Chapter 2: Surprise.

SUMMER.

I didn't know why my mum named me Summer up until a few weeks ago. Drunk on merlot, she had told me the truth. Besides it being her most favorite time of the year ever since she was a teenager, it was the time she met the dad.

The Summer of '02, this green eyed gorgeous surgeon resident that happened to show up at the hospital. He captivated the eyes of almost everyone, with his blonde hair and his charismatic smile that could light up a room—everyone including my mother.

But with the million eyes on him, his was set on just one. And for the many years after that, their eyes would gleam for the thousand and one times that they told that story, that it was love at first sight. And hearing it the very first time was what cemented what love was to me.

It was a love like theirs, a love I was sure would last forever. But then the summer of 2014 came and it only got worse after that, eventually they decided to divorce and that idea of love that I once had shattered.

It was almost like I didn't believe in love anymore. Shy of nineteen years old, I was yet to have my first boyfriend, my first kiss and all of that. Of course I got a couple stares because I wasn't ugly but it never really got passed a talking stage.

Besides, I was way too invested in academics to even chase anyone and like that, the years passed. Not one time did I feel that surmounting, heart fluttering, butterflies in the stomach type of love. And I was convinced it was way too late now.

Love was at the very bottom of my list, being a doctor like my mum was at the top. But that was all about to change.

"Summer!" My dad's voice roped me out of my thoughts as the car came to a halt. "We're here" He announced. "Finally" A breath of relief escaped my lips. It had been an excruciating long and quiet twelve hours.

And as I placed my feet to the ground, I got a searingly painful cramp.

"Ouch."

"You okay?" Dad made his way around as I clung to the car door. Taylor walked past me without even batting an eye lash from her phone and I rolled my eyes because I honestly didn't expect anything less.

"Yeah" I stood, straightening my feet. "I'm good" I replied him.

"So—" With his arms stretched wide, he turned back to the Villa where we going to spend the next two weeks. "What do you think?" He asked and honestly, nothing could prepare me for how magnificent it was. It was a stone walled building like the kind you see in Western Italy.

And a part of it was a large house, with tiny pink windows all around. There was a whistling lake just at the corner and ducks squirming around.

"It's beautiful." Not to talk of the scent, my mother was right. Summer did have a scent and it was the most scintillating thing to trickle up my nose. I took a step forward, only to look at my dad and he has a proud smile across his lips.

"I'm so glad you like it" He said.

And occasionally, I forgot how stupidly rich he was before things like this would remind me. The thing was after a few years of being a surgeon, he had quit to start his own bioengineering firm, a mix of the two things he loved which was tech and medicine.

And he became quite successful at it, one might even say too much which was undoubtedly why Taylor clinched to him like bee to a comb. A look of disgust flashed across my face as she packed her bags which I'm sure father caught by the way he heaved a deep sigh.

"Look..."

"It's nothing" I turned away, embarrassed and he reached to my arms. "I know you don't like her. Trust me, she's nothing like your mother." He said. "Then what are you doing, dad?" I asked him.

"I'm trying something different because...Look It doesn't mean Taylor is terrible because I'm sure if you give her a chance, you'll actually get to like her. Maybe even see some things that you have in common" He said.

"I mean besides the fact that she's what twenty two, four years older than me?" I whispered and he looked away, checking if she was close enough to hear. "Six years, Summer. She's twenty four, you're wrong and I guess I was wrong to think that you of all people wouldn't judge me."

And with that, he brushed into my shoulders, allowing me a moment to run my hands through my hair before I called out to him.

"Hey, dad!" Taylor looked at us in that moment.

"I'm sorry" I apologized when he came to a halt and I inched closer to where he stood. "I just—" "Look, I understand Pumpkin. Leaving your mum was hard even for me and I was in such a dark place with the legal battle and everything but then I met Taylor and she was the light in my life, of course besides you" He whispered.

"She made it all seem easy for me to scale through and fine, she might fit into a particular stereotype or maybe not even my typical type but here we are. Somehow, here we are and we've lasted nine months. It's not a crime to wish to wish for the two most important women in my life to get along, is it?" He asked, tightening jaw and I heaved a deep breath.

It was once mum, I wanted to say but I didn't.

I only just nodded back at him and he reached to my shoulders. "And bringing you here was also supposed to be a breath of fresh air. I know the last few months have been rough with the whole divorce and everything." He added. "Which is why I felt I owed you this" He said.

"It was supposed to be the perfect summer, the best of your life before college and life eventually drifts you away from me" There was a crack in his voice and I shook my head. "No, dad. Nothing is drifting me away from you" I whispered and he scoffed.

"Look I already know how this goes. You're already an adult so you don't have rotate summers and you're most likely going to pick your mother for the next and the next and the one after that. I was really looking forward to this because it may our last" And in that moment, seeing the tears well up in his eyes struck a chord inside of me.

I had been so incredibly selfish, to him and to Taylor and ultimately to myself. That was the moment I decided to enjoy every moment of this summer because if I was happy, dad would be happy as well.

And he deserved that because he was never so awful to me, even through the divorce. "Dad," I reached to his hands, giving it a light squeeze and I smiled enough to warm his heart. "I'm not leaving you."

"I'm not choosing anyone" I said which was true.

"And fine, if it means so much to you then, I'll be nice to Taylor" I threw her a look over my shoulders. "But only if she raises her head from her phone..." I said and without wasting a second, dad called her over to us.

"Taylor!" He yelled, interrupting her selfie session and she made her way towards us. The first few seconds was a very graphic PDA, which his hand around her waist and tongue down her throat.

"Okay..." I gulped down, darting my eyes to literally anywhere else. "She wants to say something to you" Only when I heard his voice was I convinced that it was over and so I turned back to them. But just as I was about to part my lips to say those words, even an apology to Taylor.

There was a sudden storm of wind that gushed into all our faces and a thunderous echo of a revving motorcycle that zoomed past us and around before finally coming to a halt in the midst of the rising dust. I choked on it, bringing my dress to cover my nose as an arch between my brows.

"Who is that?" I muttered to dad but he wasn't entire dazed nor was he surprised. And then a figure crept out of the hazy air with a helmet strapped around his head which he proceeded to take off. And then it hit me, the strange feeling of my stomach tying itself into a knot.

"Vincent" I could barely say the name of my dad's best friend, partly because I wasn't entirely sure what he was doing here but mainly because he usually made me feel that way, even though it had been so long.

"Davis!" He yelled out my father's name, taking his arm for a hug and I couldn't tear my eyes off him, or close my lips. Neither could Taylor who for the first time that day put away her phone. Vincent was different, he was bulkier, with tattoos across his arms and muscles.

He wore a tank top that clung to his moist sweaty skin and the scent of his woodsy raspberry cologne filled the air, settling in the back of my throat. He seemed so different, except the signature smirk across his lips.

And before I knew it, he was standing in front of me with my hands miraculously appearing in his. Softly placing a kiss on it, he shot a glare that could kill and my heart lumped in the back of my throat. It was as though I was swept off my feet and away from everyone else.

For that brief moment that my heart pounded in my chest just like the very first time, I didn't care that my father was close. "Hey Sunshine." His voice was deep and decadent but he didn't let go of my hands until he finally uncaged the butterflies in the deepest depths of my stomach.

And that was the very first time that I felt the heart fluttering, surmounting emotion that was love and it was for Vincent Wilde. It was for my father's best friend and this was about to change everything.