Drawn To You

by Lily Summers

  I open my eyes and see Ezra’s smile. Then I pull the tarp away.

  Beneath it, Iris looks over her shoulder, a smile touching her lips and her curls gathered back and twisted with flowers of every color. Star jasmine and violets are intertwined with camellias and roses. They flutter down around her and curl into waves near the base of the wall. She wears a dress I know she’d love, one that dips into a low V in the back to reveal the freckles across her shoulders. There’s an ethereal light in her eyes as she gazes out over the river toward the bridge, where anyone and everyone in Portland will be able to see her as she watches over them.

  It’s a portrait Ezra and I made together, our styles twisting in and out of the piece to create something unlike anything either of us could have done alone. His bold colors and unfettered joy mingle with the softness of my strokes and the love I infused into every inch of my sister’s face.

  The crowd hoots and claps behind us, bringing me back into the moment.

  Ezra leans in and speaks low into my ear. “Now your work’s out there for everyone to see. No more hiding.”

  “No more hiding,” I agree.

  Before the party, Duke set up an additional temporary station up here on the roof, and he gets back to spinning. Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” rises up into the air and people start dancing beneath the stars, the lights of cars going over the bridge reflecting up over the water.

  Ezra puts my glass down and grabs me around the waist, spinning me around and into the throng of people. We sway and laugh against one another to the music.

  His fingers spread over my lower back and he looks as amazing as ever in the moonlight. Wherever we go from here, we’ll do it together. We are Summer and Autumn, warm and golden. We’ve survived.

  As we turn in a slow circle, I glance up at Iris and I swear I see her wink.

  Now live, she’d say.

  So I will.

  THE END

  Excerpt of Nine Letters

  Did you enjoy Drawn to You? If so, check out Nine Letters by Blake Austin! It’s a gorgeous, emotional read! Read it now—FREE on KU!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Eighteen-wheelers rolled through Kansas City on the 70 outside the window, and noon light came in through the blinds. Neither the noise nor the light did much good for my hangover, and I didn’t so much wake up as I gave up on sleeping. The day was weighing on me already.

  Maggie was still asleep. I was in her bed again, in her dead-end apartment, again, on her dead-end street. Again. I said the previous time was going to be the last time. Bad habits were like that.

  Even with her makeup smeared by sleep and sex, Maggie was hot in that way that bartenders knew how to be in order to bring in tips. I eyed the black ink of the tattoos that climbed the curve of her back, then looked away, looked down at the floor in shame. My wife had been gone for a year already. I told myself there was nothing to be ashamed of, the same as I did every time I woke up next to my co-worker with a hangover and the vague hope we’d remembered to use protection. Telling myself it was fine didn’t work most days, least of all on the anniversary of Emily’s death. She deserved better.

  Maggie’s arm was over my chest, and I lifted it just enough to slide out of bed. Standing, the headache came on worse. Physical pain was good. A headache was good. Anything that kept me from thinking was good. I could handle physical pain.

  She rolled away, her long hair black against her black sheets, her skin freckled and tan. Her mouth was open just the slightest bit. It wasn’t her fault we didn’t get along. We scarcely liked working together, and she didn’t care about much besides nightlife and computers and meaningless things like that. But there was a sort of vicious chemistry between the two of us in bed. I hated everything about the whole situation. If only I could quit coming back.

  I found my jeans, shoes, shirt, flannel, and hat, all scattered on the floor, but I couldn’t find my belt. My pants would stay up without it, but I didn’t want to give myself a reason to come over after work again, so I didn’t stop looking.

  The place was a mess, even worse than my house. Stacks of takeout boxes and checkout-line magazines sat atop mismatched furniture, and after a few minutes I gave up and went to use her bathroom. My belt was on the worn linoleum floor, next to her bra. I ran the leather through the loops on my jeans, clasped the Royals buckle into place, and looked in the mirror. I could use a shave, but I was doing alright. Even with a soft job like tending bar, my arms still had definition. I adjusted my cap, then went out and crossed the room as quiet as I could, hoping to get outside before she woke.

