I frowned, straightening up from the boat. “What do you mean ‘everything going on with her’? I thought she was just coming home for the summer.”
Landon sighed. “Her shitty-ass boyfriend was cheating on her. She walked in on him with some girl. Pretty rough. She quit her job right after, but hated it anyway, and just packed up and drove here. Laura’s been worried sick about her.”
Something tight and protective twisted in my chest. I hadn’t expected that. Juliet had always been the steady one, the kid who had her shit together even when the rest of us didn’t. Hearing she was hurting hit me harder than it should have.
“Shit,” I muttered, dragging a hand over my jaw. “I didn’t know.” I looked at my brother. “I should go beat that little fucker’s ass for hurting her.”
Landon chuckled and clapped me on the back. “I’ll be right there with you,” he teased. “But yeah. So… it’d be good if you came. For her.”
That ugly twist hit me low in the gut again. I hated how fast it flared and how much I cared.
I didn’t answer right away. The lake house had always been more Landon’s than anyone else’s. After my mom and his dad moved to that retirement community in Florida, he and Laura had basically taken it over. They’d fixed it up, raised Juliet there, and kept the whole place operating smoothly. When I did visit, I just stayed in the small guest house on the property even though I still had a room in the main house. The latter never really felt like mine anymore.
“Of course I’ll be there,” I muttered.
Landon nodded, relieved. “Good. I’m glad.”
“Can’t believe my little girl is all grown up,” Landon said, shaking his head. “Shit, man. We’re getting old.”
“Sure the hell are.” I was feeling every one of my forty years. Landon, being older and with an adult daughter, was probably feeling it even worse.
He smirked faintly. “Still weird seeing her all grown up, though. She was just a kid last time you were around for any real length of time. Twelve? Thirteen?”
I took a slow sip of coffee. “Something like that.”
But that wasn’t entirely true.
I had seen her one more time when she was eighteen, walking across the stage at her high school graduation. I’d been on a short leave and slipped into the back of the auditorium without telling anyone. She never knew I was there. No one did. I hadn’t wanted some big homecoming when I had to leave again that night.
But that was the day everything shifted.
Watching her in that cap and gown, smiling like the whole world was opening up for her, I stopped seeing her as Landon’s kid. I saw her as a woman. A beautiful one. And that realization hit me hard enough that I stayed the hell away ever since.
Until now.
By the time lunchtime rolled around and I pulled up to the lake house for the cookout, I already regretted saying yes.
Too many people.
Too much noise.
Then I saw her. Every goddamn thought in my head stopped cold.Fuck.
She stood barefoot at the edge of the dock in tiny denim shorts and a thin white tank top the breeze kept tugging at. Her dark hair was down and still damp from the water, and the sunlight hit her like she was the only thing worth looking at.
Juliet wasn’t the little girl I remembered anymore. Shit, she wasn’t even the eighteen year old I last saw. Not even close. And the way my body reacted to that truth made me feel sick with guilt.
Then she turned and caught me staring.
Our eyes locked across the yard, and everything else disappeared. The noise, the people, the years between us. For a second, I saw it flash across her face, too: surprise, heat, recognition. Like she felt the same dangerous pull I did.
She smiled, small and soft, and started walking toward me.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to get back in the truck and drive away.
“Bastian,” she said when she stopped in front of me. The way my name slipped from her lips was soft, familiar, way too warm.
“You’re back,” she added quietly.
