Love Me Forever - Juliana Stone Page 0,20

and wanted to make sure she got home safely.” Blue pushed off from the railing. “Look, you’ve been dancing around him since he got back to town, first avoiding him like the plague, and now you’re freezing him out. I’m all about supporting my girls, and I’ve got your back. You know that. But I think you might have him all wrong. Shouldn’t you at least find out? Give him a chance to make things right? What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of him,” she admitted softly, focus back on Boone as he laughed at something one of the guys said. His son clung to his legs and looked up at the man as if he was the entire world. Boone ruffled the top of Benji’s head and pulled him closer. “I’m afraid of wanting more. I’m afraid that he was the one for me. That I’ll never again feel the way I did that summer.” She sighed as a jolt of loneliness shot through her. “And I want to,” she whispered. So badly, it hurts.

“Then you’ve got two options the way I see it.” Blue gave her a hug. “I don’t think you’ll ever have a chance at feeling that way with another man if you don’t banish the ghosts of that summer.” She stepped back and winked. “Or you reignite them and see what happens with a boy who’s now a man.”

Poppy thought about that as her friend disappeared inside the house, and then made her way down to the dock and boathouse. She was smart and took the long way around to avoid the crowd of men on the back lawn, but she needed some quiet. She walked around to the other side so she was completely hidden from everyone and plunked her butt on the edge, dangling her feet in the water. It was shaded here, and the water cool to the touch.

She leaned back on her elbows and closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the party, to the voices and laughter, and the water slowly lapping up against the dock. Crystal Lake and summer were two things that would always be tied together and full of memories. She let them wash over her, let them settle in her mind until she had no choice but to remember. She used to meet Boone out at the old Booker place on the water—the family had been traveling, and no one was there—so it became their secret place to go and be alone. And it was on a night just like this one that she’d fallen in love.

“Come on,” Boone said, a lazy grin sliding across his handsome face. He beckoned and held out his hand. Poppy glanced back into the dark that surrounded the boathouse, unsure, a little afraid and more than a little excited. In fact, her body was thrumming with energy and the need to be with this boy, who wasn’t really a boy anymore. He was on the cusp of something bigger, and the whispers of college and a scholarship and playing pro ball were on a lot of lips in town. The thought was one she pushed away as quickly as it came. She didn’t want to think about a future that didn’t include him. Not now. Not when she’d tasted his lips and felt his touch. Her young body and mind responded to him with all the fire of a thousand suns, and she’d never felt this alive.

“Poppy?”

“Won’t we get caught?” she whispered.

“Nah, Cam and them are gone, and his grandmother is in town babysitting their animals. There’s no one here. Just us and all that space on the boat.” His voice was coaxing, his smile full of the devil.

She hesitated. She was only sixteen and out after curfew with a boy who didn’t play by the rules. A boy who made her heart beat a mile a minute. A boy who kissed her and made those secret parts of her, the ones that had never been touched by another, pulse and ache with a need she didn’t fully understand.

He was a boy who’d gone all the way with a lot of girls—or so Poppy had heard—and she felt out of her depth. What if she didn’t know how to do it properly? What if all those novels she’d snuck from her mom’s bedroom didn’t have things right? Oh my God, she thought. What if he wants me to put my mouth on his—

“Come on, Poppy.” He angled his head