Welcome to the complete chapter list for Conrad’s Version – Book Three.
Use this page to navigate every chapter in order. This guide updates as new chapters publish.

Book 1 is available to free subs and Book 2 chapters 1-41 are available to free subs with new chapters releasing every Monday and Wednesday.

Paid subs get access to chapters early, bonus content, both ebooks, and more.

BOOK ONE INDEX HERE

BOOK TWO INDEX HERE

EBOOKS HERE (Paid Subs Only)

📘 BOOK THREE — CHAPTERS

0. Prologue

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Chapter 22

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

28. Chapter 28

29. Chapter 29

30. Chapter 30

31. Chapter 31

32. Chapter 32

33. Chapter 33

34. Chapter 34

35. Chapter 35

36. Chapter 36

37. Chapter 37

38. Chapter 38

39. Chapter 39

    Chapter 39 Explicit (Bonus Paid Sub Chapter)

40. Chapter 40

41. Chapter 41

42. Chapter 42

43. Chapter 43

44. Chapter 44

45. Chapter 45

46. Chapter 46

47. Chapter 47

48. Chapter 48

49. Chapter 49

50. Chapter 50

51. Chapter 51 (Paid Sub Early Release)

52. Chapter 52 (Paid Sub Early Release)

53. Chapter 53 (Paid Sub Early Release)

54. Chapter 54 (Paid Sub Early Release)

Copyright © 2025 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

He was sitting with his head down on the bench in Mom’s memorial garden, still in last night’s clothes, disheveled. He didn’t look up as I came closer, but I saw his whole body go rigid.

“Don’t take another fucking step. Don’t come any closer to me. I’m warning you,” he seethed.

I kept walking anyway, until I was standing right in front of him. “Come on, Jere. We have to get back. There’s no time for this. You’re getting married today.”

“Fuck you, Conrad.” He said through clenched teeth, still not looking up.

Read more

It was a clear night, no clouds, stars scattered thick overhead. I stretched out on a pool chair, condensation cold against my palm, when I heard footsteps behind me.

I sat up fast, half expecting Belly or Jeremiah come to lecture me about something else I’d done wrong. Instead it was Laurel, carrying beers.

“Laurel. What a nice surprise. Thought you’d be at the Inn.”

She opened one of the beers and sat down beside me. “Wasn’t really in the mood for ice cream either. Figured I’d come keep you company instead.”

I was about to take a sip when she stopped me with a hand on my arm. “We should toast first. But to what?”

I looked at her, a small sarcastic smile pulling at my mouth. “To the happy couple. Obviously.” I clinked my bottle against hers.

I took a sip. She took a bigger one. We sat quiet for a while, the only sound the ocean somewhere behind the dark of the yard. I started peeling the label off my bottle, one long strip at a time.

“How are you these days, Conrad. Really?” She was looking right at me when she said it.

Read more

I got dressed in a daze, replaying the last couple of days over and over in my head. I didn’t know what came next, only that I had to see the wedding through. I finished dressing and headed to the rehearsal dinner with Dad and Steven.

I was standing in the foyer of the country club, half listening to Steven go on about his kiss with Denise and how they’d decided to just stay friends, the smell of fresh flowers and candle wax thick in the air, when Belly walked in.

Read more

I heard the girls getting up and moving around in the morning and stayed in my room until I thought the house was clear. When I stepped out, there was Belly, fresh out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. I cast my eyes down immediately, unable to meet hers. She shuffled into her room fast, the soft sound of her feet shuffling against the wood floors.

I went out to get coffee and tried to eat a breakfast burrito at a food truck parked near town. I kept my head down while I ate, not wanting anyone from town to stop and make small talk. I chewed without really tasting it, my mind still stuck on the fight from the night before. After a few hours, I figured Belly would be at the spa with the girls, so I headed back home. Except, when I walked in through the kitchen, there she was, mid bite on a sandwich and completely alone.

The look of disbelief was clear on her face. She looked down at the counter, licked her lips, then up at me, a slight glare settling in.

“Hello,” I tried to say casually, but it came out weaker than I intended it to.

I saw the slightest shake of her head as if in disbelief. “What are you doing here, you’re supposed to be on the boat with everyone.” Her eyebrow went up as she crossed her arms in front of her.

I took a few tentative steps forward, floorboards creaking under my weight. I looked at them instead of her. She was still waiting for my answer. I was about to lie, say I had a headache, but the truth came out instead. “Yeah, I couldn’t bring myself to be on a boat for hours with my brother. Didn’t seem like the best idea.”

She looked at me for a second, then down at the counter, at the rest of her uneaten sandwich. I saw a slight tremor in her hand and knew I had to fix the damage I’d done.

“Can we, um, talk,” I started, scratching at my chin, “about last night.” I still couldn’t meet her eyes, and when I dropped my hand from my face I cracked my knuckles, just to give myself something to do.

She waited. Arms crossed, jaw tight. A few seconds passed, then a few more but I couldn’t get the words out.

Her patience ran out. She let out a short breath through her nose and reached for my car keys off the counter. “I actually have to go. I have something I have to do in town.”

I followed her toward the door. “I’m so sorry about everything I said last night, I was drunk off my ass and I’m really sorry and..”

She whipped around before I could finish. She looked away, then back at me, mouth opening and closing like she couldn’t land on where to even start.

I found the words that time. “I think being here again,” A pause, “with you, it just brought back a lot of memories and I let it fuck with my head. I don’t even really remember everything I said last night, I was out of my mind and very drunk. Can we just forget it?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No. You were not drunk.”

