Boyfriend for the Summer (A Second Chance Enemies to Lovers Romance) Read online

  What kind of curveball is the universe trying to throw at me? If Leena knew that he was here, and I was here, she’d throw a fit. My stomach flips, and I already know that I’m not going to tell her. There’s a strange sort of relief in that.

  I’ve wanted to see Eric forever, and this is one of the only ways it could have happened that makes sure there’s no interference. I just need to make sure that he’s okay. That he’s happy. At least that’s what I’m currently telling myself. Closure. That’s what I need. Long overdue closure. Sure.

  The devil himself wouldn’t believe that lie.

  We all file into the cabin, and I step into my private room and shut the door, leaning my forehead on the cool wood of the door. In the sudden silence I can hear the way my heart is pounding.

  This is the last thing that I expected.

  Even here in this cabin the memories are pressing in, and I don’t have a choice but to let them flood my mind. They’re so visceral it feels like everything happened yesterday even thought it was six years ago. Every scent and breath feels like I’m breathing it now. I’ve fought this for so long, it feels good to remember.

  3

  Persephone

  Six Years Ago

  I drop my backpack on the bunk harder than I meant to, jangling everything that is inside. But it does the trick of taking the edge off the frustration I’m feeling of being here yet again.

  Red Rock Summer Camp is cool. Or was cool. But now that I’m a junior, everything seems small. Especially in comparison to Leena’s vacation. She’s going to be sending me pictures from Paris with the Eiffel Tower and sneaking sips of wine at vineyards, and I’m going to be sweating in the Georgia heat.

  And the worst part is that Leena could care less about spending time in another country. Her parents take her on some exotic vacation every year. And I’ve barely left the state. All I want is to travel and write about it. I want to be able to paint pictures of gorgeous Italian frescoes and the way the sunset whines through a glass of white wine on a stranger’s table.

  I unzip my backpack and dig out the notebook I was going use on that trip. I’m still going to write—I refuse to stop just because I didn’t get lucky. There are still beautiful things at Red Rock, and I’m going to practice getting them all down. Going to make the best of it. What else can I do?

  Five more minutes of moping and then I’ll find the silver lining. I have to. Nothing but silver and gold linings from here on out. I grab a pen from my backpack and slip it into the binding of the notebook. There probably won’t be many places I go without it while I’m here—except for the lake where it could get destroyed.

  Okay, I think to myself. Time to get out there and stop wishing you were somewhere else. You’re here now. Look on the bright side.

  I take a deep breath as I step out of the cabin. It’s a gorgeous day with perfect sun, and unlike some of the days that can be spent here, it’s not blistering hot. It’s pleasantly warm, and I close my eyes to bask in it for a moment before stepping forward to head to my favorite grove in the woods.

  It’s a mistake not to open my eyes.

  Something slams into me so hard that I see stars through the brightness, and I don’t even remember moving. Suddenly I’m on the ground staring up into the sun. A shadow looms out of the sun, and I blink. Somehow I can’t still breathe. What the fuck happened?

  The shadow solidifies into a face, and now I can’t breathe for a different reason. It’s a boy I’ve never seen before…and he’s gorgeous. Haloed by golden light, his hair looks that much darker, and his eyes are so blue they match that perfect clear sky that I had seen just before whatever happened…happened.

  His mouth is moving, but I can’t seem to focus on what he’s saying. My ears are ringing and I blink once. Twice. The shapes of his words are coming though now.

  “What?”

  My own voice sounds muffled, and then clears and I hear his voice. It’s strong and musical. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  His hands are on my shoulders, helping me to sit up, and I realize that he’s right. Liquid pours down my face and I look down in horror and the blood that’s collecting on my new camp shirt. “I am so sorry,” the boy says. “Are you okay? Can I take you to the nurse?”

  I stand in a daze. Around us other campers have stopped to look, mostly just watching me bleed. A few others are laughing at either him or me. I’m not sure what to do or what happened. I’m still in a daze.

  “Here,” he says, fingers grazing my arm, “let’s go to the nurse.”

  We take all of one step together when another voice descends, loud and brassy. “What happened?”

  “It was an accident—” he says.

  Hands clamp down on my shoulders. “We’ll figure it out later, she needs to get to the nurse now.”

  “That’s where I was taking—wait!”

  I twist to look back at him—the handsome boy with the blue eyes, but I’m already too far away to hear what he’s saying. The counselor is marching me across the camp at a pace I can barely keep up with. My ears are still ringing, and the blood on my face feels thick.

  Now that I’m coming out of it my nose is starting to hurt. I don’t think it’s broken, but I guess I wouldn’t really know, having never broken a nose before.

  I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve only had to be in the nurse’s cabin a couple times in the years that I’ve been coming to Red Rock. It’s a small cabin on the edge, and an older woman has been the nurse for as long as I’ve been coming here.

  “Mabel,” the counselor says, guiding me through the door. “We’ve got a live one.”

  The nurse turns with a smile, and she doesn’t look remotely concerned when she sees me standing there covered in blood. “Thank you, Jennifer. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Thanks.” There’s a clatter of the screen door behind me and she’s gone. Must have something else she needed to do.

