best to ignore Summer after my earlier conversation with my brother. Then the front door opened, and she sat her fine ass down next to me on the step.
“Here you are. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”
I was honest to a fault, more so when I drank. “I was.”
She bumped her shoulder into mine. “You’re not too good at it, seeing as you’re sitting on the front porch, and this is the only way out.”
I guzzled the last of my beer. “He still has feelings for you.”
Summer’s face fell. “But he’s seeing someone.”
“I’ve been seeing other people. Doesn’t keep me from staring at your face every fucking day on my phone.”
She tilted her head. “My face? Is that the part you stare at in the photo on your phone?”
My eyes dropped to her cleavage. “There’s more than three billion women in the world. Why is it that the only one I really want is the one I can’t have?”
Summer stared down at her feet. Eventually she said, “Like I told you eight months ago, I like Jayce. He’s a great guy. But whether you and I had met or not, he’s just a friend.” Her eyes rose to meet mine. “You can’t make yourself feel something for someone any more than you can make yourself stop feeling something for someone else.”
I knew she was right. We’d had no contact for more than eight months after finding out my brother was crazy about her. We’d both moved on to other people, and she’d never moved Jayce out of the friend zone. It was clear neither one of us had stopped feeling what we’d felt that first day for each other. Heart trumps head, every damn time.
It was me who started the game this time. Summer’s hands were splayed flat on the steps on either side of her, next to mine. I lifted my pinky and reached the few inches over to her hand, entwining her little finger with mine.
“Truth or dare,” I said.
She lifted those big green eyes to mine, looking up under thick lashes. “Truth.”
I arched a brow at her choice. She’d always been a dare girl. After sorting through a million questions in my head, I went with something open-ended. “Tell me a secret no one else knows.”
Summer bit her lip and looked shy for the first time since I’d met her. “No one knows I stalked you on Facebook and screenshot a photo someone had tagged you in. You were at the beach and looked really sexy.” She paused and lowered her voice. “And no one knows that sometimes I look at it while I masturbate.”
Jesus Christ.
I swallowed hard. This girl was trying to kill me.
She looked down at our linked pinkies and squeezed. “Your turn. Truth or dare.”
I cleared my throat. Since we were going against the grain, I went with it. “Dare.”
A seductive smile spread across her face. “Come home with me.”