From where I stood, I couldn’t see much more in the dark than the white foam of ocean waves and two heads of blonde hair, their figures shadowy in the distance. The girls who’d turned my life upside down. It hadn’t been much of a life. No doubt, it was better now. After watching my parents’ knock-down, drag-out fights followed by make-up sessions that’d keep them in the bedroom for days, I couldn’t have predicted I’d ever actually want to get married. Tiffany and I wouldn’t end up like my parents, though. When she baited me, I kept my cool. When she got upset, I’d do my best to help her manage her emotions. She was a catch, too, and I was the only one who’d caught her in any meaningful way. We’d build a good, sturdy life together. I’d find work that fulfilled me and made sure she did the same.

And I wouldn’t be saddled with the constant worry that I wasn’t enough for her.

I returned my attention to Corbin’s brother, who was talking about restoring a T-bird. He took out a pack of cigarettes and held it up to me. “Smoke?”

I took one and stuck it in my mouth while I dug my lighter from my jeans pocket. “You’re in college, right?”

“Santa Barbara.”

“You live in a house or something? Where do you keep the car?”

“Here, in my parents’ garage. I just work on it when I’m home for weekends or holidays. Corbin helped out before he left.” He cupped his hand to light his cigarette. “He’s not so bad, you know.”

So everyone insisted on telling me. Knowing Corbin had driven Lake and her friends here tonight, I’d seen the beer in his hand and my mind went to the worst. Maybe some of my overprotectiveness was unfounded, but I’d actually known people who’d died as a result of drunk driving, and I’d bet Corbin did, too. My gaze went directly to the girls, as it had been every couple minutes. They stood right at the shore, the water creeping up to their bare feet, reaching for them after the smash and fizz of each wave. I shuddered.

“You go out with Tiffany?” Corey asked.

I nodded. “Are you the one who dated her?”

He laughed a little. “No, that’s my oldest brother, Cane. I mean, I wouldn’t say they dated. I think they probably hooked up a couple times in high school. Sorry.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know her then. She says your brother had a crush on her. Not Cane.”

“Corbin? Maybe. She was a senior when he was a sophomore. They all had crushes on her.” He blew smoke out the side of his mouth. “But that was before he met her sister. Corbin’s fucking whipped on that girl. He’s so in love with Lake, it’s stupid. And she treats him like crap.”

“Yeah?” I asked. That didn’t sound like Lake. “How?”

“She just strings him along. Says they’re best friends or some shit, won’t sleep with him. But he keeps hoping she’ll change her mind.” He shook his head. “He’s a pussy. He gets lots of girls. Just not the one he wants.”

Lake was a heartbreaker, that wasn’t news to me. I’d seen how Corbin looked at her. I’d probably worn the same expression. She’d break more hearts than ours. I couldn’t muster any sympathy for any other motherfucker. Maybe Corbin was the gentleman everyone claimed. Maybe he was in love with Lake and wasn’t out to hurt her. Maybe he’d even be good for her. But he was still the one who could get everything I wanted with one word from Lake.

“It’s not that she doesn’t want Corbin.” At some point, Val had inserted herself between us. She slurped from her beer can. “She just can’t see him. Someone else is in the way.”

“Who?” Corey asked.

“I’m not sure.” Val glanced at me and then the girls. Tiffany had her arms around Lake. “I’d bet a hundred bucks that right now, Tiffany is asking Lake to be in her wedding.”

Fuck. Tiffany wouldn’t waste any time. From now until she walked down the aisle, all eyes would be on her. I couldn’t do anything about it without making things worse for all of us. There were some things I couldn’t protect Lake from. She’d have to handle herself. I looked into the fire, swallowing down my guilt.

“You guys getting married?” Corey asked.

“Maybe it’ll be a beach wedding,” Val said. “Right here. Picture it. The sun setting, all your friends and family in the crowd, Tiffany complaining that she can’t wear heels, that her dress is dragging in the sand. Lake walking down the aisle, catching the bouquet.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Val knew. Her attempts to get me to open my eyes were cute, but they wouldn’t do much good. As long as I believed this was best for everyone involved—not just Lake, but for me and Tiff, too—it was the right choice.

“Sounds epic,” Corey said, but neither of us looked at him. He flicked his cigarette into the fire. “I’m gonna go see if Cane’s back with more alcohol yet. He’ll need a hand.”

