their childhood homes and their usual lives. They were each going out into the world. They’d experience new things. They’d meet new people. They’d move on from their childhood families. Would they move on from the island too?
She’d kept up her promise. Returned the following summer even though it was just her and her mother and Gemma by then.
But Simon never came. Or explained. Or apologized, either. His parents came—said he’d gotten a great internship that was too good to pass up. Instead, he’d passed her up.
Still, she’d waited. And hoped. For a change of plans.
For a change of heart.
What would she have said, all those years ago, when she’d cried into her pillow late at night, swam in the lake all by herself during the day, and rode her bike all over the island, wishing and hoping that one morning would mark his return, if she knew that he would someday return? That he’d be back, long after she’d stopped looking for him. That he’d be standing in her art studio. That she would own an art studio! That she might have another chance.
Except for the small part about him being engaged.
“So you work out of here?” he asked, looking at her in wonder.
She nodded, pride filling her as she stood amongst her work. Her dreams. “I paint out of the studio, but I also paint on location. I run classes once a week, too. Friday nights. Open to anyone, so long as there’s a chair.” She eyed him, wondering if she should push her luck, and then decided she had nothing to lose. She’d already lost him once before. “You should drop by sometime.”
He grinned at her, and every nerve ending in her body seemed to sing. “Maybe I will.”
After a moment, he broke her gaze and motioned to a painting, one of her favorites, that she’d painted last fall when the leaves were at their peak and the entire island seemed to be awash in shades of crimson, orange, and yellow. “This one is remarkable. I never saw the island like this before.”
“Most people don’t,” she said simply. After all, most of the tourists were gone by Labor Day, the summer people too. Then it was just the year-round folks, grateful at first for a chance to breathe, to have their space back, to be able to walk into Main Street Market without having to worry that all the fresh bagels would be sold out, but then, she’d learned with time, eager for everyone to return.
She came to stand next to him, thinking that it would be impossible to give this up, not just the painting but the island, the cottage, the opportunity to see what she saw, every day, to capture with her hand and a paintbrush and some paint.
“I guess I need to come back to the island a little later in the season sometime,” he said, slanting her a glance.
Something inside her locked up. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, with that grin, and those eyes…it made her feel things she shouldn’t. It made her think that they still had a chance.
Did they?
He was so close to her now that she could feel the heat off his skin, and her heart began to pound at the familiarity of it all. It would be so easy to just fall back into step, to continue the relationship they’d built summer after summer; from the time they were fifteen to eighteen they’d carried on in June where they’d left off the previous August.
Time had never created a distance between them before. Maybe, it didn’t have to now.
“I thought you had a job to get back to,” she said, trying to keep herself footed in reality.
He shrugged. “I told you. I have my own thing going now. I can technically work from anywhere in the world.”
She raised her eyebrows, trying to imagine such freedom. “I’d love to travel the world. To capture it.”
“You should,” he said, but she just shook her head.
She was exactly what her father told her she was. She was a starving artist. She’d spent all her trust on this studio—because as Gemma was so quick to point out, real estate on the island was prime. The house was paid off, and there was enough set aside for the taxes and the utility bills. But it stopped there. And the money she made selling her paintings in town was far from reliable, and she’d certainly never be rich from it, or