She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, squared her shoulders, and walked back down to the fire.
“Jeremiah just pretended to fall into the fire. On purpose. For a girl.”
Conrad turned to face her fully. The porch light caught the side of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the dark circles under his eyes. He looked older than twenty. Older than grief. book 3 the summer i turned pretty
Because that’s what you did at Cousins Beach. You showed up. You stayed. And you tried not to drown in the space between what you wanted and what you couldn’t have.
He stopped. Swallowed.
Three summers ago , she thought, I would have been sitting right between them.
Book 3. The summer everything broke.
He stepped closer. Close enough that she could smell his sweatshirt—salt, cedar, something underneath that was just Conrad . His hand hovered near her arm but didn’t touch.
“Because I’m the one who walks away,” he said. “That’s my job. That’s always been my job.” She wiped her eyes with the back of