Page 164 of Seven Lost Summers
My heart’s a fucking wrecking ball, smashing against my ribs like it’s trying to tear its way out. Every beat is a reminder that I can’t stay in this house another second without losing it. Quinn’s everywhere in here. The air tastes like her, the walls hum with her voice, and I can’t breathe without feeling her fingerprints on my skin.
I need out.
I need to move before I drown in it. I have to find someone to talk to. Or sink into the couch with Alex and let an animal documentary pull me under until the noise in my head thins to nothing.
The front door shuts behind me with a click.
The sky is too goddamn blue for the way I feel. It digs at me, makes me want to spit at it for daring to look perfect when everything in me is a fucking storm.
I head to Xander’s.
Not because he’ll fix it. Fuck no. He’s the only one who’ll let me fall apart without trying to clean it up. The only one who won’t flinch when I tell him the noise in my head is louder than anything else. That’s always been his way.
Nate isn’t an option. Not for this. Not with Quinn between us like a fucking shadow neither of us can shake. He’s bleeding out the same as me, but he’s gone quiet, pulled so far in that the air between us has turned cold. If we keep drifting this way, I’ll lose him.
I can’t even name what we are anymore. It’s not simple. He’s been there my whole damn life. My anchor. My constant. The one person I never had to doubt. Now everything’s shifted. It lives in the way his eyes find mine and hold there, in the silence that stretches too far, in the way my chest aches when I think about the lines we’ve already crossed. And if losing him is the price for whatever the hell this is now…
I won’t survive.
I move up Xander’s driveway too fast, chest tight, breath ragged as though I’ve been running for miles. I take the porch steps two at a time, and shove the door open and step inside, a man on a mission.
Alex’s squeal cuts through from the back patio.
I head for the window. Xander’s out there floating on the water, stretched out like some retired rock god on a spa day, head tilted back, sunglasses catching the light.
I watch Alex, as the kid launches himself off the ledge, backflips and splashes, pure dolphin-on-crack energy. Every jump sends another wave crashing toward Xander, who doesn’t even flinch, until the next one soaks him completely.
That’s when he’s up, grinning, and in two strokes he’s catching Alex mid-laugh.
He dunks him under, the kid’s muffled yells bubbling through the water. When they both resurface, they laugh. Alex says something, and Xander answers with a lazy grin, sending a playful splash his way. Alex fires back, the water exploding between them until they’re both laughing harder, their voices carrying out across the pool.
They’re loud.
They’re happy.
The air outside is all sunlight and unbroken days. I’m glad he has this — that broken guy I met all those years ago, finally content with life.
I scan for Poppy.
I expect her curled in a deck chair with a book or whatever the fuck that glorified Etch A Sketch thing she reads on is called. Or sitting in the water on the pool steps, smiling, watching the way she always does when Xander and Alex are in their own little world.
But she’s not there.
I move further into the house, and that’s when I see her.
Poppy.
Sprawled on the couch like a pregnant queen who’s been ruling the kingdom of cushions since sunrise. Legs kicked out, one hand on her belly like she’s guarding a treasure, the other dangling off the armrest like she fell asleep mid-thought. Her long blonde hair’s a glorious, knotted mess that says she either just woke up or fought off an intruder with her bare hands.
“You asleep,” I ask, “or marinating in your own ass air and calling it aromatherapy?”
One eye cracks open. “I was asleep, asshole.”
“Could’ve fooled me. It kinda had that angry goose in a wind tunnel vibe.”
“I don’t snore.”
I lean against the doorway, grinning. “Tell that to the fucking moose you scared off.”