I looked away, unable to lie to her face. “Yeah, I actually was pretty wasted and…”

She scoffed, her voice climbing. “Oh my God, and here I thought you’d changed. You haven’t changed at all, Conrad.”

Hearing her say my name in anger caused knots in my stomach. When I looked at her again, there was anger written all over her face.

She kept going without pausing. “You decide to finally be honest and open up the weekend of my wedding. That’s,” she sucked in a breath, “that’s fucked up.”

I shifted on my feet, feeling the harshness of her words.

“And now you’re asking me to just forget it?” she went on, her voice dropping an octave at the end.

I couldn’t help wondering if my confession had actually affected her. If some part of her didn’t want to forget my words at all. “What are you saying,” I said, fighting back a smile. “That you don’t want to forget everything I said?”

She threw both hands up like she was shielding herself from me, and my smile died before it fully formed. “You know what, you’re sick for playing these games. Do you realize you can’t play with people like that?” She turned back for the door.

“Belly, just wait a second,” I said, guilt barreling down on me.

She turned back around so fast I took a step back. She stepped closer, finger in my face. “No. No. Don’t say my name.” She poked me in the chest. “Don’t say my name ever again, don’t think it, in fact, forget my name. Forget me. Don’t ever speak to me again. You got it?” She was nearly shouting.

I stood there, shocked at the rage spilling out.

“Belly, come on, you don’t mean that,” I said as she shook her head in disbelief. I kept going anyway. “It’s going to be a little hard to honor that, considering you’re marrying my brother.”

Her hands flew up in frustration before slapping down against her legs. “Yeah, you’re right, I am marrying your fucking brother, and now I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to say to him or how I can even look him in the face after you, you…” She was too angry to finish it.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing in and out, once, twice, before she went on. “How am I supposed to marry him with you standing next to him on his wedding day after all of this?” Her hands gestured to me and then herself. “I can’t. I can’t do that to him. It’s cruel and it’s dishonest. I want you to leave. I want you gone. Make up one of your shit excuses and go to Boston, back to California, I really don’t fucking care where, as long as you go.”

I inhaled sharp, willing my voice to stay even while my eyes stung. “No,” I said, then louder, “I am not going anywhere, Belly.”

She clenched both hands, stepping closer. “I told you not to say my name again. I am telling you to go. Just fucking leave. Go!” She shoved me back.

I had never seen her this angry. Not at prom. Not even at the funeral. She closed the distance again and shoved me a second time. “Go, just go!”

I stumbled back then stood frozen. “What did you want me to say, Belly?”

She pulled at her hair, fingers tangling like she wanted to yank it out by the roots. She was coming apart in front of me, and it was my fault, and I still couldn’t stop.

“Stop saying my name,” she shouted again.

“What do you want? What do you want from me?” My own frustration broke loose.

“I want…” she started, but I cut her off, unable to hold back anymore. “I don’t know how to do this anymore. I tore myself open, bare, for you last night. I laid it all out, honest. And you shut me down. Shut it all down.”

I breathed in softly through my nose, trying to bring my voice back down. “And now here I am, trying my best to find a way out of last night. I’m trying to fix this for both you and me. Trying to salvage a little piece of dignity I have left with my heart bleeding in my chest. Trying to walk away a little less broken so I can stand to be in the same room as you.” My voice cracked. “So I can have just enough pride left to look you in the eye. And you won’t even let me have that.”

Her nostrils flared, tears rising in her eyes.

“My heart is bleeding in my chest. Do you get that? It’s broken into a million pieces for you. Is that the honesty you want?” I finished.

She shook her head. “No, Conrad. Your heart can’t be broken when you’re so fucking heartless.”

Her words went into me like a knife that she wanted to twist deeper.

“No,” I said, a tear slipping loose. “You’re wrong. It’s actually you that’s heartless.”

I pushed past her, trying to leave, but she grabbed my arm and turned me back to her.

“Why would you say that?” She didn’t let go. “Tell me what you meant by that?.”

I glanced down at where her hand gripped my arm, she didn’t let go, so I carefully removed her hand. If I had no right to say her name, she had no right to touch me.

I closed my eyes briefly, the fight draining out of me. “You know what I meant. You’re the one without a heart here. I love you. I have always loved you. I will never not love you.”

She stared at me, stunned. I willed myself to keep going, to finally let all my truth out. “But you already knew that. I think you’ve always known but you just chose to ignore it. To pretend there was nothing left between us. It made it easier that way. Easier to be with Jere. Easier to not feel like shit about your choice.”

She shook her head at me. “No, no, that’s simply not true.”

“Yes it is, and you know it. Now who’s the one that’s lying?”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She said exasperated. “We dated, Conrad. Briefly, in high school. And you broke that. And now what, I’m somehow supposed to know you’re still not over it after all these years?”

“It wasn’t just when we dated, Belly, and you know that.” I took a step closer. “It was every moment before it. Every summer before that. And every moment after, too, all the ones we don’t talk about, all the ones I know you remember same as I do.” My voice caught, but I pushed through it. “And it hasn’t been years. It hasn’t even been a year since Christmas.”

Her face fell at that. She tried and failed to stay angry. “Christmas? What does that have to do with any of this?”

I closed my eyes for a second, a montage of moments playing in my head. “It’s not just Christmas. It’s the day at Michael’s. The dinner before Jere got home.” I opened and closed my fist to keep from touching her. “What about when I cut my leg surfing? You’re going to look me in the eye right now and tell me that was nothing? That you felt nothing?”