  “Looks like you got hit pretty hard,” Mabel says, patting the cot with one hand. “Come sit down and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

  I sit, feeling a little clearer. I’ll probably have some bruises from the fall, but I don’t think I’ve got anything worse than a scratch on the rest of my body.

  “What happened?” she asks, wetting a cotton pad with something that stings and gently cleaning the blood from my face.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I stepped out of my cabin and then I was on the ground. I think someone ran into me by accident.”

  She sighs, but she’s smiling. “Probably one of the boys. We keep telling them to slow down or somebody will get hurt. Maybe this will make them take it seriously.”

  “Maybe…Maybe not.” I think about the boy with the blue eyes. He did seem really concerned.

  Mabel finishes cleaning the blood from my face and touches my nose softly. I wince, but it’s not the worst pain that I’ve ever felt. “Hmm,” she says, “bear with me.”

  She runs her fingers along the bridge, pressing at intervals and watching my reaction. “I don’t think it’s broken. You’ll have some swelling and bruising, but you should be fine in a couple of days. I can give you a bandage if you like.”

  Of course this would happen. On the first day of camp I end up being the girl with the giant bandage on her nose. I could be in Paris right now.

  Stop. I halt the thoughts before they can go further. There’s no point in wishing for what might have been. Absolutely no point. “If you think I need it,” I say, but I don’t manage to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

  “I think you’ll be okay with just icing it for a couple of days.”

  It’s a gift she’s offering, like a little drop of sunshine. “Really?”

  Mabel nods. “If it were broken, I’d insist on the bandage. But ice it today and tonight and come back and see me tomorrow. We’ll make sure it’s not anything more serious.”

  “Okay.”

  She crosses to one of the shelves and pulls another camp shirt off the shelf. “Here.
Change into this and I’ll wash that one for you. I’ll give it back to you when you visit tomorrow.”

  I step behind a screen in the corner and pull off my shirt and slip into the new one. “Thanks.”

  “It’s no trouble, dear. Is the one who knocked you down all right?”

  Shaking my head, I hand her the shirt. “I don’t know. If I see him again, I’ll ask.”

  She smiles. “Tell him to come see me regardless. Can’t be too careful.”

  “I will.”

  Mabel crosses the cabin to the refrigerator and opens the top door to the freezer and hands me a small ice pack. “As much as possible. But don’t freeze your nose off.”

  As I step out of the cabin back into the sun, I see him. The boy in question. He’s a little ways down the path, waiting, and he looks nervous. Now that I’m more clear, I’m frustrated. Even when you’re running, how hard is it to not run into someone? You have to be really not paying attention.

  I don’t really want to talk to him—no matter how attractive he is—but I know that it’s going to happen at some point. Might as well get it over with now. I press the ice pack to my nose. It stings.

  He spies me coming down the path and straightens up, looking me up and down like he expects to find a cast on my arms or something.

  “She wants to see you,” I say. “To make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. I’m more worried about you. Are you all right?” He winces. “Is it broken.”

  I could tell him yes and make him feel worse, but he already looks miserable. “No, it’s not broken. Just icing for a couple of days.”

  The relief on his face is plain. “I’m glad.” Then he holds out my notebook and pen. I had forgotten I had them—must have dropped them when he knocked me over. Sitting on top of it is a red Starburst.

  I take the notebook, and the candy. “Where were you going?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you knocked me over, where were you going?” What I’m trying to ask him: what was so important that you were so absorbed in running that you weren’t looking in front of you?

  His cheeks blush, and in spite of myself, I notice that it’s cute. He’s cute. More than that. He might be the most attractive guy I’ve ever spoken to in real life, and I wish that I wasn’t mad at him.

  “Yeah…” he clears his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to knock you down like that. I was mainly just trying to get you out of the way.”

  I shake my head, which presses my nose too hard into the ice and I suck in a breath. “What are you talking about?”

  He runs his hand through his hair and it leaves it just disheveled enough that I wonder what it would be like to put my own fingers through it. “A few of us were throwing a baseball around near that cabin, and you came out right as one of us missed the throw. It was going to hit you, and I didn’t want that, so I ran at you.

  “My plan was just to move you out of the way, but I was too fast. I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Oh. Oh. Well, my eyes had been closed. I would have no idea if a baseball was hurtling towards me. And it’s entirely possible that that would have caused more damage than a bloody nose. “Well thank you for that.”

  I unwrap the candy he put on my notebook, a tiny acceptance of his peace offering. We stand across from each other, awkward silence hanging between us. “It could have been a lot worse,” I say.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t.”

  “Me too.”

  He slips his hands into his pockets and looks at me, and again I’m struck by how blue his eyes are. How striking the color is against his dark hair. “What’s your name?”

  “Persephone,” I tell him. “My friends call me Seph.”

  One corner of his mouth pulls up into a smile. “Well, hello, Seph,” he says, boldly declaring himself my friend. “My name is Eric.”

  I don’t know what possesses me to smile, but I do.

