The Summer You Found Me (The Summer, #3)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

We’ll figure it out—if he takes me back.

I’ll adjust. To the lake. To the fucking neighbors. I’m a shiny new version of Kate, one who’s going to make Caleb happy. The last version mostly sucked at it.

“I’m Kate. Caleb’s wife.” She bites her lip and her face falls like a child’s might, before stumbling away without a word. A silly little girl with a crush, and I can’t even blame her:

“Stop,” he whispers, not quite able to meet my eye. “I’m with someone now. Lucie. I wasn’t looking to move on, but we share the dock and it’s just—”

“You saw her?” he croaks, tugging at his hair, finally showing some emotion. This is what’s upset him.

“Is it serious?” His wince tells me this is going to hurt. “Yeah. As soon as this is done, I’m going to marry her.”

“Kate, let it go. She works at TSG with him and she’s a nice girl. They’re happy.”

“It won’t matter.” His voice is knife-sharp. “He loves her and she makes him happy.”

“He blew off the entire merger to go find her yesterday, you know,” Beck says, his voice gentle. “You want to think this is a fling, but I promise you, it’s not.”

“You can stay. Just until you’re back on your feet. But there are conditions.”

“Number two: you don’t fuck with Caleb and Lucie.”

I picture it before I can stop myself—Beck holding someone down on that mattress—and electricity surges through my blood. It’s not the first time Beck has had that effect on me and I remind myself—as I have before—that it’s probably the effect he has on everyone.

His nostrils flare. “They went out of town for the weekend, but I was serious before. Leave them alone. No matter what you seem to think, she’s suffered enough.”

Lucie came home from the hospital with two children and I came home with none. And now she’s got my husband too. “He likes them?” Beck winces. “That’s not why he’s with her.”

She clearly thinks being married to one of my closest friends will stop me from doing something I should not. I’m somewhat less sure. One of many reasons I need her out of my home.

I’m struggling a little today.

I stare at my phone, waiting for his reply, and my stomach sinks when none arrives. He’s getting ready for their busiest time at the bar, sure, but it’s not like I asked him to come hold my hand. He could at least have said “hang in there” or “you’ve got this.”

A roar in the distance makes my spine go straight. It sounds like a motorcycle, and it can’t be Beck, not at this time of day,

The door flies open and Beck stands there in all his oversized glory, helmet tucked under one massive bicep.

Beck came home. He came home for me.

“I’m going to say this once and then we are never going to discuss it again. The first time I saw you, I thought you were the most perfect thing I’d ever seen, and I still think it. I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. Now shut the fuck up and watch the show.”

Except I wasn’t waiting for him to change his mind. I was waiting for you to change yours.”

Rachel grins at me after she’s ended the call, then rests a hand on her stomach. “You didn’t hear that, angel.”

“So,” I say, grabbing two sugars and ripping them open, “I assume you have some dastardly plan to make our spouses break up?”

He thrusts and I struggle to keep my eyes open from the pleasure. But I want to. I want to memorize the strain on his face, the focus, the way he grows heavy-lidded and dazed like a junkie as a needle hits the vein.

Why is it so much better with him?

How will I stand to go through my whole life without ever having this again?

But every minute I’m inside her is more perfect than the one before it. It’s different with us. I know she’s aware of it.

This is Kate under my sway, begging for things she wants from me, not him. I’ve fantasized about this a thousand times, but the reality of it is so much better.

I don’t want any of it to end, and she doesn’t either. I just wish she’d fucking realize it.

“I could tell you to get naked and on all fours right here and you’d do it.”

“It’s probably time I stop pretending this isn’t happening. And you’re not wearing panties. So I guess you were done pretending too.”

He goes into work, assuring me we won’t have sex again for “at least seven hours,” but when I walk through the bar’s saloon doors, my gaze is on him like I’m the bad guy in a western, and he’s the sheriff. As if he’s my only reason for walking in here in the first place.

“I keep forgetting you were married to him. I can’t see you with anyone but Beck.”

“If you were any more perfect,” Adam says when he picks up, “I’d probably have to leave my boyfriend for you.” “I’d still have a vagina.” “I didn’t say I wouldn’t be disappointed eventually,” he replies.

store. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve found myself somewhere like this, thinking of Beck.

“Sometimes the good news is harder to take than the bad,” she says. “And sometimes getting the thing you want makes you realize you wanted other things.”

“Did he love you?” The lump in my throat is getting harder to form words around. “Yeah.” “And you really think that just stops? Did it stop for you?” “No, but he never did anything wrong.”

My voice is a whisper. “What if he says no?” “Then you wind up exactly where you are right now,” she says. “And we go from there.”

It was thoughtful of him not to bring Lucie, though unnecessary. I just want him to be happy, and if she’s capable of giving him that, she has my blessing.

We were two people who liked sex and were too busy for a real relationship, then two people preparing to raise a kid together. There wasn’t much more to us than that.

“Well, I never got the chance to thank you, either, for the grant.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I paid for a lawyer to get the possession charges dropped, but there was no grant.” He frowns. “So who would have done it?” We look at each other, and it seems to hit us both at the same time. There’s one person, aside from Caleb, who would have cared enough to do it and had that kind of expendable income. A person who claimed he had “no idea” where all his profits had gone.

“Look, this whole situation is uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. I’m not sure he’s the best guy for you, and I’m not sure you’re the best person for him either. But he—” Caleb bites his lip. “He wasn’t himself for a long time. And I didn’t see it until you came home. It’s like you brought him back to life. So pull your head out of your ass, Bennett. Of course he was here to see you.”

I’ve never felt closer to him than I do as he walks away. Because we weren’t meant to be, but he loves the person I love, and he loves him enough to put him first. Maybe I should do the same.

He doesn’t smile. He just stares, his jaw shifting as if he’s trying to keep himself from saying words I won’t want to hear. I need to get mine out first.

“I’m sorry.” My voice cracks. “I know I should have said it a long time ago, but I needed to get my life together.”

“And Caleb was never the person I was in love with. It just took you leaving for me to see it.” “Okay,” he says, setting his book down on the counter. I wait for there to be more, but no words come. He’s looking at me blankly, as if the conversation is over.

Somehow, I get to my car. I’m opening the door when I hear my name shouted, and then Beck is marching toward me, the same way I marched toward him a few minutes ago, with nothing conciliatory on his face whatsoever.

“Jesus, Kate,” he says. “Why’d it take you so long?” His palms slide past my jaw and into my hair, and then his mouth is on mine—hard and insistent, as if this is something it pained him to wait for.