She paused. “It was nothing,” she said, but her voice wasn’t as strong as she probably wanted it to be. Her lip trembled. I knew she was lying, but if she couldn’t be honest after everything I’d just given her, there was nothing left for me to say.

“Okay. Fine. If that’s what you want to tell yourself.” I paused. “But I’m done lying to myself. Done lying to you. Done holding it back just so you can feel comfortable pretending none of it’s real.” I reached for her hand. Her breath halted and for a second neither of us moved. I gently pulled my car keys from her fingers, careful not to hold on any longer than I needed to. “I’m done pretending for you.” I left her standing there, turned around, and walked out the door.

1

The drive home was silent.

I watched them haul Jeremiah up the driveway and inside when we got home. The lights were on in the house. I stood by the car for a moment, looking at them, and knew I couldn’t walk in there, couldn’t sit in a kitchen and act normal. So I turned around and walked toward the beach instead.

It was well past midnight. The wind had picked up and the night had gone cold with it. I didn’t care. I made it down to the shore and climbed the lifeguard tower, hauling myself up and sitting under a crescent moon with the sound of the waves below me, trying to get my thoughts in order, trying to get Redbird’s voice out of my head. How he’d talked about Jeremiah hooking up with Lacey like it was nothing, and how Jeremiah had laughed.

“Jere.” I heard a voice from below, faint against the wind. I stood and looked down. Belly was running toward the tower. She got close enough to see it was me and I watched the disappointment move across her face before she could stop it.

“Belly?” I gripped the railing.

She looked up. “Oh, Conrad. Hi. Jere was supposed to meet me here. Did he send you?”

“No. I had no idea you were meeting here. But Jere is—” I looked back toward the house. “He’s not coming.”

The wind pulled her hair across her face. She looked crestfallen, standing there in the dark. “What are you doing out here anyway? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. No. It’s nothing,” I said.

She looked at me, then at the waves, then back at me. “Isn’t it against the rules to be up there?”

I looked at her for a moment and felt something give way in my resolve. I loosened my collar. “I don’t think anyone’s out here to bust me right now.”

“Look at you breaking all the rules,” she said, smiling.

I made the mistake of looking straight at her when she said it. After everything I’d just heard, my restraint went with the wind. “Why don’t you come up? Sit with me for a minute.”

I watched the surprise hit her, then her curiosity. She took a step toward the tower, then glanced back toward the house. “I should probably head back before they send a search party.”

“Just come up for a second,” I pressed.

She hesitated another moment, then started up the ladder. I held out my hand. She paused before taking it, her hand warm and familiar against mine as she climbed the last few steps. I let go as soon as she was up and we sat down on the bench. The wind moved around us. Neither of us said anything.

“Did you guys have a good time?” she asked.

“They did.” I smiled, tight. “They all had quite a bit to drink.”

I watched her take a sharp breath in through her nose.

“Jere barely made it home,” I said. “He was that wasted.”

More frustration built on her face. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Then she turned back to me. “Same old Jere,” I said, my own frustration bleeding through. “Same old habits.”

She glared. “I think he’s allowed one night of partying at his own bachelor party. You should cut him some slack.”

I nodded and looked back at the water, rubbing my palms on my jeans. We sat in silence. After a moment she moved to stand. “I should go back.”

I felt the moment slipping and panic crawled up my spine. “Belly. There’s something you should know.”

She stilled, hands on the railing. I watched her take one breath, then another. When she turned around, her face was neutral. “What is it?”

I looked at her. Every feeling I had ever had for her was right there at the surface, clawing. I swallowed hard.

“Jere cheated on you. Over spring break, in Cabo.”

Her face didn’t move.

“I know,” she said quietly. “I’ve known for a while.”

The last thing I’d expected her to say was that. I felt my face fall in surprise, then disappointment and anger moving through me at the same time. “You know,” I said, my voice cracking on it.

“Yes.” Firmer now. Her hands tightening around the rail. She was working hard to hide the embarrassment but I could see straight through it.

“And you’re still…” I stopped. “You know what he did and you’re still marrying him? He was with someone else five months ago, Belly. What the,” I swallowed. “What the actual fuck.”

She looked down at her feet, then shook her head. “People make mistakes. He’s sorry. He’s suffered for it and I forgave him and we’re good now.” Her hands moved, a short defensive gesture. “We’re good. Everything is fine.”

I laughed, humorless. “You’re joking.”

“It’s not any of your business anyway.”

I stood up. “No. You’re wrong. It is my business because Jeremiah is my brother and he’s being a piece of shit and you’re…” I stopped. The word I wanted wasn’t one I could say. “You’re just not the kind of person I pictured putting up with something like that,” I said instead.

She laughed, sharp. “That’s rich coming from you. I put up with way worse from you.”

I clenched my fist. “How can you say that? I never thought about another girl. I never so much as looked at another girl when we were together.”

She turned to the ladder. “This conversation is done.”

She went down so fast I had to jump to catch up. “Belly, wait. I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s none of my business, I just,” I followed her down the beach, the sand shifting under my feet. “I just don’t understand. Why marriage? Why can’t you just move in together first?”

She wasn’t answering, walking faster. “Belly, I’m talking to you. Why do you have to get married? You’re getting married at the country club, for god’s sake. I don’t even know who you are any...”

She whipped around so fast she was in my face before I’d finished the sentence. “Who am I? You have no right to ask me that.” Her voice was shaking now. “You disappeared, Conrad. For years. You don’t know me anymore and I sure as hell don’t know you.”

