“I’m not. I just want to try and make it right.”

Maggie frowned. “You’re being naive. I know how you are, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

There was a slight lull, and then Alyssa clapped her hands together. “I say we do it. What have you got to lose? Maggie, your birthday is before Louisa’s, so if this works, we can still make the Brant Point pact thing reality.”

“That’s not going to happen, Ally,” Louisa said. “And I’m okay with that. I just want the chance to say I’m sorry.”

“But then you want your happily ever after,” Maggie said.

“No, I want a fish fry down on the beach, just like old times.” Those were some of her very best memories. She’d purposely not thought of them for years. “We’ll invite everyone who loves you.”

“Short list,” Maggie quipped.

“Stop it. You know that’s not true.” Louisa felt suddenly weary, in spite of the adrenaline rush of a new idea.

“I know I’m not going to be able to change your mind,” Maggie said. “But like I said, don’t get your hopes up.”

She shrugged. “Like Ally said, what have you got to lose?”

But even as she uttered the words, she thought of at least ten things that could go wrong. Knowing she was the reason for all of them made her stomach somersault like an Olympic gymnast with a killer floor routine, and that left her feeling woozy.

CHAPTER FOUR

JULY 30, TWELVE YEARS EARLIER

Louisa didn’t remember a birthday without Cody. In fact, she was fairly certain she’d never had one. But this one felt different. They were eighteen. They were legal adults. They could get married if they wanted to.

They didn’t, of course, because that would be ridiculous, and Louisa was headed to Boston University that fall on a substantial academic scholarship, whereas Cody still hadn’t decided what he was going to do now that high school was over.

Maybe to the rest of the world, they were mismatched, but now, finally alone together after a day at the beach, Louisa looked at him, and she couldn’t imagine spending a single day without him.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked her, his voice quiet.

She was rarely quiet, so when she was, he noticed. She forced herself to smile, in spite of the fact that she left for school in two weeks and her head had turned into a pile of mush. What-if questions raced through her mind, accompanied by the overwhelming need to cling to him, to protect what they had.

“You and me,” she finally said.

“How great we are together?” His words nearly stole her breath away.

How would she survive without this—without him? How would she concentrate on school when her mind and heart were so wholly rooted wherever he happened to be?