“Thinking dirty thoughts?” Liv was every bit as perceptive as Julia, but most days, she was also twice as loyal and only half as mean. She plucked the sunglasses from Charlotte’s hand. “I’m just kidding, Char. You look fabulous. You are fabulous. Sterling won’t know what hit him. Drink?”

Charlotte was not sure if that was a question, an order, a suggestion, or a request. She went to grab the liquor, but stopped when she saw the boat pulling into the cove below. On a weekend day, Falling Springs was busy, but during the week?

They were the only ones here.

Charlotte’s eyes searched the boat. Sterling was driving, which only made sense, because it was his family’s boat.

He wasn’t the type to abdicate the wheel.

Charlotte smiled when he looked up at her—not too much, not too little. Just right.

Liv was right. She was perfect. And so was he.

“Who the hell is that?” Liv asked suddenly.

Belatedly, Charlotte finished assessing the occupants of the boat. J.D. was there, of course, and there was a third boy whom Charlotte assumed was the rough-around-the-edges Thomas Mason, who Julia had talked her brother into bringing along.

And sitting between them was a girl.

CHAPTER 33

The Ballad of Lily Easterling and Walker Ames was supposed to be a love story for the ages. Or at least, that was what I’d been told.

That was what Lily had always seemed to believe.

“Sawyer.” Victoria turned to me, implicitly accepting Lily’s second offering as sufficient. “You’re up.”

The secret I’d written down on my card was only two words long. I CARE. I’d spent a lot of my life in self-protection mode. I’d learned early on that it was better not to expect too much of people. I liked to think of myself as someone who didn’t have tender feelings for other people to hurt.

If nothing mattered that much, it was hard for anything to penetrate your armor.

But the truth was that I cared. I’d always cared—about the way my mom was the best friend a girl could ask for one moment and off chasing daydreams the next. About the way a subset of people had talked to me and about me in the town where I’d grown up.

About not having a father.

Now I had other people to care about, too. People who could leave me. People who could decide, if they were so inclined, that I was more trouble than I was worth.

“Sawyer,” Victoria prompted again.

I glanced at Lily, who’d just admitted that, for the first time in her life, she had no idea who or what she wanted.