I stood there, stunned.

She put her finger against my chest. “You need to leave me alone. Stop following me or I will scream. I promise you I will scream loud enough for all of Cousins to hear me.” She turned back around.

“Belly. Please. I’m sorry.” I took a step after her.

She kept walking.

“Belly, stop. Just…” The desperation was climbing up my throat and I couldn’t stop it. “I still love you,” I shouted.

She froze, then turned around slowly.

I stood there in the dark, waiting for her to look at me, to see it. My breathing was ragged, and so was hers.

I closed some of the distance between us. “I can’t get you out of my head. Out of my system. You’re always here.” I pressed a hand to my temple, then to my heart. “And here. Always.”

She looked at my hand on my chest. Then at me. “This is what you do. You say things you don’t mean in the heat of a moment and then you take them back. You’re only suddenly saying this because I’m marrying Jeremiah.”

“Suddenly?” I shook my head. “No, Belly. It’s never been sudden.” I looked at her, trying to make her understand. “Don’t you know by now, haven’t you realized, that it’s been always, for infinity.”

She stood very still. “You’re too late,” she said softly. Then again, harder: “It’s too late, Conrad. And the fact that you waited until now to say this is beyond fucked.”

She turned back toward the path.

I reached for her wrist without thinking. She turned, anger clear on her face, and I let go immediately. “I know this is fucked up, trust me I know, but please just hear me out. One minute.”

I closed my eyes. Tried to find solid ground somewhere. When I opened them she was still there. Her lower lip was trembling.

“I fucked up so badly four years ago. I fucked up so many things. But especially that night at the motel, you remember it?” She gave the smallest nod. “I told you I still wanted you. You were right there and I didn’t know how to reach for you. I couldn’t sleep that night.” My voice broke on the last word. I pushed through it. “I loved you then. But I was scared. I was scared I’d hurt you, that I’d let you down somehow, and I couldn’t live with that.”

The wind came off the ocean, lightly coating us in salt water. I pressed on.

“I was in so much pain and I had seen you with Jere at Brown. I saw how happy you were after everything I’d put you through, and I thought the noble thing was to let you go.” I watched her chest rise and fall. “I really tried to let you go. For years. Why do you think I moved so far away?” My voice cracked again and I had to collect myself. “Then this summer you came back and being around you was so hard but I just wanted more time. Talking like we used to. And there were moments where you looked at me, like you used to, and I felt…”

I took a deep breath as my eyes welled with tears.

“Being around you again, everything I worked so hard to build just crumbled. Every plan I ever made just went to shit.” I looked out at the waves, then back at her. “And I know it’s all fucked up because I love Jeremiah. He’s my only brother. He’s family. And I hate every part of myself for feeling the way I do.” My eyes were wet, tears spilling. I didn’t try to hide it. “But when I watch him with you. When I see you both together.” A sob broke loose on the last word. “I fucking hate him.”

She started shaking her head and I kept going.

“Don’t choose him. Don’t marry him.” I could feel my own heartbeat in my hands, in my throat. Everything I had ever swallowed down for four years, rising back up. “Choose me.”

I watched her jaw work. When she finally spoke her voice was measured and cold and it cut through everything. “You will never be what Jeremiah is to me. He’s my best friend. He has loved me unconditionally, and he’s never made me second-guess myself. He doesn’t run when things get hard.” A pause. “No one has treated me better than he has. Least of all you.”

Tears ran down my face. I watched her eyes track them and for one moment, just one, something in her expression came loose. Then it closed back over and she was stoic again.

“You and I were never anything,” she said. “And we never will be again.”

She turned away.

I waited for her to look back. She didn’t. Not once. She just walked, steady and certain, until she rounded the corner and was gone.

I felt it happen before I understood it. My knees hit the sand, and my hands went to my ribs, pressing hard, like I could hold myself together from the outside. Then the sound that came out of me, I didn’t recognize: a wail that had been living in me for years, finally finding its way out, all at once. Every version of us I had ever imagined, every morning I had told myself to let her go and failed, every moment of this summer: all of it poured out of me into the empty darkness.

I stayed there until there was nothing left. The sand cold and wet beneath me, the wind pulling at my shirt, the moon gone behind the clouds. I had loved her my whole life. I had loved her before I knew what the word meant and through every version of myself I had been since. And kneeling there in the sand, I felt the enormity of losing her. Like something had been keeping me upright all these years and now it was just gone.

She hadn’t looked back once.

When we were kids, Mom used to drop us off at the mall, leaving me in charge of Jeremiah, Steven, and Belly. I felt so grown up then. This particular time Belly was around eight and we were headed to the arcade. She reached her little hand out and grabbed my forearm. “Conrad, I really don’t want to go to the arcade.” I felt bad dragging her along to what the guys wanted to do but Mom had drilled it into me that we stay together. “Please let me go on my own,” she begged.

I knew all she wanted was to go to the glass-blower shop. She could spend hours in there but none of us ever wanted to go with her. I saw her glancing at the store, the light dancing in her eyes, and I couldn’t say no. “Okay, fine. But you have to meet us back at the entrance in one hour.” Her whole face opened up with her toothy grin as she walked straight to the shop.

I watched her go before heading upstairs to the arcade. I set an hour alarm on my Velcro watch. When it went off, I went straight back to the entrance, but she wasn’t there. I waited five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. She didn’t show, so I ran to the glass-blower shop expecting to find her playing with the unicorns she always played with. She wasn’t there either.

