Page 58 of These Summer Storms

His brows rose above the aviators. “Why were you there?”

“Jack, in all the time that you worked for my dad, did you ever see himnotget what he wanted? Hell—he’sdeadand he’s still getting it.” He didn’t deny it, so she pressed on. “I worked there because he wanted me there. Because that was his plan.” She continued, counting on her fingers. “He chose my friends, the college I went to, the summer internships I had, the apartments I lived in. I was living Franklin Storm’s dream.”

The others weren’t for him: Greta was Elisabeth’s replica; Sam was the kind of person who blossomed with money and power, but struggled with work; and Emily was sweet, but not for stockholders. But Alice—

“It didn’t matter what I wanted. He was convinced I was the future of Storm. The kid he would mold in his image.” She ran her fingers through the seawater on the deck rail as she spoke. “I had a fellowship in Rome all lined up. Art conservation. I’d worked my ass off to get it—an American hadn’t received it in twenty years. I applied in secret, knowing it would piss him off. I was so proud of it. The first thing that really felt like it was entirely mine. And you know what he did?”

“Alice.”

He knew what she was going to say, of course. She looked to him. “Why am I even telling you this? You were his fixer. You know what he did. What he was capable of doing to get what he wanted.”

She’d been devastated when she’d received the letter reporting that funding had been pulled for the fellowship. She’d begged her mother for money, then begged the museum to let her pay her own way.

Six months later, Storm Inc. was listed as a major donor on its website. Her father hadn’t hidden it; he’d wanted her to know that he would always win. When she’d confronted him, he’d reminded her in that superior, arrogant way he always did that she wasClass A stock, impossible to be divested.

Every time he said it, it made her dig in more. Made her try forsomething further afield. Something less like him. Less Storm. “My whole life, he had plans for me. Who I was allowed to date. Where I was allowed to go to school, what he wanted me to study, where he wanted me to live, to work. And Ihatedit.” She shrugged. “And the truth was, once he was forced to see that I didn’t want the same things…he didn’t really want me at all. But he still wouldn’t cut me loose.”

“So, you cut yourself loose.”

She narrowed her gaze on him. “What’s that mean?”

“Only that I’m doing the math—seven years since your Wikipedia entry, and only five since the last time you were here. So what was it? The final straw? Let me guess—the fiancé.”

“Griffin.” She lifted her chin. “There is no Griffin. Not anymore.”

She’d been afraid it would feel like failure, to confess it to him, but when he nodded and said, “I know,” it felt like something else. Like freedom.

“How?”

A hesitation. Barely there, then gone as he answered. “You don’t wear an engagement ring.”

She looked down at her hand, recently bare. “You’re the only one who’s noticed.”

“I notice you.”

Her eyes widened behind her sunglasses, and she wasn’t sure what to say—her whole life, she’d tried hard not to be noticed, but it had never felt as dangerous as it was when this man, all strong hands and set jaw, noticed her.

As if she didn’t have enough mess to contend with.

The sound of his throat clearing should have been lost in the wind, but it wasn’t. Neither were his words. “Your father didn’t like your fiancé.”

“My father barely knew my fiancé.”

“Okay,” he said, focused on the water again, navigating the waves. “Did you like him? Griffin?” She didn’t miss the way he said the name, like it tasted wrong.

“Obviously.” Was it, though? Obvious? She looked to the sea and took a deep breath. “He was the second thing that felt entirely mine.”

She’d been twenty-eight, devastated by a lifetime of battles with herfather—large and small—the war unwinnable now that she’d betrayed him so thoroughly, turned her back on the road he’d paved for her from birth.

“He was handsome and funny. Had a big personality.” Griffin had been all friendly smiles and belly laughs and wild stories about the time he’d backpacked across Europe during a gap year before he went to NYU and with friends everywhere, and no, he didn’t have a steady job (an actor) and no one was really certain how he paid the rent on his apartment in Greenpoint (not by acting), but did it matter when he was so fun?

“I was in hiding—the whole world knew what I’d done. My father wasn’t speaking to me. The rest of my family was fading away, uncertain of what was to come and absolutely not interested in getting caught in the cross fire. I had a new job, was trying to make a new life. And Griffin…he was just…different.

“He hosted a trivia night at a bar near the school where I teach.” She’d never gone before that night, too afraid her colleagues would ask questions she didn’t want to answer. But they hadn’t. It had been fun, and she’d been happy. “When our team won, he came bounding over. I’d known an answer he’d expected to stump the room. He bought me a drink.” That was a lie. Alice had bought the drinks, but she’d rewritten the night for so long she’d forgotten the truth. “I’d never met someone so—uninhibited.”

“Uninhibited,” he said, in the same tone he’d saidGriffin.

“Impulsive,” she clarified. “Impulsiveness isn’t afforded to Franklin Storm’s children. The press pays attention. Social media explodes. Wikipedia gets updated.”

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