Page 106 of A Summer of Stars

I love you.

“I don’t know right now,” I lied cowardly.

He nodded in understanding, his eyes still glued to me. They were so blue, it looked like they stole from the ocean around us.

I leaned in and pressed my lips against his.

Peace. I craved just a moment of peace.

Kieran obliged. His lips embraced mine as the birds stopped calling home and the sun disappeared.

“How Is Luna Aldridge’s Newest Relationship Compared to Her Marriage with Jeremiah Evans?”

—Marie Style

“WHAT ARE YOUdoing?” he groaned with one eye open, squinting against the light of the lamp. “It’s four in the morning.”

“Kieran, it’s six o’clock.”

He ignored me. “Come back to bed.” He reached for my hand. I squeezed his palm before tying my shoe.

“I’m going for a run. I’ll be back by the time you wake up again,” I whispered.

“Stay. I’ll let you have the left side of the bed.”

“I slept on the left side of the bed all night.” I laughed.

“This time I’ll be less grouchy about it.”

I leaned over and said, “I’ll see you in an hour, Grouchy.”

My sneakers creaked against the floorboards as I left his childhood bedroom and went downstairs. With the sun yet to fully rise outside, the hallways were dark. Usually, I’d wait until it was light out, but I couldn’t lie there anymore, staring at his quiet face while my nightmare played itself over and over.

Last night had ended on a good note when we got back fromthe beach. His parents and grandmother had returned, sitting in the kitchen with Franny, Mila, Anica, the neighbor’s three children, and Rosco. They all ran into the living room when we slid the back door open. I wouldn’t have been as startled if it weren’t for the fact that it looked like Kieran and I had just gone skinny dipping, painted in the sea.

Mila and her girlfriend had snorted before we left to get cleaned up—separately. Kieran waited downstairs while I showered. Once I finished, and he had gone up, the kitchen was full of clattering crockery, the smell of saffron and red sauce, and a family prepared to tell me every embarrassing thing about Kieran.

Apparently in high school, he had asked a girl out, and she told him she was busy, only for her to show up at the family restaurant on a date during Kieran’s shift.

“That’s horrible!” I told Mila. She only laughed, saying that he survived.

His father shared that Kieran once rear-ended a neighbor’s car while trying to parallel park and blamed it on a raccoon. “The best part about it was that she believed him! She still has no idea that there isn’t a raccoon the size of a human running around.”

Even though I went to bed with a full stomach, sore cheeks from laughing, and a handsome man wrapped around me, I hadn’t stopped thinking about the conversation on the beach. It carried itself into my sleep.

TwoA.M., I woke up sweating, old memories burrowing themselves into my dreams. The first of me and Jeremiah in New York before the US Open, him reminding me that my forehand wasn’t strong enough.Why don’t you focus on winning a match before telling me how to practice?

The second, the night I first met Kieran.You could never lovesomeone like that.Who said something like that and then changed their mind? How did that work?

Almost outside. Almost to the ocean.

“Good morning.”

“Oh, Mr. Alvarez. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” I pressed my hand to my chest, after not noticing him on the deck through the screen door. He sat in a rickety chair with a coffee in hand, watching the rolling waves.

He released a gruff laugh. “No one is awake in this home before seven. What are you doing up so early?”

“Just going on a run. Keeping up with routine.”