Dog Days Forever


 
 
 Dedication
 For Nicole Fischer
 You becoming my editor was a dream that took a decade to become reality.
 Thank you for seeing my potential all those years ago.
 Thank you for fighting so hard to work with me.
 Thank you for fighting so hard for this book.
 Thank you for being you.
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Prologue: The Last Summer
 Chapter One: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
 Chapter Two: Everything Is Just Peachy
 Chapter Three: The Healing Power of Nachos
 Chapter Four: Unplugged
 Chapter Five: Green Mudslides and Green-Eyed Jealousy
 Chapter Six: What If I Never Get Over You?
 Chapter Seven: Ghosts That We Knew
 Chapter Eight: Here You Come Again
 Chapter Nine: From the Beginning
 Chapter Ten: So, So, So Many Signs
 Chapter Eleven: Friends to Lovers. Lovers to Friends.
 Chapter Twelve: A Stroll Down Memory Lane
 Chapter Thirteen: The Trouble with Wanting
 Chapter Fourteen: Home
 Chapter Fifteen: Contentment and Hope
 Chapter Sixteen: One That I Want
 Chapter Seventeen: Tightrope
 Chapter Eighteen: Hold You Dear
 Chapter Nineteen: Won’t Back Down
 Epilogue: A Life of Adventures
 Acknowledgments
 P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
 About the Author
 About the Book
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 Prologue
 The Last Summer
 The rain had been coming down for hours. A summer storm had rolled in over the little town of Cruickshank, North Carolina, settling down between the mountains and getting comfortable for the night. It didn’t want to go anywhere, and there was no one who understood that feeling better than Maximillian Abbott.
 Everything was perfect. The queen mattress beneath him was like a cloud, the cotton sheets soft on his bare skin, and he was wrapped around the love of his life. He knew he could circle the globe, but his favorite place to travel was the distance between Caroline Buchanan’s collarbone up to the hollow behind her ear.
 Max pressed a kiss to her skin before trailing his nose along the slope of her neck, inhaling her the whole journey up. She always wore citrusy scents, and these days it was grapefruit. He’d have sworn he could get drunk on it as the sweet scent filled his lungs.
 She did something to him, something he didn’t understand, something that was too powerful and perfect to be explained by man or God.
 Thirteen years had passed since Caro had walked into Max’s life, and things hadn’t been the same since. It had been his first summer in Cruickshank, and everything had been new to him besides his grandparents.
 He didn’t do well with change either.
 Max hadn’t been familiar with the massive Victorian house that Martin and Ava had just moved into. It was so different from the brownstone in Boston where they’d lived for the first six years of his life, the one where he’d spent every Christmas and summer vacation so far. His favorite pizza place had been a couple of blocks to the left, and a park with a swing set was a few blocks to the right.
 No, their new house had creaky floors, two staircases that never led him to the place he wanted to go, and a massive, scary tree outside his window that scratched at the glass during storms.
 Forty-eight hours into his summer vacation, and he had hated it . . . until he met her.
 “Caro?” Max whispered before lightly biting her earlobe.
 “Mmm,” she hummed, her body stirring against his. Her legs swished against the sheets as she pressed back against him, skin to skin.
 He moved his hand across her stomach and to her side, gently tracing his fingers over her ribs as he kissed her bare shoulder. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
 She shifted again, rolling over in his arms so their faces were mere inches apart. There were a few candles lighting up the space in her little loft apartment, and he wasn’t sure if the glow in her hazel-gray eyes was from the flickering flames around them or if it was coming from inside her.
 “Like it was yesterday.” The warmth and vibrance of her smile seemed to add to the limited light.
 For as long as he lived, Max would never forget the first time he saw her. It was imprinted on his brain, a permanent photograph, never to be erased.
 Caro and her mother, Rachel, had shown up on a particularly rainy Monday morning. Rachel had been hired to help his grandparents around the house. She was their assistant, cook, gardener, whatever needed to be done.
 Max had watched the two newcomers in the kitchen, peeking out from his safe place behind the door that led to the living room. Even then he’d known there was something almost otherworldly about Caro. She reminded him of the fairies and forest nymphs that he read about in his storybooks.
 She’d caught him watching her, and the second her eyes locked with his, her mouth split into a giant grin that somehow lit up her entire face . . . like it was doing right now.
 Six-year-old Max had felt a jump in his stomach somewhere behind his navel, a feeling he always associated with roller coasters and Caro . . . a feeling he was experiencing in the present moment.
 “You were wearing a hot pink tutu and bright yellow rain boots that made you look so tiny.” His hand was at her back, his fingertips tapping gently across her spine like he was playing a piano. “Though you’re still tiny.”
 “Hey!” She playfully pinched his side, making him squirm against her until he grabbed her hand. “It’s not my fault I reached five foot two and stopped growing while you just had to get to six feet.”
 “It doesn’t matter.” Max pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “We still fit together.”
 “We’ve always fit together.”
 It was true, even from the start. He’d been a painfully shy child who had trouble stringing