I still had half a cigarette left, and I didn’t like giving up something I’d once fought a man over, but I felt like I should offer. “Need help?”

“Nah, we’re good,” he said and took off, leaving Val and me.

“You think I’m an asshole, don’t you?” Val asked.

I hadn’t been sure what to make of Val when I’d met her. In some ways, Lake’s relationship with her reminded me of hers with Tiffany’s—one loud and attention seeking, the other composed, reserved. Except Val seemed to recognize that Lake’s quiet confidence wasn’t to be mistaken for meekness. She challenged Lake in a way her friends and family didn’t. Not even her dad, because Charles didn’t really want Lake to think for herself. “I think you’re a good friend.”

“Because I don’t have a dick?”

I pulled back, frowning. “What?”

“When Corbin tries to look out for Lake, you go caveman. Is it because you want her for yourself?”

I set my jaw. She had no right telling me my business, but my anger was diluted by the fire her words lit in me. Want her for myself. Want. Lake. For. My. Self. Lake did bring out the caveman in me.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Val said as Tiffany headed back in our direction. “But you can have her. Of that, I’m pretty sure.”

Tiffany pulled her hands into her sweater sleeves, trekking through the sand toward us. “I haven’t stopped smiling since the party,” she called out to me. “My cheeks hurt.”

“Why?” Val asked.

Tiffany’s smile fell. “Because I’m getting married.”

“Oh yeah.” Val snorted. “I already forgot.”

Val knew how to get to Tiffany. Unlike Lake’s other friends, I hadn’t seen Tiffany try to engage her. Maybe she wasn’t sure she’d win. “Maybe you’ve had enough beer,” I told her.

“Maybe.” Val tossed her empty beer can into a trash bag slumped by some lawn chairs. “I’ll see if the guys need any help.”

“So,” Tiffany started, “how do you feel about hydrangeas?”

I looked over her head. Lake was walking away from the bonfire, along the water. “What’s she doing?” I asked.

“Hydrangeas,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Huh? What is that?”

“A type of flower. For the wedding.”

“Tiff,” I said, squinting to see into the dark, “you know I don’t give a fuck about the flowers.”

“All right, geez. I thought you might want to try to care.”

I cared enough that I’d possibly made a deal with the devil, but I didn’t have time to get into that now. “Where’s Lake going?”

“I don’t know. Probably to drown herself because I stole her spotlight.”

My face heated as I dropped my eyes to her. I’d never gone into much detail about my sister’s death with Tiffany, but she knew Maddy had drowned. “Why would you say that?” I asked. “You have any idea how insensitive that is?”

She rubbed under her nose, looking away as she muttered, “About as insensitive as ignoring me?”

Tiffany wasn’t mean-spirited, but sometimes she did mean things out of hurt. I knew her comment about drowning hadn’t been meant as a barb at me—it was too low of a blow. But she needed to think before she spoke. “I’m going to go get Lake.”

“No.”

I glanced down at her. “No?”

She put her hand in my free one. “She’ll be fine. I need you here.”

“For what?” I squeezed her hand but let it go. “I’ll just be a minute. It’s not safe for her to walk alone in the dark.”

Tiffany folded her arms. “Manning.” She thinned her lips into a bloodless line. “I said no.”

She was telling me no. It was cute she thought she could. Before anything, I was a man, and I answered only to myself. Especially after the life I’d led. I’d bent over backward to make Tiffany comfortable, but I wasn’t indulging this kind of behavior. I took a drag of my cigarette and watched Lake get farther away. “I have to.”

“Like you had to let her in your truck that night? You couldn’t have just fucking said no and closed the door?”

I sucked nicotine into my lungs, hoping it’d morph into some kind of explanation for that night. I understood why she was paranoid after what she’d witnessed with her dad, but I didn’t need Tiffany throwing that in my face the rest of our lives. “I tried.”

“Try harder.”

I didn’t want to. Tiffany didn’t know that trying harder meant me walking away from the whole situation. I’d given her as much as I was able these past couple years. This moment wasn’t about her, though. Lake was hurting, and it was my fault, and I had to attempt to fix it. I kissed Tiffany on the forehead and started for the shore.

“She did this to herself,” she called after me. “It’s not your job to make it better.”

Sand filtered into my sneakers until I made it to damp ground. The shore chased me up and down as I closed the space between Lake and me.