I panicked. Raced back to the arcade where Steven and Jeremiah were still consumed in their games. “Have you guys seen Belly?”

Neither of them looked up. “She was here a few minutes ago,” Jeremiah said, annoyed at having his game interrupted.

I ran the entire arcade looking for her before racing back downstairs. She was at the entrance, standing alone, looking around with that lost, small expression. When she finally spotted me, a huge smile broke across her face, and we ran toward each other in relief.

“Belly.” I exhaled her name. “There you are. I was looking for you everywhere.” My voice began to rise at the end.

Her face fell. “I’m sorry, there was a unicorn and...” She didn’t finish. Tears ran down her face and she started to cry. I felt sick for raising my voice. “Oh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. I’d been scared, but she must have been terrified. “I’m sorry I lost you. It won’t happen again. From now on I’ll always be by your side, okay?” She nodded into me, still crying, and hugged me back.

A few weeks later, I had Mom take me back to that store and bought her the big glass unicorn for her birthday with my allowance money.

Now here we were on a sidewalk on the night of her bachelorette and she looked just as lost at twenty-one as she had at eight. I’m here, I thought, just as Jeremiah pushed past me. Her smile of relief had been for him this time. He dipped her and kissed her and I felt my throat close. I forced myself to look away.

Redbird jogged up and interrupted them, murmuring something about the party continuing before he whisked Jeremiah forward to the next bar. The rest of them followed. I walked a little slower and as I passed her, I gave an awkward wave.

I got a few steps past when she said my name. Just my name, and it rooted me to the sidewalk. I turned back slowly.

“Can I talk to you real quick?” she asked, smiling softly.

The guys ahead didn’t look back. “Yeah, of course. What’s up?” I ran a hand through my hair. She took a small step toward me.

“When did you talk to my mom?” she asked, biting her bottom lip.

I blinked in surprise. “Um, yesterday. And the day before. I talk to your mom often.”

“And did you talk to her about coming to my bridal shower?” Her voice was soft but her eyes were steady on mine.

I stammered, “I mean, it’s Laurel, you know how she is. She makes her own choices.”

“That’s not what I asked.” A pause. “Did you convince her to come to my bridal shower or not?”

I couldn’t look away or lie. I exhaled. “Yes. Okay, yes I did.”

She pursed her lips. “Why did you do it?”

I let out a slow breath. “Why else would I do it? Because I knew it meant a lot to you, Belly.” She furrowed her brows, not fully satisfied, so I kept going. “Because... uh, I don’t know. Shit, Belly. It’s your wedding and...” I stopped. Took another breath. “Because you should have everything you ever dreamed of.”

I watched her eyes fill. Her lower lip trembled and I wanted to reach out and put my hand against her cheek. I started to reach for her, but then Taylor and Anika came out of the bar behind her. Taylor gave me one of her disapproving looks. “I should get back to the guys,” I said, already backing away.

It took everything I had to turn around and walk the opposite direction of her.

By the time I caught up with the group, Denise had gone to meet the girls, tired of the boys’ antics. The guys were hammered, taking shots, belting out a song at the top of their lungs. I slid into the booth and joined them.

Then Jeremiah threw his arm around my shoulders. I could smell the tequila on his breath, warm and sharp. “Con. My best man. My brother.” He shook me a little. “Thank you for an incredible night. I’m so fucking happy to have you here.”

“Happy to be here, Jere.”

He squeezed harder. “No, really. Thank you for taking care of us tonight.” He gestured at the others. “For taking care of me tonight. And all of my life, really.”

He was slurring, but I took it. “Of course. I’m your big brother.”

“Wait, no, hear me out.” He turned to face me more fully, eyes serious the way drunk people get serious. “I know you worry about me. But you don’t have to anymore. I’m good. Really good. Dad offered me a full-time position.”

My mouth fell open in surprise. “Really? Is that what you want?” I asked.

“I don’t know what I want, I’m only twenty-two.” A hiccup. “Actually, scratch that. I know I want Belly. That’s why you don’t have to worry. Her and me, we’ve got each other. We’ll take care of each other. Forever.” He looked at me. “You know what I’m saying?”

I wrapped my hands around a glass that wasn’t mine, the cold relief of it against my palms. “Yeah. I know what you mean. I’m happy for you. For both of you.” I made myself smile. He hugged me hard and then just as quickly turned back to his friends, already into the next song.

The night went on and the guys got sloppier. Steven disappeared to find Denise. When Jeremiah spilled his drink on me, I handed him a glass of water and went to clean up in the bathroom.

On the way there, I saw a girl with long dark hair and a short white dress. My heart leaped before my head caught up. I got closer and it wasn’t her. I went into the bathroom and ran cold water over my wrists, splashed some on my face, blotted my shirt dry. I couldn’t even be at a bar without my mind going to Belly. Every thought looped back to her. Always.

I gripped the edge of the sink and felt my breathing go shallow. I closed my eyes. Thought of Jeremiah’s face at the table, how wide open and sincere he’d looked. I stayed there until my breathing leveled out. Barely missed the panic attack. Then I dried my hands and walked back out.

I heard them before I reached the table. Ethan’s voice, loud over the music, taunting Jeremiah about only sleeping with Belly all through college.

I stopped, unable to keep from listening at the mention of her name.

They didn’t notice me.

“Jeremiah, what? They don’t know about Lacie?” Redbird hollered, clapping him on the shoulder. Ethan and Blake looked between them. Jeremiah’s face went briefly uncomfortable before he shrugged. Redbird kept going, talking about the spring break hookup Jeremiah had with some girl. All the details of it. Less than five months ago.