  “Luke,” Maggie mumbled, her eyes barely open. “Sneaking out like you always do?”

  “Just didn’t want to wake you,” I said. It was the truth, at least.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “You gonna call me?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “No you’re not,” she said. “You’re just going to ignore me at work and then turn around and hit on me when you get drunk after your shift. Like you always do.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Like I care,” she mumbled, rolling back over and pulling a pillow over her head. “Get out of here.”

  She fell back asleep, and I slipped out the door.

  Emily died in the springtime. Nobody should die in the springtime, but least of all someone so alive. Now I dreaded the warmer days, the green of the season. The memories were too strong.

  I pulled on my flannel as I walked to my truck, the brim of my cap almost working to keep the sun from doing its best to ruin my life. Still, it felt good to step up into my Chevy and turn the engine over. I let it shake to life, got my left foot off the clutch and my right foot on the gas, and took off out of that dead-end street.

  You’ve got this, I told myself. You’re tough. You’ve been through worse.

  I pulled out onto the 70, cranked down the window, turned up the heat against the chill still hanging on despite it being midway through April. Cold wind poured into the cab, clearing my head a bit and knocking Granddad Cawley’s dog tags where they hung from the rearview.

  I wanted a cigarette, maybe a can of Skoal, more than I wanted to deal with the day. But I’d quit tobacco for Emily. I’d promised her I’d quit, even though she was the one who’d died of cancer and she’d never even smoked. She was dead, but my word meant something to me. My word was all I had. I wouldn’t disappoint her. Not anymore than I already had.

  I drove faster, instead. I ignored my phone as it went off in my pocket, I ignored the speed limit, and I let myself be grateful for my truck and the wind and the Sunday lack of traffic. Maybe I’d get out of town sometime soon. Get my boots in the dirt, get mud on my tires. Go fishing. Call my brother, maybe even my dad. Maybe.

  Kansas City is alright for a city, anyway. I’d be alright. I was tough.

  You could still get a pretty good house in Kansas City on a truck driver’s take, and my granddad had given me a house, a fixer-upper two-bedroom place with enough yard for kids and enough garage to keep a man happy. I pulled into the drive and tried not to think about the look on that man’s face when he’d handed me the deed at the wedding.

  “The hell do I need the money for anyway,” Granddad Cawley had said, like he didn’t care. “Was going to leave it to you in my will, but I don’t want no grandson of mine plotting against me. Was going to give it to you sooner, but I didn’t want you thinking things in life came much for free, either.” That man had been proud, so proud, that all of his years and miles behind the wheel were enough to provide for his family.

  It was a small miracle that Granddad went to his grave before Emily did. He’d never had to know that there weren’t going to be kids in that house, that I was never going to get to build a swing set in that yard. What sort of world is it, where your Granddad’s death is a small miracle.

  As soon as I cut the engine, the hangover came on, and worse. I made it into the house, turned on the heat. A house should have an engine block, should just warm up f
rom use like a truck. But it doesn’t work that way.

  Inside, I scanned the fridge, but there weren’t any eggs. I still had a half a deer in the deep freeze in the garage, but nothing hot I could make fast enough to be worth the effort. No breakfast today, then. Guess I’d drag myself to Price Chopper sooner or later.

  A shower would do me better than cold cereal anyway, and I made it to the bathroom off from the master bedroom. The one I’d been working on when we’d found out Emily was sick, the one I’d never finished remodeling. I stripped, stepped into the hot water. The first half of the shower, I decided I needed a better way to keep Emily off my mind than sleeping with Maggie, because sleeping with Maggie didn’t work anyway. The second half, I didn’t care that it didn’t work, because I didn’t care about much anything at all.

