Nantucket Romance 3-in-1 Bundle Read Online Free PDF Page B

day of her life. Three months was a lifetime. Of course, it would pass quickly for him. He’d be having fun, taking classes, meeting new people. New girls.
    Sam clenched her jaw until it hurt. Why should she care about that? He was like a brother. Closer than a brother. Something in her refuted the thought, but she resisted the argument.
    Something tickled her bare leg, and she opened her eyes. Landon was beside her, his knee propped up on the bench, his elbow poking outward. The wind tousled his hair.
    “Who am I kidding?” he said. “I can’t imagine three months without—without seeing you.”
    Sam had never seen him so solemn. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and a light coat of stubble covered his jaw. She wanted to draw her fingers across it and feel the coarseness against her hand. She turned away, his words echoing in her head.
    She didn’t care if he would miss her. It was his choice to go away to college. He was doing this to them. She knew he had dreams, but Sam had her own too. It wasn’t fair that he got to go away while she had to stay here and work for another year to afford college.
    “Sam?”
    She covered her frustration, burying it deep where all her other hurts were hidden. “It’ll be fine.” And it would be. She was used to people leaving, just not Landon. She’d come to depend too much on him, and her weakness angered her. “I have other friends, you know. And you’ll make plenty.”
    Landon made friends easily, and she resented it now. He was the only teenager she knew who could walk into a room of strangers and not feel the need to attach himself to someone. That confidence attracted others by the boatload.
    “It’s not the same, and you know it.”
    Why not? Just because her other friends hadn’t taught her how to swim, hadn’t let her beat them at Scrabble a thousand times, hadn’t rescued her when Jared Garrett dumped her in the ball bin in the third grade? Why had she let him in? She shifted, sitting up and putting an inch of distance between them.
    “Don’t do that.” His voice rode the wind. The sun was gone now, and the clouds on the horizon had turned twilight blue.
    “Do what?”
    “Push me away.”
    Her gaze bounced off him. “If I were pushing, you’d know it.”
    Somehow his arm had settled against the back of the railing, around her. She fought the urge to run to the other side of the boat. He was looking at her, and she could feel his eyes like a burning laser. She wanted to look. She was afraid to look. Her heart rumbled like an engine.
    “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this summer, and there’s something I want to tell you before I go.”
    She was supposed to look at him now. She could hear the plea in his voice, but all she wanted to do was put her hand over his mouth and stop the words she was sure he was going to say.
    “Sam. I know you’re mad at me for leaving.” He hooked a finger under her chin and turned her head. One look and something in her softened. How could she help it when he looked at her like that?
    “I’m only leaving for college. I’ll be back, I promise.”
    He’d been there when her dad died. He’d been there when her mom left. Who would be there when Landon left? A cool wind passed over Sam’s skin, chilling her.
    “I’ll write. We can talk on the phone too.” But he wouldn’t be there to see the flashlight in the window. She hadn’t thought about that in years, the way he worried about her. Especially after her mom left.
    “Sam.” Landon leaned closer until she could feel his breath on her cheek.
    She wanted to throw her hands over her ears, because she knew what he was about to say would change everything. And she didn’t want anything to change. Especially not now, when he was leaving. But her muscles refused to move.
    His eyes had turned jungle green in the dimness, and a deep furrow separated his brows. “You’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember. I used to pull your ponytail and hunt for