I stood there and felt it move through me, slow and then it hit like a punch. He had gone to Cabo while he was with Belly. He had slept with someone. And then came home and proposed like none of it had happened.

Redbird droned on. How hot Lacie was. How they’d been kept up in the hall all night listening because Jeremiah had locked them out. I heard it from somewhere that felt like being underwater, pressure building in my ears, my jaw, my hands going numb at my sides.

Jeremiah laughed and took another shot of tequila like it was nothing.

I gave her up. The thought came in clean and harsh under everything else. I gave her up so he could have her, so he could be the one who did it right, who loved her the way she deserved, and this is what he did with it. Got drunk in Cabo and climbed into bed with someone else and didn’t even have the decency to look sick about it now, laughing along like it’s a story instead of real life.

My father’s face came up, the memory of what he had done. The day I had come home early and walked in on him and Mom fighting. The look on her face as she confronted him about his affair. The year everything came apart because he couldn’t keep it in his pants for our mother, the year I decided there wasn’t a lower thing a person could do to someone who loved them.

And here was Jeremiah, my brother, doing the exact same thing, and calling it a drunken mistake, and expecting the mistake to disappear the second he put a ring on Belly’s finger.

He was just like Dad. Selfish. A cheater. Somebody who takes what he wants and lets somebody else clean up what’s left. I used to think I was the screwup between the two of us. Standing there listening to Jeremiah laugh about it, I understood I had that backwards the whole time. I had deemed myself unworthy of Belly, but it was him who was unworthy.

I had just barely gotten my breathing under control and now it was for nothing. I closed my eyes, tried again to find the floor under my feet, but then Jeremiah shoved past me toward the bathroom with his hand clamped over his mouth. I turned and followed him without thinking. Anger hot in my veins.

He barely made it to the stall. I stood in the doorway watching him throw up and I wanted to put my fist through his skull. I wanted to drag him up off that floor and make him explain himself, make him say it out loud, say what he’d done and who he’d done it to. I stood there long enough to know I wasn’t going to do either. He looked pathetic draped over the toilet, and for the first time in my life looking at my brother, I felt sorry for him. He was an immature little shit. I was done lifting him up and cleaning up his messes.

I was done giving everything up for him. The thought settled into a place in me I knew wouldn’t shift back. I was done making life easy for him. Done being the one who stepped back so he could have the one person I loved most and not even cherish it. He didn’t deserve her. He never had and I was a fool for ever letting her go.

I turned. Walked out of the bathroom and through the bar. Past the guys. Out the door and toward the car, fist clenched the entire time. I needed to hit something so I wouldn’t follow through with the urge to break his face.

Song: “Broken” by Sofia Valdes and Pink Sweat

Authors Note:

This chapter is the climax we’ve all been waiting for, the moment Conrad realizes he gave up Belly in vain. Jeremiah failed her in a way Conrad never would have.

Conrad held onto the belief that letting her go was the best thing he could do for her. Over the course of this night, he finally sees that letting her go was actually his biggest mistake. He’s always had her best interest at heart, from when they were kids all the way into adulthood. He’s spent his whole life cleaning up Jeremiah’s messes, but this is one mess he’s not willing to clean up for him. This is the breaking point Conrad needed to finally fight for Belly without the guilt.

He also puts together the real reason behind the rushed engagement. He understands that Jeremiah proposed out of guilt and fear of losing her because he screwed up, and how selfish that motive actually is.

I love this chapter because it shows that Conrad’s healing isn’t linear. He has relapses, and in this one his anger comes bleeding through. His temper is one of his biggest flaws, and even though he’s worked hard to rein it in, Jeremiah reawakens it.

My favorite part is that Conrad no longer feels obligated to keep his promise to his mom, because Jeremiah isn’t worthy of the sacrifices Conrad made to keep it in the first place. And while part of us wishes he’d punched Jeremiah in the face, it’s almost more poetic that he doesn’t. That he realizes Jeremiah isn’t even worth the effort.

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

“Wow, this looks so grown up,” Belly said, taking a seat.

“Yep, because adults get married,” I offered, as Taylor sat to my right glaring at me. Anika took the seat to my left.

Belly sat across from me with Jeremiah’s arm draped casually over the back of her chair.

Everyone was starving from a day in the sun, so for a while there wasn’t much conversation, just the sound of glasses and silverware. The low hum of the ceiling fan filled the silence until the wine kept flowing and the table finally started to come alive.

Meanwhile, I was so aware of her across the table that I had to forcibly redirect myself to the food, to whoever was talking, anywhere else. I turned to Anika as a distraction. We got into a conversation about majors and plans after college and at some point I glanced up briefly. Belly was watching us. When she saw me looking at her, she turned back to Jeremiah, her mouth in a tight smile.

“So why communications?” I asked, turning back to Anika.

She took a long sip of wine. “Honestly, because I want to dance, but my parents wanted me in college and Comm was the only thing remotely interesting to me.” She said it plainly, without apology.

I clinked my glass against hers. “Well at least your major sounds fun. Mine is basically just years of debt and sleep deprivation with a fancy white coat at the end.” She laughed, putting her hand briefly on my arm, and her laugh was warm enough that it pulled a real smile out of me.

Then I felt it. They way you feel a room suddenly grow a few degrees warmer. I turned and caught Belly watching us, her face not quite fast enough to hide the scowl before she looked away. When I glanced back at Anika, she was looking at Belly too, her shoulders dropping a little.