  4

  Eric

  Present

  Seph is here. It’s the three words that have been rattling around in my brain for the last day. All the way through settling into my cabin and through last night’s orientation. I could see her across the room, her presence something I couldn’t ignore.

  All through the evening when I could barely sleep, thinking about the fact that she’s here. And I woke up thinking about it too. My eyes popped open before the sun with those words on my mind.

  It all seems so perfect. I wasn’t supposed to be here, and yet I am. And now that she’s here too, it’s like fate is giving us a do-over. Maybe that’s wishful thinking.

  It’s entirely possible that there’s too much between us now for the stars to align in a way that gives us a second a chance. But we have the summer, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to take this chance. No matter how much I’ve pushed away the reality of this, I’ve wanted it.

  When you think something isn’t possible, it’s easy to tell yourself that you don’t want it or need it.

  I knew Seph before I knew Leena, but even though Leena and I split up a while ago, I haven’t had any contact with Seph. Though she hasn’t expressed the vitriol toward me that some of Leena’s other friends have. That alone gives me hope.

  Thinking about Seph gives me more energy than I have any right to this early in the morning, and I need to do something with it or I’m going to be antsy all day. I don’t have time for a run, so I have to make do.

  I start with the pushups, not bothering to count. I just go until my arms start to burn. The same with sit-ups. I brought a medicine ball with me in my bag and I use that for extensions, starting to work up a sweat. The clock tells me I have five more minutes, so I break out the jumping rope and push myself until my lungs are on fire.

  I let myself take a breath, thankful that I took the edge off. If I have to do more later I will, though thoughts of Seph still have me wishing that there was another way that I was burning off energy.

  The coffee maker beeps, and I pour myself a cup. First real day on the job, and there’s going to be a lot to do. I sit down at the desk in my cabin and flip open the schedule for today in the binder that’s going to be my bible for the summer. As much as I want to think about Seph at all times—and will have a hard time stopping myself from doing just that—I still have a job to do.

  And part of that job is knowing the schedule of activities for the day so I can oversee them. Thankfully I won’t have to directly run too many of them, but I need to know exactly what’s happening so I can make sure the staff are properly in place and the equipment is ready.

  My cell phone rings where it’s still plugged in next to the bed. Dread pools in the pit of my stomach. It’s early enough that anyone calling me might have an emergency. But my pulse smooths out when I see my dad’s name on the screen.

  “I could have been sleeping,” I say by way of hello.

  His voice is gravelly, and the chuckle grates across the line. “But you’re not.”

  “No. Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Excited for your first full day?” he asks.

  I take a breath, pushing back a new thought about Seph. Probably not the best time to mention that. “Something like that.”

  There’s a heavy silence before my dad speaks again. “I just wanted to check in with you before you started.”

  “Everything is fine.” I flip the book shut. “I promise. I’ve got it covered.”

  “I’m sorry that I had to ask you to do this. I know it’s not what you wanted—”

  I cut him off. “We’ve been through this, Dad. It’s fine. Don’t apologize to me. It’s not exactly something to feel guilty about. And besides, I’m finding myself optimistic about the summer.”

  “Oh?” He coughs for a second, but I can tell he’s curious. “Why? What changed?”

  I wasn’t exactly shy with the fact that I didn’t love the idea of being here. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  He laughs again. “Fair enough. But if you need me, you k
now that I’m just a phone call away.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I need to do the rounds.”

  “Get on that,” he laughs.

  We say our goodbyes and hang up. I didn’t lie. I need to walk the campground and make sure all the equipment is where it’s meant to be. And I think it will be good to be up and about before the rest of the camp. The rare moments of silence in the couple of months that are bound to be filled with noise.

  The sun is peeking over the horizon. Even though the trees and mountains are obscuring it, the early morning sky is painted with streaks of pink light. It’s peaceful, and already warm. Mist floats across the surface of the lake. It’s perfectly smooth, the only ripples coming from a pair of ducks making their way across.

  If it’s this warm already, it’s going to be boiling by mid-morning. An even better reason to get the rounds done early. As I’m rounding the lake to head over to the tennis and dodgeball courts, I’m stopped by a vision.

  Or at least what my head is telling me is a vision, because it’s exactly what it would have come up with. Seph is on the shore of the lake, lit up with a beam of sunrise like a dream. The sun sets her hair on fire, and her skin is glowing like she’s a saint in a Renaissance painting. And as if that wasn’t enough to make my body react to her, she’s doing yoga.

  A group of her campers are there with her, following along on yoga mats, but I only have eyes for her. She’s wearing a thin t-shirt and the shortest little shorts I’ve ever seen that show off lean legs and an ass that I’m pretty sure I dreamed about last night. Fucking hell.

  Let’s not even start on the fact that she was able to get a group of teenagers up before the sun to exercise. This woman is amazing, and I can’t stop staring at her. I release an invisible plea to the universe that I can find a way to reach her again. That everything that I’ve done and that she’s done and that life has thrown at us won’t keep us apart. Because I feel in my gut that I’ve been waiting for this for too damn long.