“Summer’s neighbors,” Jess said, fanning her cheeks and giggling breathlessly. “Gorgeous neighbors. They were so tall and dreamy, and?—”
“Those are the ones,” Harper said, enjoying the fact we were hanging on her every word. I was hanging on for a different reason than the rest of them. “One of the brothers is coming back for the summer.”
Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react.
“Which one?” Capri asked carefully.
She was asking the question I couldn’t. That’s what your person did.
Not Colt. Please, please, please not Colt. Let it be Cody. Let it be the younger one with the flirty smile.
“Colt Anderson issoback!” Harper exclaimed excitedly. But her announcement didn’t elicit giddy enthusiasm from me. Instead, I sat reeling in the aftermath of the bomb she’d just dropped, my ears ringing from the blast, heart racing from the adrenaline spike.
Capri’s foot connected with my shin under the table. Hard. I blinked. The contact snapped me out of whatever spiral I’d been in. I lifted my margarita and took a long, slow sip, the salt on the rim catching on my lower lip.
“Colt Anderson,” Mia repeated in a dreamy tone. “The tall one with the green eyes and those glorious abs.”
I set my glass down and pushed my chair back. “I’ll be right back,” I said. The calmness in my voice fooled even me.
Don’t panic,I told myself over and over as I wove through tables to get to the bathroom. A girl coming out held it open for me, and I managed a tight-lipped smile before ducking past her and into the nearest stall. I promptly locked the door, pressedmy back to it, and fought to keep the rising tide of panic in my chest from drowning me.
I didn’t hear Capri come in, but when someone knocked on the stall door, I knew it was her. A quick glance down at her feet under the door confirmed it, red painted toes in gold sandals. My girl.
“You’re freaking out,” she said.
“Not at all.”
“Liar.”
“He can’t be here,” I whispered.
“It’s not the worst thing to happen.”
I unlocked the stall door, pushed it open, and joined her by the sinks, where I splashed cold water on my face. “Colt and I had asecretromance, remember? Secret as in no one knows. Especially my dad.”
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “No one knows, so it’s like it never happened.”
“That is not what that means.”
“This could be a second chance,” she said.
I scoffed. “Hell no. We were supposed to be together when I graduated but he dumped me. He chose his family’s billions. He wanted to work in some boring investment company instead of being with me. I want nothing to do with him.”
“Girl, he’s stupid rich,” she hissed.
“I don’t care. He’s a jerk.”
“Is he, though?”
I braced myself on the bathroom sink and glared at her in the mirror. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always yours.” She moved up to stand beside me. “It doesn’t have to be awkward. It’s been four years since you’ve seen him. You’ve grown up a lot in that time. I’m sure he did, too.”
“He was twenty-seven when we first met seven years ago,” I reminded her. “So he was thirty the last summer we spent together.”
Capri sighed. “You’re right. He’s an asshole.”
“Thank you.”
