Next Summer, Find Me If You Can

Chapter 01

Evelyn POV

"My friend, Miguel Hawkins, is coming for dinner tonight. I need you to get ready."

Angelo's words landed in the kitchen like glass shattering against tile, and for a moment I convinced myself I had misheard him entirely.

Ten years.

Ten years since that name had touched my ears, and I had built an entire life out of the silence that followed it.

I stared at my fiancé, waiting for him to laugh, to tell me he was only testing whether I still listened when he spoke.

He didn't laugh.

He stood there in his crisp white shirt, completely unaware that he had just dropped a body into the middle of our living room.

"I don't understand," I said slowly. "Who is coming for dinner?"

Angelo crossed the room, reading my hesitation as exhaustion rather than terror. 

"I know you're tired of my friends parading through here lately," he said, his voice gentle, "but this one has a purpose. We have business to discuss, and I promise you, he's the last person I'll ever ask this of. He's been away from the company for years, he wants back in. Can you do this for me, just this once?"

I held his gaze longer than I should have, my mind screaming questions I couldn't ask out loud. "Angelo, why does he have to come here?" I finally managed. "Can't the two of you go out for dinner instead?"

He smiled, the kind of smile that always disarmed me, and stepped closer until his hands found my waist.

His lips brushed my neck, and despite everything churning beneath my skin, my body still remembered how to soften for him.

"I know you're baffled," he murmured against my ear. "I know you're tired of this, and I shouldn't be putting you through it, especially when I haven't even made you my wife yet."

I pulled back just enough to frown at him. "Hold on. Are you saying that once you marry me, you're going to make me cook for your friends every single day?"

Angelo laughed, the sound was rich and unbothered. "God forbid. Look at you. That red hair, that nose, those lips, that shape. You weren't made for a kitchen, Evelyn and I love you too much to let you carry more than you should."

I smiled, though it had nothing to do with his words.

My mind was elsewhere, tangled in a name I had spent a decade trying to forget.

 "Fine," I said. "I'll prepare something."

He kissed my cheek, satisfied, and turned toward the cellar. "Let me grab some wine. I'll be quick."

I caught his hand before he could disappear. "Angelo. Are you actually about to let me be the one to usher him in?"

He turned back, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear with a tenderness that made my chest ache with guilt I couldn't explain to him. "No, baby. But if he arrives before I'm back, you can't leave him standing outside like a stranger, just greet him and walk away. That's all I'm asking."

I swallowed the lump rising in my throat and nodded, forcing my mouth into a smile. "I hope he isn't late," I said, though I meant the opposite with every fiber of my being.

"He won't be," Angelo said, already moving toward the stairs.

That was when the doorbell rang, and my stomach dropped somewhere beneath the floor.

Angelo turned back with a grin. "Lucky you. Looks like I get to answer it after all."

He crossed to the door and pulled it open, already mid-greeting, before he paused entirely.

Standing there wasn't Miguel Hawkins.

It was Ethan's teacher, and beside her was my son, backpack slung over one shoulder, grinning up at his father.

"So early?" Angelo said, surprised.

"The school bus broke down," the teacher explained, "and we had an emergency staff meeting, so the children were sent home."

Ethan didn't wait for the adults to finish talking.

 He launched himself at his father. "Daddy, I got A's in all my subjects!"

"My God, look at this little superman," Angelo said, sweeping him up and spinning him once before setting him down to shake his small hand like a business partner closing a deal. "That deserves a Spider-Man outfit, don't you think?"

"Yes! I'm gonna be Spider-Man!" Ethan shouted, throwing his arms around Angelo's neck.

I watched them from across the room, my heart hammering for an entirely different reason now.

This was the family I had been trying to build brick by brick out of nothing.

 This was the safety I had bled for.

And somewhere out there, driving toward this exact house, was the one man who could undo all of it without even trying.

"Okay, babe, I'll be right back," Angelo called to me, already heading for the cellar stairs. "Ethan, since you aced everything, that costume is happening today."

"Thank you, Daddy!" Ethan beamed, hugging him once more before Angelo set him down and disappeared.

Ethan ran to me, his small face searching mine. "Mommy, are you okay?"

I forced the brightest smile I owned. "I'm fine, baby. Go upstairs, take your shower, get dressed. We have a guest coming."

I knelt down so we were eye level, and my voice dropped lower than I intended. "Ethan, listen to me carefully. If anyone rings that bell tonight, I need you to stay in your room. Don't come downstairs, no matter what."

His little brows knit together in confusion. "But Daddy always wants me to meet his friends."

"No," I said, firmer than I meant to. "Not this time. No matter what your father says, you stay upstairs. Do you understand me?"

He studied me the way children do when they sense more than they're told, then nodded slowly. "Okay, Mommy."

"If you're good and you listen," I added, softening, "I'll get you a Batman costume too."

His entire face lit up. "I can be Spider-Man and Batman? Best day ever!" 

He turned and bolted up the stairs two at a time, already lost in his own joy, completely unaware of the storm gathering beneath our roof.

Alone in the hallway, my fingers drifted to the pendant resting against my collarbone, the one I had worn every single day for ten years.

 I didn't need to look at it to know the words engraved across its surface. 'Next summer, find me if you can.'

I had written that promise for me and Miguel, believing it was the beginning of a love story.

Instead, it became the epitaph of everything I lost the night I learned Miguel Hawkins already belonged to someone else.

I didn't want to be found anymore.

I wanted him gone, and erased like a stranger's name in a stranger's mouth.

I had survived him once.

 I refused to believe I would have to survive him twice, especially not in the house where my son slept upstairs, blissfully unaware of the man who shared his blood.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang.

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I nearly stumbled.

 I smoothed my hair with trembling hands, glanced once toward the empty staircase, and forced my feet to move, each step heavier than the last, like walking toward something I already knew would break me. 

I reached the door, drew one unsteady breath, and pulled it open.

Standing there after ten years, and somehow exactly the same, was Miguel Hawkins.