Page 4 of Summer of You
While I had come clean to my friends and family about being bisexual, it never felt right being with another guy after Chase. It felt all wrong, even though I had tried. Every time I’d kiss someone, my mind would try to shove his face onto theirs, and itfelt like I was cheating on him, though we weren’t together. I didn’t seem to have that problem with girls.
My thought process was abruptly cut off when Max ran to the door, barking again. Gravel crunching underfoot could be made out through the loud woofs coming from the dog, and my heart rate kicked into hyperdrive.
“Max!” Uncle Drew yelled as the front door swung open.
Like some weird movie moment, everything switched to slow motion. My pulse pounded in my ears as the man stepped through the front door. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing he was saying. All I could focus on was the way his dirty blond hair stuck out from the bottom of the backward-turned baseball cap as he shoved an overzealous dog off of him.
When Chase looked up, and our eyes met, the oxygen might as well have been sucked from the damn room. Those steel-gray eyes didn’t look very welcoming, laced with so much resentment, and they quickly flicked back to my uncle. All at once, everything unfroze, and I could hear again, not that I wanted to hear what he had to say.
“So it’s not a fucking joke? You’re really doing this to me?”
Uncle Drew looked at his phone screen before shoving the device back into his pocket and standing. “You ever consider being an Olympic cyclist? That took you next to no time at all to pedal your ass over here after I sent that message.”
My gaze bounced between the two of them. They obviously knew something that I didn’t, but I guess this saved me the trouble of asking if Chase was still around or not. A sense of betrayal settled in that my uncle had surprised me with him like this, not that my family knew there were hard feelings between us—hard feelings that were there because I’d fucked up.
Chase stormed back out the front door, the dog following behind him.
“Well, that went well,” Uncle Drew said, watching him go.
I let out a humorless laugh, looking up at my uncle from the couch. “What the hell was that all about?”
Uncle Drew ran a hand down his face before shaking his head. “I informed your co-worker about who he was going to be working with for the summer.”
Well... shit.
Chapter 4
Chase
Of course,hewas here, sitting on Drew’s couch. Why wouldn’t he be here already? Drewwouldchoose to spring this on me at the last possible second.
Max ran around my legs excitedly as I paced in circles, kicking at random rocks in the driveway. He really should pave this crap, but that wasn’t important at the moment. The man who had been holding my family home over my head tricked me into working with the last person I wanted to see, and that was what mattered. Not that he knew that.
Before Nathan left that last summer, he hadn’t come out to his family. We were a big secret, but we’d been close. If he had ever come out, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to piece together what had been going on between us.
And why did he still have to look so damn good? It wasn’t fair. If he had gone to college just to abandon me, why couldn’t he have been hit with an ugly stick or something? Then again, for all I knew, there was a reason Nate hadn’t returned like he said he would. I, however, chose not to cling to hope. He didn’t deserve that from me.
“Would you calm down?”
My head snapped toward Drew’s voice. Calm down? He wanted me to calm down?
When the object of my irritation appeared in the doorway behind him, my body instantly gravitated toward my bike. I yanked it to a standing position and swung my leg over the seat. “I’ll calm down when you figure something else out.”
“Chase.”
I froze at Nathan’s voice. It was pathetic how—after four damn years without it—something as simple as hearing my name pass through those lips could transport me right back to where we’d been.
With a huff, I let the bike drop back to the ground, sending Max running across the yard, startled by the sudden noise and movement.
“What the hell do you want?”
The way I snapped was out of character, but I’d bottled it up for the last several years. When Nathan shrank back, I knew I’d hit a nerve.
Drew moved out of the way as Nathan exited the house and slowly made his way across the lawn to me. When we stood toe-to-toe, I had to fight the urge to let go of my anger. I had every right to be angry. He’d betrayed my trust. But I’d been stupid to think that someone I’d fooled around with during the summers as a teenager was actually coming back for me.
“This isn’t... ideal.”
I scoffed. “Ideal? What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