  From the time I was seventeen to twenty-three, I’d lived with Emily at my side, in a bliss I didn’t know the world had to offer. Now that she was gone, I wasn’t prepared to face the world without her. Hell if I knew why I kept on going in the first place. I guess because Emily would hate it if I quit. And if I was honest with myself, I was afraid she might not be waiting for me on the other side if I took my own life. Whether or not I was right with God, no matter how shaken my faith, it just wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

  The water ran cold all too soon.

  Drying off in the bedroom, I found myself flipping through the stack of proof prints from our wedding, like I did most days.

  I’d memorized every one of them.

  Emily on horseback in her wedding veil, head thrown back in a laugh, me holding the reins from the ground and staring up at her like I’d never seen anything so fine. Another with Emily in her white gown, smirking, leaned against my chipped beige Chevy pretending to aim a slingshot at me while I held back a grin. The two of us sitting on the tailgate, hand in hand, the skyline of our western city silhouetted against the setting sun, mud on both our boots.

  The photographer had charged too much, I used to think. Emily and I’d argued over it, even, in that halting, loving way that was the worst the two of us had ever really argued. She’d been right, of course. She’d always been right.

  It was too overwhelming. I set down the stack of photos, but I could feel her blue eyes follow me across the room. April 15th, when those eyes had shut forever, was a date burned into my brain deeper than September 7th, our wedding, or September 28th, her birthday.

  I threw my clothes back on and left the bedroom.

  My cell phone sat on the butcher block counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. The house was a minefield of memories—I’d built her the countertop as soon as we moved in. I unlocked my phone and saw two missed calls, two voicemails. One from my brother Mike at 10am, the other from my work, at 1pm.

  “Luke,” Mike’s voice said, impatient. “Wake your ass up. Am I going to see you at church? Ever again? You even alive?”

  I deleted the voicemail before it even finished playing.

  “Hey, so I don’t know if you’re really into having a job,” Warren, my boss, said in his familiar drawl, “but if you are, you can’t keep pulling this shit. I got in this morning and the place was a mess. You didn’t do the dishes, you didn’t close out the register, you didn’t wash the mats or take out the trash. I feel like I’m lucky you even remembered to lock up on your way out. I’m sick of cleaning up after you, and I know we’re friends but I’m going to find a new guy if you do this to me again. See you at three.”

  I had to be at work by three.

  I looked at my phone. Two-thirty, and a thirty-minute drive.

  Without another thought, I went out the door. There was a package on the stoop, about the size of a book from Amazon, but there was no return address. Just my name, Luke Cawley. No postage, no address, just my name.

  I picked it up, tossed it inside the house before I locked up, and ran to my truck.

  Want to read more? Nine Letters is available now!

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people to thank that I don’t even know where to start. Publishing a book is a lifelong dream of mine and I could never have done it without these lovely people.

  First and foremost: thank you to my family for all of the support, the guidance, and the understanding when I fall off the face of the earth to write. Mom, thank you especially for taking me on that trip to Portland. The city changed my life and I hope I was able to bring it to life here.

  I can’t even begin to describe my thanks for everyone in this community. Thank you all the bloggers and authors for being so welcoming. A special thanks to Roxy, Lola, Sanzana from I Bookin’ Love to Read, Candi from Dirty Laundry Review, Jenn and all of the rockstars at Social Butterfly PR, Kylie and Beth from Give Me Books, and so many more. I could write a thousand words thanking everyone.

  Finally, thank you to YOU! I have endless gratitude to every single person who picked up this story.

  ♡ Lily

  About the Author

  Lily Summers is a lover of avocados, man-buns, and all things angst. She made her book-nerd debut by winning her local bookstore’s Harry Potter costume contest and has been lost in the shelves ever since. When she’s not writing, she can be found pretending like she knows how to run, befriending strangers’ dogs, or enjoying a cold beer in the sunshine. Lily lives in Los Angeles but is considering moving to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

  Connect with Lily!

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  lilysummersauthor@gmail.com