When I was at her back, she stopped and turned around. She didn’t look surprised to see me, probably because she knew I’d come. “How could you do this to me?” she asked. “Why? I’m eighteen now.”

I inhaled through my nose, then took one final drag of my cigarette. Maybe it was my fault Lake got so hung up on age. Had she thought she’d turn legal and we’d ride off into the sunset on a fucking bicycle? “It’s not as simple as that.”

“Summer?” she asked, sounding strangled.

“I know it’s soon.” Admittedly, the urgency of it made my collar tight. “But does it really matter when?” I asked. “Would it be easier if we waited a year or five?”

By the way her face fell, I had my answer. It was the same for me. Putting an end to this for good would never be easy. Maybe having the wedding now would give Lake the closure she needed to go off to school and live the life she was meant to. In that respect, summer wasn’t soon at all. In fact, sooner was better than later.

“You’re really going to do it?” she asked. “You want this?”

I squatted to put out my cigarette. “Yes.”

“You won’t even smoke in front of me,” she accused. “I’m old enough to buy cigarettes, but I’m still a child in your eyes.”

I looked up. The night sky spread out behind her. The stars weren’t as clear as they’d been up in Big Bear, but it didn’t matter. She was the only star I saw. No, she wasn’t a child in my eyes, because if she was, that’d make me the same monster as my dad. I saw her naked underneath me. I saw her as a woman opening up for a man. I saw her soft parts giving way to my hard ones. And it sent my heart racing. “One day—”

“Don’t tell me ‘one day,’” she said.

Her beauty fucking radiated when she hurt like this. She couldn’t control her pain, so it just seeped out of her. I wanted to tell her it’d go away soon. She’d meet someone at school who’d do far better for her than I could. Some rich, California asshole who’d go on to run a Fortune 500 company or produce movies or something. Some finance guy like Corbin, maybe. She’d be his star, not mine. She’d forget about me in no time. If I had the smallest doubt about it being the right thing, I would’ve taken her somewhere right now. I’d have made her mine for real, even knowing there was a large chance she’d figure me out one day, and I’d end up the one with a broken heart.

“There’s only now,” she said. “There’s no more time. You have to be selfish, even if people get hurt.”

“Selfish?” I stood abruptly, training my eyes on her so she’d understand I wasn’t fucking around. I gestured toward the parking lot. “This is me being selfish. I stayed when I should’ve gone. For you. Now, I have a life here. A family. Now, I’m not sure I could leave if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

She turned away from me, toward the ocean, her chin wobbling. “Whatever you say, whatever she says, I know the truth. I saw it.”

I had to crane my neck to hear her over the waves. “What are you talking about?”

“Your tattoo,” she said. “That night at your apartment in the kitchen. I know what it is.”

Hands on my hips, I hung my head. What could I say? I’d been desperate. Locked up, unable to talk or even think too hard about the things that mattered most to me. Trying to forget the memories I’d made just months earlier. A lifer had been trading tattoos for cigarettes and I’d asked for the stars. It’d cost me three packs and a little bit of my bad-boy image, but having those three stars on my body had bought me some peace.

“It’s for Madison,” I said, which was partly true, and easier to swallow than the whole truth.

“No, it’s not.” Her long hair blew into her face with a breeze, and I had to cross my hands under my pits to keep from brushing it away. She took a breath, the words floating out on her exhale. “It’s for me. It’s Summer Triangle.”

She fucking knew I’d put her star on my body, even though it didn’t belong to me and never would. Wasn’t that enough? I couldn’t tell her I loved her. I couldn’t tell her I didn’t. It killed me, but that was how it was. It wasn’t going to be any other way, no matter how many times she put me in this goddamn position.

“I love you,” she said.

Hearing it aloud, from her mouth, made my throat thick. I allowed a second for the pleasure to sink in, for that euphoric warmth to spread from my chest to my face, to the lower half of my body. She loved me, and those words alone were doing things to me. She was going to get me hard with one sentence? Goddamn it. I was a grown man who thought with his head, not his dick. I had to get ahold of myself. “Don’t do this, Lake.”

“I can’t just sit back and watch. I have to say something.” Her face, open and sweet, pleaded with me. “You know it’s true, Manning, you have to. You’ve always known that my heart doesn’t function right without you, that food doesn’t taste the same and air is too thick, and my mind is always wandering back to that night on the lake, because I’m all wrong without you, because I’m in love with you.”