Summer by Summer (17 page)

It was a long time before he answered. At first I thought he was trying to figure out what I meant, the way his brow quirked and his mouth twitched, but with a long exhale, all the questions disappeared. “I’m just Bray.”

There didn’t seem to be a lie hidden in his words, just honesty. And it caused something to click on the inside of my chest, like
some forgotten key turning a door from locked to unlocked. There was pressure against my heart. I looked down to see my own hand fisted there.

Bray touched my wrist, closed his fingers around it and gently lifted it to his mouth. There, he placed the softest of kisses on my fist. And all the emotion of earlier when he’d kissed my tears away came rushing into my belly like white-hot lava.

I knew I should say something. Words failed so I opened my fist and let him kiss my palm. It had calluses from the island, but he didn’t seem to care. He planted two kissed there, and then moved my hand back to his shoulder.

I swallowed. “Just Bray, huh?”

He nodded. “I swear I’ll never hurt you, Summer. At least not on purpose.”

The words raked from my ears down into my knees, where they settled on knocking me off balance. I swayed in the water. But Bray was there, strong, holding me. “You’re keeping me from sinking,” I said in a breathy tone.

“I’ll never let go.”

Hearing those words caused my heart to squeeze. I couldn’t explain it, didn’t even understand it, I just knew that Bray was someone amazing. Someone I could . . . could . . .

My hands slid from his shoulders to his chest. Rock hard. There had been plenty of times my hands had been on his chest, but this was different. He wasn’t rescuing me; he wasn’t dragging me to safety. We weren’t even wrestling in the ocean after a bucket of water had been dumped on my head. We were standing in the sea with dolphins playing behind us. There was no threat as I touched him. I wasn’t surprised when his hands slid around my waist.

Something shifted in his gaze. Everything — our breathing, his look — became more intense. I felt the muscles of his fingers tighten then release almost like a spasm.

He stared up at the moon for a few long moments, and I could only wonder what was going on in his head. When he readjusted his gaze on me, he looked different. “Summer, I uh, I really want to kiss you right now.”

Those words shot into the pit of my stomach.

“But —”

“But?” I echoed back to him, because I was a little confused. I wanted Bray to kiss me. And that realization rocked me.

One of his hands left my waist and ran through his hair, dripping seawater as it went. “But I just swore I’d never hurt you, and I think tonight your emotions have already had enough of a roller coaster ride. I uh . . .”

His other hand dropped from me and the water suddenly felt colder. Sadness and relief took turns on me.

He started to move away from me in the water.

“I understand.” My words were barely a whisper.

We both started to wade toward the beach. Halfway there, Bray grabbed my arm and turned me to face him. His eyes were alive with a new kind of fire. “When I kiss you . . . and believe me, one day before we leave this island I will. When it happens, I want it to be about you and me. Nothing from the past. No dead boyfriends. No ghosts.”

I swallowed. “That’s a lot for you to expect.”

“You’re a survivor, Summer. It’s time to let Michael go.”

CHAPTER 10

Bray

I’d never been in love. It was a strange word to me, love. I mean, there were girls I’d liked and had fun with. But love? No. I’d watched my mom and dad as I’d grown up. I knew that kind of thing was possible. How my mom could calm my dad by just the gentle touch of her hand to his arm. How my dad would hold her close and kiss the top of her head. They’d been happy once. Love didn’t give up on them. They gave up on it.

Summer. Summer was . . . well, there really weren’t words. And I’d had to use every ounce of willpower not to take a kiss right there in the water.

I used to think a kiss was just something to do in preamble to the good stuff. But all I wanted was to kiss Summer. Just kiss her. Like that would be enough to satisfy. She’d left my body aching, and the reality unsettled me as much as it excited me. I was going to kiss Summer. It was just a matter of time. But right now, she needed space. So I took off early in the morning and left her a note on the inside edge of the hut’s door using coal I plucked from the fire.
Exploring north side of island. Be back soon.

Really, I just needed space. She consumed the air around us,
drawing it in and changing it like a little bit of dye changes a whole bucket of water. I was drowning in her.

I’d followed a path through the woods from the resort. A little ways down, I uncovered an outbuilding. Small, but still holding some tools and a bare spot on the floor where a riding lawn mower probably once lived. I also found an old gas can, saws, hammers, and a few nails. Everything had rusted, but looked like they would still work. I took a sickle with me into the jungle, hacking at the foliage as I went. When I heard strange sounds — foreign to the island — I stopped in my tracks.

Through the trees I saw a slash of white, so I worked my way closer, hoping, praying my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. When the death metal music floated to me, I knew it was a boat. I started to yell, though they’d probably not hear me over the music, but something stopped me. Sweat in my palms caused me to grip the sickle tighter as I closed the distance to the last line of trees and focused on the scene before me. Right on the beach beside the boat stood three men and four women who were clad in bikinis. The hair rose on the back of my neck. One of the men grabbed one of the girls and jerked her to his side. She screamed, head jolting, but didn’t seem to mind his roughness as he planted his hands deeply into the flesh of her hips and kissed her.

My heart pounded. This could be our chance at rescue, but something about the men gave me pause. They were dressed in fairly normal island clothes, two with their shirts hanging open, the other in a T-shirt. But something about them just wasn’t right. A little too shady looking, a little too cocky. Goose flesh spread across my thighs and arms. That’s when I noticed. All the men were wearing guns.

