Summer's Desire Vol. 1 (Complete)

Part 1: Chapter 3

What a wretched time for one's harmless flu to turn into life-threatening pneumonia, she thought wearily. At least, Seth had been spared the sight of her so ill. Otherwise he would have been liable to go crazy worrying... Oh God, Seth! And Grandma! Summer had trouble breathing once more as a crushing wave of sorrow and yearning rushed over her.

Slowly, she rose from her bed on trembling legs, glad that there were no nurses around to stop her. Endless minutes later she was leaning outside in the hallway next to a pay phone, holding the phone to her ear and hearing it ring. But nobody picked up on the other side of the line. Before she could try to call again, a disgruntled nurse came looking for her.

By the time three more days had passed, Summer was settled in a new foster home hundreds of miles away from her previous one. Each day since waking up in the hospital, she had bought or borrowed or begged for the opportunity of at least one phone call to Seth. That day was different only in that, for the first time, she was using her own cell phone; she had finally managed to buy one a few hours earlier.

And yet the call itself was no different than all the other ones she had made to Seth's house over the past three days: a voice—already well familiar and intensely hated—came on and announced that the line had been disconnected. And this time, hearing that recorded message finally became too much.

The dams that had kept her grief at bay during the past week burst over her in a torrent. She was drowned in tears, her diminutive frame wracked with the force of her sobs. Frantically, she clutched at her heart necklace for comfort—but no comfort was to be found.

Once more death had come into her life and taken away someone she loved. Was it her fault this time as well? Was she meant to bring nothing but death and misfortune to everyone she had ever let herself love? To everyone who had ever loved her?

Was she cursed to lose all her loved ones? But please, not Seth, too! She would rather die herself than give him up too.

She missed him like a vital part of herself, and the pain of losing him increased further with each passing day. Her night terrors were back as well. She hadn't had a decent night's sleep since she had left Seth. But she could live with her nightmares, if she had to; they were her price to pay and so she would pay it. She didn't think, however, that she could live without Seth. More importantly, she didn't want to.

So she dried her tears and wrote her first letter to him.

She continued writing him a letter each day, and with each day the weight on her chest grew heavier, until she sometimes thought that it would squash and suffocate her. Her heart already felt like a crushed pulp.

For Seth never replied.

After a year, numb with grief, Summer stopped sending him letters. And she vowed to never again let herself care for anyone—to never give anyone else the power to savage her so deeply.

* * *

When Seth's Mom heard about Grandma's death, she quickly descended like a ravenous crow to pick at the remains, he observed with contempt.

It was her own mother lying lifeless in a coffin, yet his Mom took no more time than to squeeze a couple of crocodile tears before she contacted a real estate agency to put her childhood home on the market. Seth's angry protests fell on deaf ears. And legally, as a thirteen-year-old in his mother's custody, he could do nothing to stop her from her course.

His Grandma wasn't even cold in the grave before the house was sold. Seth was forced to move into a dingy city apartment with his Mom. The money from the sale she spent in six months. Six months—that was all it took for his Mom to throw away his grandparents' entire lifework on drugs and booze and men.