Summer's Kiss (The Boys of Ocean Beach 1)

“That’s a good rule.” I’d been on the pill since I was sixteen for period issues. Thank god, because Mason didn’t always use protection. He didn’t like how it felt. What a dick.

“And the pact worked?”

“It did,” he says. “I guess.”

I tilt my head. “What’s the problem?”

“Sometimes someone comes in your life and throws everything upside down, you know?”

My breath caught. “Yeah, I do know. What happens then? Would you toss out the pact?”

I hear my mother speaking near the front door, saying her thank yous and goodbyes. Nick straightens but replies before she walks onto the porch, “A pact like ours can’t be broken, but if everyone agrees maybe it can be altered.”

He walks off the porch, lifting his camera to his eye. I smile tightly at my mother as she steps into the hot summer air. I have no idea what Nicholas is talking about, what he means, but in the pit of my belly I have a feeling it’s about me.

* * *

“Did you get what you needed?” I ask on the way back to the campground. We dropped Nick off at the marina. I was disappointed none of the others were around but my heart did skip a beat when he said goodbye and squeezed my shoulder on his way out of the car.

She nods. “I think so. Such a brave family. I can’t imagine having to live with a nightmare like that for your entire life.”

“You really seemed to connect to her.”

“I try,” she flips the turn signal when we reach a stop light. “People just want to be heard and they want to feel safe. I can try my best to provide that for them.”

I pick up the file folder my mother slid between the seats. Inside is the photo of Darlene and her friend. “This is a really cool picture.”

She nods. “That tip about the Myrtle Beach stuff. That’s an angle I’ve been wanting to push. I asked Darlene if she’s heard of any other people narrowly escaping Gaskins.”

“Had she?” The thought of crossing paths with Donald Gaskins and escaping is a chilling one.

“Some vague rumors. Nothing concrete.”

I bite my tongue for a moment and then say, “Rumor has it you were pretty big on the whole, ‘sneaking out at night to go to Myrtle Beach’ thing when you were younger.”

She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Where did you hear that?”

“From Anita and some of the others at the beach.”

“From Sugar, then.”

I shrug. “I guess.”

Her hands tense on the steering wheel. “It was stupid kid stuff. Things were different back then, but it’s no big surprise she blabbed.”

That took me by surprise. Why was she so defensive of this? And why the bitter tone about Sugar? “Sounds like fun though—late night hijinks with the cousins.”

“It was stupid. We were young and it was idiotic. We could have gotten in serious trouble.”

I hold my hands up in defeat. “Okay, jeez, why so angry?”

“I’m sorry,” she sighs, turning to give me an apologetic smile. “It was stupid and I’m just mad at Sugar—I’ve been angry with her for decades.”

“Decades?”

“Yeah, we had a falling out—a big one, way back. We’ve tried to talk a couple of times and Jimmy pushed us to play nice but, I don’t know, things are too far gone between us.”

“What happened?” I ask.