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Holt tucks his shirt in the back of his jeans and jogs across the street. He keeps jogging up the walk and onto the porch, not stopping until he’s bracketing me between his arms. Fire erupts inside me, threatening to incinerate me.

“You miss me?”

“I always miss you.”

His eyes roam my face. There’s a sheen to his skin that tells me he worked all day under the hot sun. “I saw you last night, but I spent all night and all day thinking about you.”

I wet my lips, thrilled when his eyes chase the movement. “What about me?”

With his arms still bracketing me, he lowers his face to mine. I can smell the salt of the day on his skin. I don’t bother fighting my shiver.

There’s no one who affects me like Holt Wilder. No one.

He’s the fire that powers my soul.

“All kinds of dirty thoughts,” he replies honestly. When his eyes flick to the window behind me before back to mine, he asks, “Your parents’ home?”

“What are we doing if they aren’t?”

Holt makes a noise that’s all man. Sometime this summer, he shed the last of his boyishness. I’m not even sure when it happened. I can’t imagine him being more than he is now, even though Mom tells me to just wait. That he’s not nearly come into all that he’ll be.

For once, I can’t imagine she’s right. He is all hard lines and deep rumbles and raw masculine power.

And he’s mine.

“Do you have any idea how much I want you, Faye?”

“You want me?”

His dark eyes burn on mine. His reply is hoarse. “You have no idea.”

I want to tell him to take me inside—to do all the things he wants to do to me—but Mom appears in her PT Cruiser at exactly that moment.

Disappointment settles heavy inside me. It settles in Holt, too, as he drops his head between his shoulders before he pushes up and away from me. He lifts my feet, sits on the swing with me and drops them onto his lap.

He mutters, “So much for that.”

I bury my laugh in my book. Holt frowns at me, swiping my book from my hands. “What are you reading, anyway?”

“A vampire book.”

“Of course.” His eyes narrow on me. “You know, I never thought I’d be as jealous of a fictional character as I was of Edward Cullen—but you’ve been reading these books for a long time now.”

“There’s a lot of them in the series.”

Holt shakes his head with a smirk. He tosses the book to the little white table beside the swing and stands when Mom starts to pull grocery bags from the car. I watch as Holt carries the groceries in for Mom, listening through the cracked window as they chat about the hockey camp Holt returned from last week.

He had an amazing time, and it’s hard not to see the excitement for the future in his eyes. He got a different taste for the game while at the camp. The guys he plays with in Rubble Ridge are passionate, but not to the extent that Holt is. They also don’t possess the kind of natural talent Holt has for the game.

I think it was good for him to skate with players more his speed.

The front door swings open and Holt carries a bottle of pop in his hands. Already, the bottle is sweating in the summer heat.

He twists the cap off and hands it to me. I take a sip and wince a little at the sharp bubbles. Holt laughs as he reclaims his spot on the swing with me.

His head tips back against the cushion on the swing, rocking us. Butterflies flutter in my belly as the swing shifts. I snuggle into the fantasy that this could be our sweet, simple life. That we could fall into the gentle caress of a forever just like this.

“I can’t wait to move next summer.” Holt’s words jar me violently from my fantasy. “This town is so slow. So sleepy.”