For the Summer

  Additional novels by Shey Stahl

  After the Summer (Sequel to For the Summer) – Coming Soon

  Racing on the Edge:

  Happy Hour

  Black Flag

  Trading Paint

  The Champion

  The Legend

  Behind the Wheel (Book 6 in the Racing on the Edge series) – Coming Soon

  Waiting for You

  Wrapped in You (Sequel to Waiting for You) – Coming Soon

  Crossing the Line:

  Delayed Penalty

  Off-Sides (Book 2 in Crossing the Line series) – Coming Soon

  Everything Changes

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, sponsors, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, dead or living, is coincidental.

  The opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the author.

  Warning: This book is not suitable for anyone under the age of seventeen. This book contains detailed sexual encounters, explicit language and drug and alcohol use between minors. Please be warned.

  For the Summer

  Copyright © 2013 by Shey Stahl

  Published in the United States of America

  EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement including infringement without monetary gain is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250.000.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of Shey Stahl.

  Cover Art: Sarah Hansen © Okay Creations

  Editor: Madison Seidler

  Interior Formatting: EM Tippetts Book Designs

  For my readers.

  I’m just a girl. I’m just a daughter, a sister, a best friend, a wife, and a mother. You guys make me feel like a writer—a title that’s never given but earned when a story is created and matters to someone. You guys matter. Thank you for making me feel like this matters.

  No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.

  Francois Muriac

  July 2012

  SOMETIMES AS I blinked tear-soaked lashes, I felt like time passed me by. Bittersweet yes, but still, time passed, and I wondered how much I lost this time. Days, weeks, years?

  Setting the pen down, I tried to remember a time when I had ever felt so relieved to finally finish something. I couldn’t think of anything. Maybe my senior project, but no, it had nothing on this. I wasn’t sure anything ever would.

  For me, completing that journal was something I needed to do. In my heart, in my head, I knew it wasn’t the end either. Putting down the pen would never be the end for Bensen and me. There would be more. I would see him again, and the day Ivey told me she was getting married, I knew it was about to happen.

  For me, I had decided those memories—him, those summers—wouldn’t consume me forever. They would always be a part of me, but for myself, in order to heal, I wrote them down, carried them around with me for years, reliving every detail as if they held answers I wasn’t sure I even needed anymore. Relief came when I realized maybe I didn’t need the answers; just remembering and purging those memories to paper was enough for me.

  Ivey walked into our dorm room, tossing empty boxes on the bed. She proceeded to fill each one with books, clothes, and the few photographs she had of her and Wyatt.

  “I can’t believe you’re getting married.” I blinked a few times, rubbing my eyes as I wrote the words: For the Summer on the front of the leather journal. Sighing, I tossed the journal in the box and started loading it with my belongings.

  “I know,” Ivey groaned, tossing her last remaining band t-shirts in the box. “I’m such an idiot. Who gets married anymore anyway?” Her nose scrunched. “I’m twenty-two, it’s like a death sentence or something.” Drama and trouble seemed to surround Ivey wherever she went. This was mostly from her own doing, but I welcomed it because I didn’t have to think about me in that moment and what it meant to finally close that book.

  After four years at the University of Georgia, Ivey and I were finally heading home—I had a degree in Journalism and she had a degree in Psychology. What we’d do with those fancy degrees now was still a little undecided.

  “Normally the bride-to-be doesn’t call herself an idiot,” I pointed out. “It’s a time for happiness, I think.”

  “I know.”

  In reality, if you knew Ivey Cole, you would have thought she was the least likely of us to get married. Ever. She was a spitfire, full of life, tell-it-like-it-is kind of girl. And Wyatt, well, he was your typical country boy. Slow talking and conservative. Nothing like her. But, as the saying went, opposites attract.

  In a lot of ways, I was completely opposite from Bensen, Ivey’s older brother, but that didn’t stop me from loving him. He was reckless, indecisive, headstrong, an asshole, thought the world revolved around him … you get the point. He was the type of guy that had a few friends and trusted maybe one of them. Always suspicious, he said what he wanted and nothing else. He didn’t talk bullshit and wouldn’t tell you something just because he thought you wanted to hear it.

  The good side you might ask?

  Well, when no one was looking, he was passionate, easy to love, full of sloppy smiles and silly jokes, heartfelt, considerate, a dreamer, but most of all, he was just Bensen William Cole—the boy who stole my heart at thirteen.

  The rest of the morning Ivey continued to make jokes about getting married, but I knew deep down she was excited to marry Wyatt. All the while, we loaded my white Toyota Celica with everything we had at school and made our way back to the last place I thought I’d end up. Lake Lanier. The same lake I spent every summer at from ages thirteen to eighteen. Funny how life changed and you found yourself missing a place you never wanted to see again.

