Page 45 of The Summer I First Saw You
I’d give up everything I want from life in order to make what he’s said true. “He’s just looking out for me.”
Oliver stretches, then clasps his hands behind his head. “You know, our mother left him when he younger than that little boy on the beach yesterday?”
I wince. The thought of it pains me. It pained me even as a child. “I still don’t see how she could have done it.”
He sips his coffee. “But she’d have deprived the world of me and my younger brother Matthew if she hadn’t gone. If you thinkI’mhandsome, you should see Matthew.”
I laugh. “I don’t recall ever claiming you were handsome.”
“It’s too obvious to even bother debating,“ he replies with a grin, which slowly fades. “But my point is this: Harrison lost the person he loved most anddependedupon most at a very young age, and he thought marrying someone like Audrey, someone he didn’t care for too much, was an insurance policy. He wanted theappearanceof a relationship without incurring the risks of one.”
“None of that means he wants one with me. The only reason I’m here is because he still sees me as the toddler who’s going to eat sand if he’s not watching.”
“He’d like you to believe that, yes,” Oliver says, leaningforward and dropping to a whisper as Harrison walks into the kitchen in nothing but swim trunks. “He’d like to believe it himself. But Daisy, he doesn’t stop watching you. Not when you’re surfing but also not when you couldn’t be safer. When you lie in the hammock, he watches. When you walk to the bathroom, he watches. Even when you fell asleep on the beach yesterday, his eyes went to you. I doubt very much he was concerned about you eating sand.”
My eyes move toward Harrison, fiddling with the coffee maker—his thick hair mussed from sleep, his eyes still drowsy. He’s so lovely that it hurts to look at him right now, and that makes what Oliver’s saying more terrifying than anything else. If someone as worthless as Christian could shatter me by ending things, how much worse would it be if the end came at Harrison’s hands?
But how amazing would it be if it didn’t end at all?
If I was the one he’d been waiting on all along?
25
HARRISON
Iwoke even more hungover than I was the morning before, though I barely drank, and it pisses me off. I wanted this final day with Daisy to be our best.
It pisses me off even more to find Oliver is already up and hanging out with her. She’s in the blue yoga pants this morning. They cover far more skin than her bikinis do, but I’m seized by the desire to go wrap a blanket around her anyway.
I’m seized by several different desires, actually, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell myselfnoto any of them.
He leans toward her, whispering something, and my irritation cranks up a notch. Last night he told me that if I didn’t make a move, he would. I’d assumed he was joking.
Maybe he wasn’t.
“You look a little rough,” Daisy says, walking in with a smile, asweetsmile that banishes every concern because I’ve never seen her look quite the same way at anyone else.
“Nothing some aspirin and coffee can’t take care of,” I reply.
She brushes past me and refills her water, smelling of roses and coconut. “I should have stayed up last night to prevent you from having so much fun.”
As if that would have helped.I’d have stayed awake the whole fucking night just to make sure she went back to her own bed and not Oliver’s when it was done.
“It’s a sad day when you’re deemed theresponsiblemember of the household,” I reply.
“Yes,” she agrees. “You and Oliver have set the bar unbelievably low.”
We get out in the water early, trying to make the most of our remaining hours. When we break for lunch, I’m more tired than I was the day before. I’d prefer to just take a nap on the deck afterward, but Daisy is raring to go back out, and I don’t want her out there with my brother alone for three hours. Do I trust him not to hit on her? Mostly. Do I trust him not to lay the groundwork for the future? I do not.
By the time the sun starts to lower, I’m fucking exhausted. I shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night, but I think what’s tired me most is this constant awareness of Daisy. Sure, I’m abundantly aware of her when she’s in my home, too, but it’s different here, when I’m seeing her through my own eyes and then through Oliver’s. It’s a double dose, and it’s more than I can bear at present.
Oliver grins at her. “Harrison’s about to turn responsible on us, isn’t he?”
“Can we pretend we don’t hear him?” she asks.
My smile is muted. “It’s probably after four, we have a six-hour drive ahead of us, and we haven’t even begun to pack.”
Jesus, the idea of a six-hour drive is unbearable right now. I’d give anything just to go to bed and postpone for a day.