Redbird stood suddenly, swaying. “A toast.” He belched loudly, then tried again. “To the happy couple. Belly and Jeremiah.” Everyone raised their glasses. I saw Taylor shoot Anika a look before turning those narrowed eyes on me.

When I looked back across the table, Jeremiah had pulled Belly into a kiss. Her cheeks flushed and she glanced at me, then at Steven in slight discomfort.

“I have a toast to make too,” Steven said, standing, lifting his glass toward me first. “As best man. Well, co-best man.” He turned to Jeremiah. “As most of you know I grew up with this guy. Known him my whole life. Belly too, unfortunately.” Everyone hollered at that bit. Belly and Taylor rolled their napkins and threw them at him.

“Okay, settle down.” He waved them off. “But really. I’ve known them both my whole life, and while I’m normally not a fan of Belly dating any of my friends...” He looked at me briefly, then kept going. “I have to say, you guys are good together and I’m happy for you.” He raised his glass. “And with that, she’s my only sister, Jeremiah. So you better treat her right.”

Belly stood then, dabbing at her eyes, and went to hug him. We all said cheers.

“Well, since I’m standing,” Belly said, still holding her glass. “First, thank you all for coming out here and celebrating with us.” She inhaled slowly. “I want to thank Taylor for putting all of this together.” She looked down at Jeremiah and squeezed his shoulder. Then she looked at me. “And thank you, Conrad, for feeding all of us and not making us eat crappy bar food tonight.” Everyone laughed. I met her eyes and lifted my glass and tried to smile back. She held my gaze for just a second longer before sitting back down next to Jeremiah.

After that I watched him put his arms around her tight, kissing her more often, whispering things that made her laugh. Every so often she’d shift in her seat and glance at me. I pretended not to notice and failed miserably at it.

When dinner wound down everyone headed upstairs to get ready. I stayed and started clearing the table.

“Let me help. You’ve done enough,” Taylor said, already stacking plates.

“I’ve got it. Go get ready,” I offered.

She shook her head and carried the plates to the sink and started washing while I dried. For a while neither of us said anything.

“You know this is a big weekend for Belly,” she said finally, not elaborating.

I stopped drying and looked at her, waiting. She kept washing.

“I know,” I said after a moment. “I’m trying to make it special for her. For them.” I caught myself a beat too late.

She shook her head but didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to. I could feel the tension coming off her in the small space between us.

When we finished I said her name softly. She turned fully toward me and I lost whatever I’d been about to say, so instead I said, “Thanks for making everything so special for her, Taylor. You’re a good friend.”

She smiled, soft and a little sad. “Of course. Belly’s more than a friend. She’s like a sister to me. I’d do anything for her.” A pause. “But looks like only one of us was successful enough to convince Laurel to go to the bridal shower.” She said it quietly, like she hadn’t fully meant to say it at all. Then she put a gentle hand on my arm and left me alone in the kitchen.

I didn’t have long before Steven came barreling in, still buttoning his shirt. “Conrad, you’re not changed yet, come on man, it’s go time.” I laughed at how genuinely excited he was. I wished I felt the same. Bar crawls weren’t really my thing, and a bachelor party for my brother was its own particular kind of torture, but as co-best man I couldn’t say no.

We headed out close to ten. I offered to drive since everyone had already been drinking while they got ready. All ten of us fit into Ethan’s car. Downtown was warm and loud, the streets still carrying the last heat of the day.

Belly was in a short white beach dress. The other girls were dressed for a club. I smiled thinking about how they had no idea what Cousins bars actually looked like. They’d stand out a mile away.

At the corner of the Clam Shack we split up, Taylor leading Belly and the girls one way, the guys and Denise going the other.

The first bar was packed with tourists. Shiny lip gloss and heels and dresses that were so tight, I wondered how any girl moved in them. I pushed through to the bar with Steven behind me.

“What are you having?” he asked, clapping a hand on my back.

“Water.”

He scrunched his nose.

“I’m the DD, remember?”

“Oh, right.” He turned to the bartender. “Six shots, please.” Then back to me, leaning in slightly. “So how are you doing, man?”

“I’m good, it’s been a chill summer...”

“No, I mean with...” He angled his head toward where Jeremiah was standing.

“Oh. The wedding.” I picked up my water and took a long drink.

“Yeah. The wedding.” He said it flat.

I looked away from him. “It’s happening. So it is what it is.”

“And do you think it’s a mistake?”

I didn’t know how to answer that honestly and luckily I didn’t have to because Jeremiah materialized between us, throwing an arm around each of our necks. “My best men. Look at this, gang’s all back.” He was grinning wide and genuine and my stomach knotted. I made myself grin back.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s good to be here.”

Steven and Jeremiah fell into their usual rhythm, trading inside jokes and talking about work. I paid the tab, grabbed the shots, and carried them back to the table. Denise clinked her shot glass against my water. “Wow, you really are nothing like your nepo baby brother,” she said, laughing.

“Technically we are related so that would make me a nepo baby too,” I said, smiling.

She downed her shot. “Yeah, but at least you don’t act like it.”

I laughed at that, more genuine than I had expected.

By the fourth bar everyone was drunk and loose and loud and despite being sober I found I was actually having a decent time. I’d made it my job to make sure everyone else had a good night, which made the night easier to tolerate.

We were walking to the last bar, the night air growing cooler and salt-thick, when my thoughts drifted to Belly. I wondered whether she was having a good time. Whether she was laughing somewhere nearby.

