Page 166 of Summer Love

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Sierra adds. “But you have to own them.”

“Did he apologize?” Maya asks.

“Yes,” Chiara answers. “And he begged me not to leave him. I think he meant it. But... I don’t trust him anymore.”

He apologized. He begged her. But she doesn’t trust him anymore.

Jace never even apologized. Not really.

The conversation goes on without me. I only catch fragments now.

“Yeah, nah—if you don’t trust him, there’s no point staying,” Harper says. “Trust isn’t something you fix with an apology. You break it once, and it’s over.”

My fingers find my pendant, close around the wave.

It’s over.

Not because I don’t love him.

Because every time he touches me, I’ll think: is this real, or am I just a fucking bet?

“Why do you care so much, Summer?” Ruby says, unscrewing her flask.

“Because it happened to me, too.”

Every eye turns to me. Even Miles stops chewing.

“Please tell me it’s not Jace,” Maya blurts.

“No, it’s not him,” I say, a little too fast. “A guy in college, a long time ago.”

“That’s a relief,” Maya breathes. “That’s not like him at all.”

The Jace everyone knows. The guy who takes in broken people and stray dogs. But I can’t forget the eighteen-year-old who bet on my virginity. Or the twenty-four-year-old who still hasn’t apologized.

“Speaking of which, Maya...” Ruby starts. “Kai and Jace? You’ve never slept with either one? Two guys like that...”

Maya laughs, grabs a cookie, breaks it in two.

“Never. Neither of them ever tried anything. When I landed here, I had nothing and didn’t know a soul. Jace is the one who found me a job and a roof over my head, without asking for anything in return. I owe him everything.”

The conversations start back up. I get to my feet; no one’s looking at me. I grab my tote bag, slip past the back-room curtain, cross the bookstore, and step out into the street without looking back.

The evening air makes me shiver. The sidewalk’s empty. The streetlights cast yellow circles on the concrete.

I don’t cry.

I love Jace. But love isn’t enough when the trust is gone.

CHAPTER 52

Summer

Tote bag over my shoulder, I head up Main Street. I pass the medical center, Søren’s hair salon, and a pizza place where two kids sit on the sidewalk, splitting a slice.

At the next corner, I turn left, toward a cluster of low-rise buildings I’ve never had any reason to visit. Jace gave me the address last night, lying on his back, telling me about his mother’s moves—first after Tom died, then after the shark.

The building is beige stucco, three stories, with a shared front door and a row of mailboxes on the left. On the ground floor, a laundromat is lit up, empty.