The Summer I Saved You (The Summer #2)(80)

“He made you call?” I repeat.

“He said the passcode wouldn’t work and I should ask you.”

When I hang up, Caleb slaps a hand over his face. “Jesus, I’m an idiot. How did it not occur to me you’d be sharing your password with them?”

“Is that how he’s been tracking me?”

“He’s been able to see anything that goes to the cloud from via your Apple ID if you don’t have multi-factor authentication set up—your location, your texts. All he had to do was download it onto a new phone.”

We call Harrison, and once he’s done gloating over the fact that we’re back together, we tell him about the phone issue and he gives us the reply I expected: there’s nothing to be done unless we can prove Jeremy was tracking me, which we probably can’t.

“But,” he adds, “you’ve won the battle that matters.”

“We have?” I ask.

“You’re together, right? As long as you’ve got that, you can wait for everything else to sort itself out.”

Caleb’s fingers twine with mine, and he gives me a small smile.

Yeah, Harrison’s right.

This won’t be my last fight with Jeremy. There will be plenty more ahead.

But we’ve won the battle that matters, and whatever happens in the future—I won’t be facing it alone.





40



LUCIE


The air is mild, the skies are cloudless—a perfect day to learn to surf, if we can just get out of the house.

“You’ve got enough sunscreen, right?” Caleb asks, leaning over to peek into my tote. He worries about the twins as if they’re newborns. “And snacks? There won’t be much there. Goldfish and apples aren’t gonna cut it if the kids want to stay.”

I laugh. “For the third time, yes. They’ll be fine. I promise. Isn’t it a forty-minute drive? We’d better get going.”

“Henry can’t find his flip-flops,” Sophie announces, heading toward the door. “But that’s on him.”

Caleb and I exchange a grin over her head. I’ve got no idea where she gets this stuff.

“I think we should install tracking devices in the soles of your shoes, bud,” Caleb says, ruffling my son’s hair.

“Can we?” Henry asks. “Can we do that instead of surfing?” The idea of balancing on a board atop a moving wall of water terrifies him. I get that—it terrifies me too.

“You’re going to love it, Henry,” Caleb says, and I restrain a wince. Today is not only about teaching the twins to surf. It’s also about saying goodbye to a major part of Caleb’s childhood. Harrison’s dad’s place just went under contract, and today he’ll be meeting his friends there for the last time. In typical fashion, he’s acting like it doesn’t bother him when it must, and is entirely focused on how surfing will change the twins’ lives.

He hasn’t parented long enough to understand that basing your happiness on that of your kids is a recipe for disaster—even the most fun day has a fifty percent chance of ending in tears or tantrums.

And trying a new, difficult sport doesn’t sound all that fun in the first place. As we climb in the car and begin our journey, Caleb’s the only one of the four of us who’s even vaguely enthusiastic. It’s only when we get to the beach and turn onto Harrison’s street that his serenity takes a hit. “It’s so weird to be back here.”

This isn’t simply the last visit. It’s also the first visit since their friend Danny jumped off a nearby cliff eight years prior, the event Audrey described to me at the bar…one that sent all of their lives in a downward spin for varying reasons. Beck suggested today’s outing, jokingly, as an attempt to ‘break the curse,’ but I think a small piece of them actually hopes it will work.

I squeeze his hand. “It’s okay to be sad, you know. You’re saying goodbye to a part of your childhood.”

He shakes his head. “It’s the beginning of something life-changing for the kids, which is even better.”

“We’ll be lucky if one of them is willing to try it,” I warn. “It’s definitely not going to be ‘the beginning of something life-changing.’”

“You’ll see,” he replies.

He pulls into a driveway behind Harrison’s Range Rover, and as I climb from the car, I get why he referred to that place we stayed over the Fourth of July as a ‘cottage.’

“This is where you vacationed as a kid? I was expecting a surf shack. It’s a mansion.”

Caleb pops the trunk and reaches for the wetsuits he insisted on buying the twins, wetsuits they’ll never be willing to wear. “It set the bar pretty high.”

“It must be hard for you now, vacationing now without a butler to serve you caviar,” I reply, taking the wetsuits. “No wonder you were so worried about my snacks.”

He walks under the carport and hoists two surfboards overhead as if they’re light as air. “It’s not that fancy.”

We follow him onto the wooden walkway. “Just because there’s not currently a butler here doesn’t make it any less fancy. I bet it had a staff.”

He laughs. “Okay, yeah, there was a staff.”