  Ivey and Wyatt dated off and on throughout our freshman and sophomore years of college, but come junior year, they were inseparable. If I had to guess, I would say they probably had some feelings for each other back when we were kids, too.

  I actually started out dating Wyatt, but when Bensen scared him off, he took interest in Ivey. That was probably for the better. As much as I never wanted to admit it, I was, in many ways, tainted in the love area and had been from the start.

  I was only twenty-two now and marked for life. Tragic.

  It was like the bastard branded me—marked me with his label, and sent me on my way like a cow. I’d never be picked up by anyone else because they’d see his brand on me and back away. Bensen Cole had that way about him.

  Wyatt picked Ivey up around noon. They needed to get some last minute wedding details hammered out. That left me traveling alone back to the lake.

  After a few days there, I was headed to Atlanta to start my new job with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a position only obtained by my very persuasive sister, Sara, who I thought was screwing one of the columnists after he did a piece on her bakery.

  I got the job, though, and that was all that mattered to me. And for the first time in my life, I would be living on my own in a city where any family I had was a good hour or more away. When you grew up
with four older sisters, whether you were close or not, it was nice to finally have some independence.

  After a few wrong turns, a stop for junk food, and another for gas, I was finally pulling into the driveway of my Aunt Megs’s home. The drive seemed to last forever, but it was probably more my mind that made the drive feel long. The trip back here had been a long time coming. For a while I thought I’d never see that lake again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  Blinking, my gaze momentarily lingered on the window of my old room that Bensen broke when he threw a baseball through it. Everything from the outside looked the same, though, except maybe the ground, which had become dry and cracked from the sun’s rays, small fissures running out in a number of directions—not unlike my heart.

  Aunt Megs had lived on Lake Lanier for about eight years now, and not much had changed in the last four years, and I sat there for a good ten minutes looking for anything that might be different. Still set down low like most lake houses were, thick shrubbery and views of the lake wrapped around a smaller eggshell-colored house with a screened porch. The rocking chairs with our names carved in them still occupied the weathered deck, and the hole in the front door screen was still there from when Ivey’s younger brother, Brady, flew through it chasing his dog, Buddy.

  When I looked next door at the Cole’s house, a lot of memories came back, and they all tied to that truck in the driveway.

  The first rain was coming.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got to the lake and saw that familiar 1956 Ford with its rusty metal parked in the Cole’s driveway.

  Part of me thought, hoped actually, that maybe Brady was driving it now, as something maybe they kept in the family. But the other part of me knew Bensen would never part with that truck, even to give it to Brady. It was a piece of him and defined a lot about who he was. Maybe rough on the outside, older beyond his years, but still, commendable in his own ways.

  As I stepped from my car, Sadie, one of my older sisters, met me outside, her smile as big as her round belly. She was due next month, and her ass could attest to that. As the summer heat blasted me, it seemed different already. Maybe not the humidity, that’d always be that way, a permanent hint of oncoming rain in a sky full of bright blue.

  “Hey Sophie!” She gleamed, practically pulling me from my car, her clammy hands gripping my wrists as she tugged.

  Returning the hug, my eyes shifted across the way to the truck and then back at Sadie. We made small talk as I retrieved my bag from behind my seat. That was when she noticed my attention next door.

  When I reached inside for the journal, intending on keeping it with me, Sadie glanced at it.

  “What’s that?”

  “Wedding gift.” Keeping the cover hidden, I tucked it against my chest.

  It wasn’t a wedding gift, but it got Sadie off subject. I never told anyone, besides Ivey, I had been writing in it. And she had encouraged it, naturally, hence the Psychology major. I thought with all the consoling she did for me she had found her calling.

  I could never explain that to my sisters, as I could hardly justify it to myself. Writing your entire first love in a journal as if you were talking to said first love didn’t exactly scream stable.

  In reality it screamed therapy. I knew that, too. And this was my form of it.

  “I can’t believe he came back.” Sadie shook her head, looking over at his truck and then away, just as quickly as I had.

  I couldn’t believe it either, but it was his little sister’s wedding. He was probably forced to attend.

  No one had seen Bensen since my and Ivey’s graduation party four years ago. Ivey said she’d talked to him on the phone a few times, and that he was working down in Gainesville laying tile for a guy named Ariah. Other than that, no word, and especially not to me, the girl left behind. I wasn’t sure if it was Bensen’s intention to leave that night, but it sure was surprising, for me at least.

  When he left I never got an answer as to why—a question that a girl like me, the one looking for the story, the underlining meaning, needed. And I’d admit, part of me, the story seeker, thought maybe after all this time I would finally get my answer.

  Some would wonder if I had moved on. Most would hope, right? Unfortunately for me, that hadn’t happened. I might have set down the pen, but there was a good part of me that, after seeing that truck, still hoped I would get the answer.

