Saving Summers (Books 1&2 combined)

17

The Hastings family was arguably the most disliked founding family in Summerville. Everything about them was perfection and nothing less.
Bill Hastings was the owner of Hastings Winery and the "main man" of his family. He was never happy with how things progressed in Summerville and he often wanted to change that. He wanted Summerville High to be a private school for the elite meaning only a small portion of Summerville residents would be able to afford the tuition and send their children to high school. The rest had to settle for high schools in neighboring towns which would be a problem because of the commuting and overcrowding of students.
Bill did not believe his children had to attend a basic school with basic children that were not on their level.

Out of greed, he proposed buying out small businesses so he could expand his winery but many people thought it was scam behavior because the amount he proposed compared to the income some businesses made was little. He begged Mayor Summers to forcefully close some businesses but that did not happen.
Summerville was peaceful the way it was, everyone was happy and nothing needed to be changed.

Many residents hoped for the Summers Family to be in authority for a very long time because the Hastings were next in line to rule Summerville and if that happened, a lot of things would change and not for the better.

When Emma was in 6th grade, she remembered seeing this new girl at their school. She was pretty with dark melanin skin and a short Afro.
Since Summerville was fairly a small town, everybody knew everybody, most of the children in the same age group grew up together but nobody knew this girl.

Fast forward to 8th grade, Emma knew the girl as Adelaide Herman but they never interacted. She became super popular around the middle of 8th grade and that popularity stuck all the way to 10th grade. She also started dating the sheriff's son, Liam.

In 10th grade on some random day, Adelaide went on a social media rampage and revealed to everyone that she was Bill Hastings' daughter, a product of an affair the man had. At first many people did not believe this was true because Adelaide had no Caucasian features at all yet she claimed to be the daughter of a white man. She claimed she had to be silent in order to live in Summerville and have the support of her father.
She even went as far as posting pictures of her mom and Bill.
Bill Hastings had no choice but to come clean about everything and that was one of the biggest scandals that year.

Out of anger and spite, Bill removed his daughter from Summerville and sent her to a boarding school somewhere. That was also the end of Liam and Adelaide, after two years together.

*

Emma sighed as she sat in her car. She was not even sure if she wanted to be at school that morning. The things that happened over the weekend were overwhelming.

Marcus was not talking to her and that hurt her a lot, especially since she had these feelings for him that developed out of nowhere. Somehow it felt like she was going through some weird break up even though nothing happened between them.

The plan to catch Ray was a massive failure which meant he was out there frolicking free and doing God knows what. At least he promised not to terrorize Emma as long as she dug into his past and finished the puzzle.

Upon returning from the Jay and Ray mess, she found her boyfriend in the arms of his ex girlfriend. She was the person behind the masquerade ball and that was her "hey I'm back!" party.
Although Emma spoke to Liam after the ball and he assured her that he was excited to see Adelaide because of their history, nothing was going to change between them. Emma was his current girlfriend and it was going to stay like that.

A knock on Emma's car window nearly gave her a heart attack. It was Jay.
She gave him a small smile and grabbed her school bag.

"You looked like you were in deep thoughts. You good?" Jay asked as Emma got out of her car.