The Summer We Fell (The Summer, #1)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

I wish I’d been prepared, at least. I wish someone had said, “Luke will be there. And he’ll still feel like the tide, sucking you out to sea.”

“You look like something rare and wild,” he whispers, pushing the hair back from my cheek. My breath catches at the feel of his fingers on my skin. “Something they locked up in a cage. And I think you were so relieved to find a safe place to land you didn’t even realize it happened. I thought I could save you if I came here this summer, but even if someone opens the cage, you’ve got to be willing to fly away, too, Jules.”

“You’re something wild and magnificent, and he has no idea how to take care of you, so he spends all his time making sure your cage is secure because he has no idea what else to do. And that’s why this kills me, Juliet. Because I think I do know how to take care of you, and I want to take his place so bad that it fucking hurts to look at you sometimes.”

People talk about love like it’s peaceful, but it isn’t, at all. It’s turbulent and anxious. It’s euphoria and despair. It’s the willingness to brave cold water and humiliation and stab the people who love you in the back. I’ll do all those things for Luke.

“I haven’t loved many things in this world,” he says, “but I loved you from the minute I saw you, and whether it’s today or seventy years from now, I’ll love you with my dying breath.”

My words die off as he closes the distance between us, pinning me to the wall with his hands framing my face. “Don’t try to tell a man who’s waited ten years for you that you love him more.”