  Sadie told me that our parents wouldn’t be here until later tonight, and then they were leaving the day after the wedding. My other sisters, Shanna, Sara, and Stephanie couldn’t make it. And after my twenty-first birthday, that was probably for the better. Since that night, there’d been a definite shift in my relationship with all of them, and I doubted things would ever be the same. We were civil, but a rift was created distancing us all.

  Out of all my sisters, Sadie and I were the closest—always had been, but I couldn’t say anything was the same.

  We lounged around Aunt Megs’s as I waited for Ivey to call so we could go over anything she needed me to do as her maid of honor. Between finishing up finals and looking for an apartment in Atlanta these last few months, I wasn’t exactly the prime pick when it came to the maid of honor.

  After an hour of waiting for her to call I was getting antsy. I really wanted to know if that was Bensen’s truck, and the fact that he might be over there, just a few hundred feet from me, had my tummy in knots.

  You home?

  She replied about ten minutes later. Yeah. Come over.

  I did, but I made Sadie come, too. If that was Bensen, I had it in my head I needed reinforcement.

  “Why do I have to come with you?” she whined, hobbling beside me, holding a bowl of grapes, before adding, “I swear to God, if he talks to me, I might punch him.”

  “Oh, don’t put yourself into labor. I doubt he’s even—” Before I could get the words out, he was there, standing before me. I couldn’t move. Frozen.

  Holy fuck. It’s really him.

  Shit. Breathe.

  No seriously. You need to breathe.

  As all of this raced through my head, he was just staring at me like I wasn’t real, eyes wide from my face to my feet. The look on his face was pure shock, but then just as quickly, he blinked the look away. The screen door slammed behind him, his hands on the back of his baseball hat, adjusting its fit to hide his face, as if we could see it anyway. The glimpse of him was quick, so quick I had no time to look at him or remember all the details my memory craved. As he passed, I was reminded not just of his looks, but his smell—all boy, all summer sweet, and tangy, musky woods.

  “Hey Sophie!” Brady said, following him down the driveway, his wave and smile bright.

  “Pfftt, what about me, kid?” Sadie mumbled, tossing a grape in Brady’s direction before pushing the few strands of thick, chocolate locks away from her face.

  Brady didn’t turn back, instead he climbed in the truck with Bensen, and they took off down the road.

  “Maybe he didn’t see you,” I teased, rubbing her belly.

  She slapped at my hand. “I’m sure that was it. Looks like Bensen didn’t see you either,” Sadie joked back. She may not have known about the journal, but she knew how caught up I was on him.

  “How could he? He probably doesn’t even remember who I am.”

  “You haven’t talked to him since then? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious. I haven’t seen him since my high school graduation party.”

  Before any more conversation came about, Ivey was at the door, crying about her dress not fitting right, and the color of the bridesmaid dresses being wrong.

  With the help of Sadie and Ivey’s mom, Lindy, we managed to get the little headcase calmed down and a drink in her hand. We were sitting in her old room looking over pictures from our summers spent here when Bensen’s reaction to me made me curious. Had he really not remembered me? Or maybe it was he didn’t recognize me. I had grown up a little in the last four years, and my hair w
as shorter.

  Trying to play it cool, I asked, “When did Bensen get here?”

  Ivey picked up a picture of her and Chase, a high school friend, the night we had a party in that old barn, laughing at him holding that bottle of Fireball we used to play spin the bottle. “He got here this morning, I guess. He was here when I got in around eleven. He and Wyatt shared a nice hello.” Ivey rolled her eyes. “And then he went up to his room. He and Brady came down right as you were coming over.”

  “So what did he say to you?”

  “Nothing really. I told him it was nice to finally see him, and I asked him why he left and never came back. He said he was drunk and had made some mistakes.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That, and he was here for my wedding and didn’t want to bother with other shit.”

  I was dancing around my obvious question, and Ivey knew it, patiently waiting for me to ask. After a moment of indecisive silence, I asked, “Did he say anything about me?”

  “I asked if he had talked to you, but that’s it.”

  “And he said?”

  “Sophie …” Her sigh that followed said it all. Ivey was no-holds-barred. If you didn’t want to know, you shouldn’t ask because she’d give the straight shit, just like Bensen would.

  My eyes dropped from her gorgeous blues to my thumbs and the blistered skin I seemed to always pick. My heart started flopping around, jumping up and down in my throat. “What did he say Ivey?”

  Ivey watched me for about a half second and then said, “He said ‘Sophie who?’”

  Damn. That sucked.

  I … well, damn. It was worse than I thought. It hurt more than I wanted.

  “Don’t pay attention to him. He was just being a dick,” she reminded me.

  “Did he want to come?”

  “No,” Ivey admitted, watching me. “Dad forced him. He called me and said congrats, but he couldn’t make it. I think the only reason he came was because Dad made him feel like shit.”