𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐌𝐀, 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧 | 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐧𝐞

chapter sixteen; goodbye

꒰꒰・┄┄・𓆩♡𓆪・┄┄・꒱꒱

CHICAGO. That was Summer's destination and by tonight, that was exactly where she would be. Jonathan was still the only one aware of her plan to leave, and he had promised that he wouldn't tell anyone until she was already gone.

There had been a handful of letters written for her friends, some were a little more detailed than others, but all written with the same amount of love. She didn't want to leave without giving them answers, and she certainly didn't want them to think that she was in danger, but this was a decision she had made on her own, and she needed to go through with it.

Helene still had no clue what had really happened to Will that week, and how her daughter really got her scar. From what she was told, Summer had slipped over on the wet grass when heading to Jonathan's car, and cut herself on an old garden pot.

Though, it was hard to think that a broken piece of pottery had been the cause of such a large gash, especially considering the placement of it. But it was the only explanation she had been given, and all three of the teens that were with her told the exact same story, so she had no choice but to believe it.

For weeks, Summer had been saving up money for a bus ticket, refusing Jonathan's offer of driving her there himself, but even when the next bus to Chicago was scheduled to leave, she'd come up short. It was then that Jonathan gave her everything he had been saving too, and told her to think of it as a loan. Of course, he didn't expect her to pay him back, but he said so to actually get her to accept it.

Arriving at her house that morning felt so surreal, to know that it would probably be a long time until he saw her again. To think that he would have to learn to live without her, one of the very few constants in his life had certainly brought up some very deep emotions.

"I made these for you," Jonathan dangles a couple of tapes in front of Summer's face as he watches her back some last-minute things into a large duffle bag. One tape was labelled 'mixtape for when you miss me', and the other had two labels, one side being 'christmas dinner', and the other was labelled 'steve'.

"What is this?" She holds up the side that had Steve's name written on it.

"When I was going through the stuff I recorded Christmas night, I mustn't have turned the camera off when we had that talk out on the back porch. I was going to delete it, but I thought you might want to hear it for yourself." He shrugs and purses his lips.

"Oh, yeah. Okay," Her brows pinch together in the middle of her forehead. "Thank you, though. I can't wait to listen to the mixtape." She gives him a hug before continuing on with her packing, wanting to be out of the house before Helene came home from work.

Summer places the tapes on top of her duffle bag and pulls out all of the things she had collected from Steve over the years, that she was going to return as an excuse to see him one last time. There were a few of his shirts that she'd borrowed, and a couple of his tapes, along with a pair of sunglasses that she had never even seen him wear.