Page 98 of Lease to Love

The bolt slid back.

The door opened.

And we stepped inside.

Chapter Twelve

Summer

The silence between us in my apartment had weight to it.

I could feel it pressing against my skin the second the door clicked shut, heavy and suffocating in a way the noise at the gala hadn't been.

With nothing left to distract me, Ayo's voice came crawling back into my head—uninvited, unwelcome, and somehow still louder than anything else in the room.

If y'all ever see me with a bitch in a studio apartment again, SEND HELP!

I looked around at the place I'd built my whole life inside of —the whole apartment you could see corner to corner in one glance — and felt the embarrassment come back fresh, like it had never actually left, just been waiting for a quiet room to climb back into.

"Summer." Roman's voice came from behind me, soft enough that it didn't startle me. "Talk to me, Sunshine. What happened tonight?"

I didn't turn around. I didn't think I could, not yet, not with my face still doing whatever it was doing.

I swallowed and stared at the wall across from me. Forced myself to exhale.

"Remember when I told you why I dropped out of Howard?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "That I lost someone?"

"I remember."

The simplicity of his answer almost broke me.

"Her name was Autumn." My voice caught on her name, the way it always did. "My cousin. My best friend. We'd built the idea for the boutique together — We were gonna call it Two Seasons Fashions… She was supposed to run the business side. I was supposed to design."

Roman didn't say anything. He just listened.

"We'd walked to the corner store — I was craving something stupid, and she didn't even want to go, and we were arguing the whole way there about whether it was possible to actually sew the dress I'd sketched."

I stared at nothing.

"Doritos and a dumb little fight about fabric. It was so normal… Right up until it wasn't."

He stayed silent. Just let me keep going.

"A car came around the corner… The guys inside it were—" My hands started shaking again. "They were aiming for somebody who just—looked like one of our friends. Wrong face, wrong afternoon, wrong sidewalk."

He reached for me, then stopped himself, like he wasn't sure I wanted to be touched yet.

I didn't. Not yet.

"I saw her get hit before I even understood what the sound was. I just ran to her. Didn't think, didn't scream, just ran." My voice cracked straight down the middle. "If I'd crossed that street five seconds later instead of running ahead of her, I would've been right next to her. It would've been both of us. Maybe just me instead."

"Summer…"

"I held her while she died." The words finally broke loose, flat and small and breaking at the end. "She put her hand on my cheek. It was—she was bleeding, and she reached up and put her hand right here—" My fingers found the spot without meaning to. "And she looked up at me, and the last thing she ever said was—"

My throat closed around the rest of it, but I made myself say it anyway.

"It's okay, Sunny."