I stayed in the brush, trying to decide what would be best to do. Maybe I could sneak onboard. Steal a radio or satellite phone. I was so intent on watching them, I only vaguely heard the sound behind me. Summer stepped near, her gaze tightly fitted to the tree line.
Just as she cupped her hands around her mouth to yell, I leapt up and tackled her.

She landed on the ground with a grunt and fought, eyes wild until she saw it was me. Still, she shoved to get me off her. I let her wiggle free, but kept my hand clamped over her mouth and whispered, “Shhhh.”

Her gaze flew to the boat, then back to me. “It’s not safe, Summer.” I nodded toward the boat for her to watch.

Something had happened in the time I’d tackled her. The women were gone, back on the boat, I supposed, though they weren’t on the deck. Then I noticed a cage sticking up from the rear of the boat — that was something you didn’t see every day. On the beach, two of the three men had their guns out and trained on the other, who raised his hands and backed up until he hit a piece of driftwood on the beach and could go no farther.

Summer sucked a breath that vibrated against me where I held her mouth. Slowly, I let go. We both watched, unable to move as the three men argued. Maybe it was a game, maybe they were just messing around. But the voices drifted to us on the beach air, mingling with the loud music. The man was pleading for his life. The first guy cocked his pistol, so I grabbed Summer and put my hand back over her mouth. When the shot rang out, she jolted against me. I turned her into my chest, and her fingernails dug into the skin of my back, trying to suppress her scream. The gunshot echoed off the water and the mountains to the left of us. I’d squeezed my eyes shut. But had to look. Had to be sure.

The body landed in the shallow water, a red cloud floating around it. Arms out, legs slightly spread.
Just like in the movies
. The morbid thought entered my head, but this was nothing like the movies. A man was dead. We’d just watch him die.

I looked down at Summer, still clinging to me, and I realized this wasn’t the first time for her. She’d watched someone die before.
I worried what this might do to her psyche. More than anything, I worried that we would be found. We were witnesses to murder, after all.

And stuck here on the island, there was nowhere to run.

I grabbed her and ran anyway, half carrying her toward the hut. Once I knew we were out of earshot, I started giving instructions. More for myself than for her. “I have to cover everything. We don’t know if they’re planning to stop anywhere else on the island. If they come around to the lagoon . . .”

Summer quaked in my arms. “Stop. Just stop.” She held her hands up. They were trembling. Her eyes were haunted as they darted around us. “They . . . they killed him.”

She probably needed a few minutes to deal, but I didn’t know what kind of time we had. “I know, Summer.”

“Shot him. Right there in front of us.”

“I know.” I squeezed her arms, hoping it would equalize her. “But right now, we need to keep ourselves safe. Okay?”

She didn’t answer.

I stared into her soft, green eyes now filled with new terror at what we’d just seen. “We made a promise to each other, remember?”

She blinked, and I watched as she searched for the memory. Summer nodded, brow still furrowed, but eyes determined. “Yes. We made a promise.”

I leaned in and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “I’m going to get things picked up at the hut then go over to the beach and make sure it looks like no one has been there.” I knew doing so would hurt our chances of a rescue plane seeing us, but with murderers on the island, we didn’t have much choice.

“I . . . I’ll help.” Summer’s voice shook with each word. But like me, she was determined. We made it back to the hut and doused the fire. Summer helped me move a giant piece of driftwood over it so that from the water, it would appear natural. I yanked the tarp
from the porch and spread the palm fronds so everything looked overgrown and, hopefully, camouflaged.

Summer gathered the kitchen utensils into the large pot and we hid it behind the trees.

“I’m going to the beach. I’ll take care of things there. I want you to stay inside the kitchen at the old resort while I’m gone. Okay?”

“Why?”

“I don’t think they’ll go to the interior of the island. Not with a half-million-dollar boat with all the amenities. No reason an abandoned resort would interest them. You’ll be safest there. Safer than staying here.”

But that wasn’t the only reason Summer couldn’t come with me. I was going to do something I couldn’t tell her about. She gauged me for a long time before answering. “Okay. I’ll stay in the kitchen. But promise me you won’t try to get onto that boat.”

I flashed her a smile. “Why would I do that?”

“Satellite phone, send a help message.”

“I swear, Summer. I swear on our lives I won’t try to get on the boat.”

That seemed to satisfy her. I walked her to the building and ushered her inside. “I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

She nodded, squeezed my hand, and let me go. “Be careful,” she said as I left. “Stay out of sight.”

I took care of my work at the beach as quickly as possible — we didn’t have much and with the way the place looked post-hurricane, a little disorder wouldn’t look out of place.

And then I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other and navigate the island near the boat. I walked a ways before I found the body. It had drifted, just as I expected it would. Bullet hole in the chest. With a nausea born of handling my first ever dead person, I set about finding the wallet on the man who’d lost his life before my eyes. My nervousness had me glancing up and
around every few seconds and — though I had seen dead animals before — my squeamishness at touching a dead human had the task taking longer than I wanted it to. I fumbled for the wallet and stepped back from the remains as quickly as I could. The waves continued to lap at the body, lifting it off the sand and up and out from the shore with each crest. Soon the body was well away from the shoreline and I felt a wash of relief that I wouldn’t have to feel a sense of obligation, of ownership of these remains of someone else’s life.

I collected Summer from the kitchen and we silently made our way back to the hut. The image of the dead man stayed in my head, and I saw him each time I closed my eyes. Summer didn’t question me, but I felt she knew something had gone on while I was away. Many nights I’d made a silent promise to be strong for her. Tonight I needed her to be strong for me.