Page 62 of Summer Ever After

He smiled at her. Then she brushed a kiss across his lips. “Sex makes it even more so.” She sighed against his lips as she shifted over him.

Their clothes hit the floor. Their movements were slow and lazy as they explored one another. As if they had all the time in the world.

Only when they had built one another up did their movements speed up. When he slipped inside her, his name escaped her lips. She didn’t know if it was begging or making a promise, but she realized she didn’t want to live without him.

She let out a long breath as their bodies cooled, tangled together, and closed her eyes, willing her mind to go blank. For the first time in what felt like forever, she didn’t double-check the locks or leave the lamp on. Aaron was here. That thought alone lulled her into sleep faster than she expected.

But, again, peace didn’t last.

The dream came in fragments, disjointed and sharp-edged. A hallway stretching longer and longer as she ran down it until the shadows swallowed it. A door slamming shut behind her. And then Ian’s voice, low, mocking, sliding through the dark straight into her soul.

“You didn’t think you were free, did you?”

Her pulse roared in her ears. She tried to run, but her legs felt cemented, heavy, unyielding. Her breath hitched as his silhouette stepped from the shadows, square, strong, bulky, all too familiar. The smell of his cologne wrapped around her, the memory of his hand at her throat, his fingers bruising her arm.

“Beth,” he hissed, soft and cold. “You’re mine. You’ll always be mine.”

Her body betrayed her even in the dream. She wanted to scream, but no sound came. She wanted to shove him away, but her arms hung limp at her sides. The old terror locked her in place, the same helplessness that had once defined her every waking hour. It was as though she’d never left him at all, as if River Camps and Aaron’s steady presence were all just illusions waiting to be ripped away.

The thought of Aaron somehow broke through the fear. Suddenly, she could feel him beside her as Ian got close enough that his breath slid down her neck. The shadows closed tighter, and she braced for his grip. Only, this time Ian wasn’t reaching out for her. This time, his hands wrapped around Aaron’s neck, squeezing until Aaron’s body went limp.

Then Ian’s shadow turned as flames burst through the camp, burning everything in its path. All of the cabins, the main building, the dining hall, the pool house and boathouse, they all went up in smoke. She heard her friends screaming for help. Each one calling her name, begging her, blaming her. This was all her fault. She’d led Ian to them.

She was the reason her friends, the people she loved, were going to die.

“No,” she whispered, a single fragile sound cracking through the nightmare.

The darkness shifted, unraveling with the force of that word. She jolted upright in bed, chest heaving, the room dim with moonlight leaking past the blinds. Sweat clung to her skin, her hands trembling where they clutched the sheet.

“Beth?” Aaron jolted upright, fumbling for the lights.

For a disoriented second, she expected Ian to be there, leaning in the corner, waiting to remind her who was in control. Her eyes scanned every shadow as Aaron wrapped his arms around her.

“Just a dream,” he said into her hair as he held her. “I’m here.”

The memory of Ian’s hands wrapped around Aaron’s neck caused her to shiver.

Fear clung to her like smoke.

She pressed her palms against her face, forcing a shaky breath. Tomorrow… tomorrow she’d figure out how to breathe again.

For now, she let him lay her back down, heart still pounding, whispering to her that everything was okay, that he’d keep her safe. But the truth was, she needed action. She had to keep the man she’d come to love—everyone she loved—safe.

“I’m not his anymore,” she said into the darkness.

“No,” Aaron agreed. “Now you’re mine and I’m yours,” he said into her hair.

He kept talking to her in soft tones, reminding her how he felt about her, coming very close to saying those three words she had been thinking about for days now, but each time growing quiet instead of saying them.

Finally, she turned and faced him.

“Aaron.” He quieted and ran his eyes over her. The room was dark, but there was enough moonlight coming in through the windows that they could see one another. “I don’t think I can hide how I feel about you. I think you feel the same.” She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, but he beat her to it.

“Beth, I’ve been trying to tell you that I love you,” he blurted out.

She smiled and brushed a soft kiss across his lips, then she whispered, “I love you too.”

He moved swiftly, pinning her to the bed, hovering over her. She felt the urgency in his kiss, felt just how much those words meant to him.