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“I think at this point I deserve to know what’s going on, yeah?”

She loosed a breath. “Okay, yeah.”

Honey growled at a hermit crab close by, then laid her belly down in the sand, her eyes intent on the crab as it scampered across the broken shells.

Jess kept her eyes on the pup and took one of her deep breaths, avoiding his gaze. He taught her what it meant to be brave, to go for the things you wanted even if it seemed scary, even if there was a good chance everything would fail. The past twelve hours she let herself do the same, let herself open up and be vulnerable. So she held on tightly to that new kernel of bravery in her soul and swung the door open wide.

“When my dad took on Mr. Sullivan as a business partner at Cap’s, everything about my life changed. Cap’s was no longer going under, and for the first time that I could recall, we had money to spend. We moved into a bigger house and we got a second car and I no longer had to wear Dakota’s hand-me-downs. And we hung out with the Sullivans—a lot. They came over every week for family dinner, and I always sat next to Charlie. We became best friends, and then, we became something more.”

The smell of freshly baked shortcakes and bright strawberries came to mind as Jess thought about her first kiss with Charlie, tucked away next to the kitchen. Even in the beginning, they were hiding.

“At the time things felt off between my dad and his. They bickered constantly and at some point, the Sullivans stopped coming for family dinners. I was afraid that if we told them about us we would make it worse, so we didn’t say anything to our families. We kept it a secret for a little while, sneaking away when we thought no one noticed.

“We finally decided to tell them when junior prom came around, but had no idea about what was going on behind the scenes. Apparently Mr. Sullivan was slowly writing my father out of the business. He’d started taking business meetings without him, brought on vendors and employees without his consent, made deals with high-paying clientele, and had all these plans for expansion. My father was technically still the owner, yet he only found out about these things through word of mouth in town, so he fought Charlie’s father on it constantly. Then…they had the meeting.”

She sighed, curling a hand into a fist. Kevin brushed his knuckles against hers, his touch reassuring. She linked her pointer finger with his, her eyes drawn to their hands.

“Mr. Sullivan decided to go through the books, dating all the way back to when dad opened the place in 1997. He hired some lawyers to make a case for ousting my dad, and it was a strong one. My dad was more of a people person, not a business person, and Charlie’s dad used all this legal jargon to essentially deem him irresponsible and unfit to run a business. They offered my dad a hefty sum to buy him out and leave Cap’s for good.”

Kevin exhaled audibly, shaking his head. He squeezed her finger with his.

“When I told my family I was dating Charlie, my father…he sort of lost it,” she breathed. “He said the Sullivans were manipulative and he didn’t trust Charlie to take care of my heart, so he refused to let me go to junior prom with him. Banned me from seeing him again.”

She shook her head, looking out at the horizon. “We had to get more creative about sneaking around, sliding out of windows and down trees late at night, faking being in after-school clubs so we could have a few hours to drive off and be free. The more we did this, the more angry I got with my father. The only side of the story I was getting was from Charlie’s perspective, who told me what his father said: that my dad was running the business into the ground, that it was for the best that they went their separate ways. I believed him. I believed them. I truly thought it was all my father’s fault.”

Honey bounded over to her and nuzzled her wet, sandy nose at Jess’s ankle. She dipped down to wipe off the sand, then dug her face into Honey’s golden fur, letting the salty smell of her pup ground her for the next excruciating part of her story. The night that changed everything.

She stood back up and faced her golden boy, shining in the soft morning sunlight. “Toward the end of my senior year, my mom caught me sneaking out. Dakota was home from college at that point and…it was the night from hell. The three of them were screaming at me, so disappointed that I would go behind their backs, that I had been lying to them for over a year. I said nasty things to my father about how this was all his fault, that none of this would have happened if he’d just been better at his job. He said nasty things back…he—he said I was no daughter of his, that he never wanted to see me again. So I left. I lived with the Sullivans for a week, and then Mr. Sullivan said I could move into one of the apartments he managed in town after graduation.”

Anger heated her cheeks. “Charlie was so stoked, he made it sound like it would be our place, that we finally had our freedom. But it wasn’t really. I was his plaything when he was home, when he was not required to be with his parents. It was always them first, me last. By the time he really moved in after college, I felt neglected. But I dealt with it, thinking that’s what it meant to be in a relationship with someone you love. Yet now…”

Kevin reached up and cupped her face, drawing her close. She quivered from the softness of his touch, the way his thumbs brushed against her cheekbones.

“Now I realize that I don’t think it was love, I think it was dependency,” she whispered, her body shaking as she shared a truth that was finally dawning on her, like the midnight moon breaking through a cloudless sky. “I had no one else, and nowhere to go. I was too proud and stubborn to go back to my family, because deep down, I wanted them to come to me. I still want my father to apologize for the things he said, to make things right. But I know I hurt him, too. And that’s what scares me the most. That I lost five whole years with them all for a man who didn’t take care of my heart, just like Dad warned.”

She wrapped her hands around his wrists, leaning into one of his palms. “Last night, Charlie came to me begging again to get back together with him—”

“Again?!”

She winced. “Yeah, he tried contacting me while we were in New York.”

Jess watched as Kevin worked to school his features, trying to act calm when he clearly wasn’t. “And what did you say to him?”

“I turned off my phone because I had other, more important things to do.”

He snorted, then pulled her close and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. “And last night?”

She smiled, her lips brushing against his. “I called the one person who has always been there for me, and he came to my rescue.”

He sealed his lips to hers, running his hands through her hair. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and stood up on her tiptoes as his hands slid down and gripped her waist, holding her up so he could kiss her thoroughly.

The jingling of Honey’s tags as she pattered up to them pulled Jess from the spell. “I have muffins to bake.”

“Fuck the muffins.”

Kevin pressed in again, slipping a hand inside her sweatshirt and up her spine, sliding it around to her chest.

She laughed into his mouth and stepped away, shaking her head as she began walking back toward the cottage. “As hot as it is to listen to you swear when you want to get it on with me, I do not want to fuck the muffins.”