And then, just like that, we rounded a corner and there she was standing at the top of a small side street. She was alone, looking slightly lost. Then her eyes found mine and her whole face lit up.

I found you, I thought, already closing the distance between us.

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

But I still tried for her. Tried to act like I hadn’t memorized the sound of her breathing, like I couldn’t still feel the almost-press of her lips. If I didn’t have the scar to prove any of it, I would have thought I’d dreamt the whole thing.

We were coexisting, carefully, but there were still moments.

Like when I cut fresh hydrangeas from the garden and filled the vases with them. I wasn’t looking at her but I felt her stop in the doorway. When I glanced up her face was already going neutral, that small window of something real closing in hopes I wouldn’t see it.

One morning, I was working on hanging frames in the hallway when the hammer glanced off the nail and caught my thumb instead. I swore under my breath and she was there faster than I expected, eyes going straight to my hand before dropping to the scar on my leg. A blush moved into her cheeks and she turned quickly, said she’d get ice.

Another time I was fixing a dead light switch when I shocked myself hard enough to flinch back from the wall and string together a bunch of curse words. She came in at the sound of it, then laughed when she saw my hands were still damp from washing them. She shook her head and brought me a towel and stood there with her arms crossed watching me flip the switch.

“Please don’t shock me again,” I muttered, bracing for it.

The light came on. I exhaled and leaned back against the wall, right hand resting just above the scar on my leg. When I looked up she was already looking at it the our eyes met and she blinked a few times, trying to smooth her expression back to normal.

“It’s almost healed,” I offered, trying to ease the tension suddenly filling the room.

“I’m glad you’re healing.” A pause. “That it’s healing.” She pointed vaguely at my leg and then turned and said something about having to vacuum upstairs.

I stood there a moment after she left. I knew she was onto me. I was doing everything short of saying it out loud to get a reaction out of her, and she knew it. I knew what I was after, I wanted to see if that moment in the bathroom had been real or just in the heat of it all.

I busied myself cleaning the grill while she stayed upstairs until Jeremiah arrived.

He came around back already pulling his shirt off. “Con, house looks great,” he said, coming in for a hug. “Belly told me you’ve been working on it nonstop — you know dad could’ve just hired someone, right?”

“Belly’s upstairs,” I said, looking up at the windows, expecting him to go say hello to her first. “And it’s fine, the house kept me busy all summer.”

“Hmm,” he said and dove into the pool. “Man that feels good, it’s already so hot out.”

I was checking the propane when it occurred to me. “Hey, Jere — did you grab the meat on the way in for the bbq?”

He was already floating on his back. “Shit, I forgot. I can go now though—”

“Yea, probably sooner rather than later,” I said. He looked surprised I wasn’t offering to go myself. I headed inside to shower before everyone arrived, calling back for him to grab another tank of propane too.

A couple of hours later I heard Belly shout from downstairs that their friends had arrived. I headed down just as Jeremiah opened the door.

Taylor and her friend Anika walked in with ridiculous penis headbands on, chanting “jellyfish,” and I glanced at Belly before I could stop myself. She was blushing in denim cutoffs and a white bikini top. Taylor walked straight over and dropped a veil on her head, hugging her tight, squinting at me over her shoulder. I looked away and nodded to her and Anika before stepping around them to greet Redbird and Jeremiah’s friends Ethan and Blake.

Blake I knew better than the rest, considering Jeremiah had dated him briefly. We helped carry luggage upstairs before heading back to the kitchen where Blake was already lighting a blunt and passing it to Redbird while Belly, Taylor, and Anika poured drinks at the counter. The house was starting to smell like weed. I opened a few windows without making a thing of it.

Jeremiah called me over to introduce Anika. She took a slow drag off the blunt and looked me over without any particular hurry. “It’s nice to meet you, Anika,” I said. She exhaled and smiled wide, not taking her eyes off me. “It’s really nice to meet you too,” she said softly. I felt Belly’s eyes on the side of my face for a moment before Redbird asked for an ashtray and the moment broke.

I went and opened the back door to air the house out more, watching Anika take another drag before catching Belly’s eye.

“Actually, can we take the beer pong and the smoking outside please?” she asked. I felt my shoulders drop. I smiled at her and she looked back at me and gave a small nod. An unspoken agreement to keep the house intact together.

I followed the guys outside and we fired up the grill. Jeremiah took the burger meat from my hands, glancing at the guys in the way he did when he was looking for approval. I stepped back and let him do his thing and set up cornhole with Redbird instead.

After a while the girls came out with drinks and settled poolside. I tried to stay focused on the game but every time Belly laughed I found myself looking over. She was talking to Taylor, not looking at me, but Anika caught me the second time and I made myself look back at the board.

Steven arrived loud and easy and I instantly felt more at place with him there. He said hello to everyone, then gave me a hug and handed me a beer from the cooler. We clinked bottles and stood there a second both looking at the pool. Him at Taylor. Me at Belly.

We hung around the pool a while, drinking and playing games, when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it and found a pretty woman with short auburn hair who must have read the confusion on my face because she immediately said, “Hi, I’m Denise, I work with Jeremiah and Steven — and you must be the more mature brother I’ve heard so much about.”

I liked her immediately. “Yes, Conrad,” I said, holding out my hand. She had a firm handshake. “Come in. I’ll go get Jeremiah?”

She laughed. “Actually I’m here on Steven’s invite.”

“Okay, come in, make yourself at home.” I brought her inside and went to find Steven, who begged me to come with him even though I wasn’t sure if his nerves were about Denise or about the fact that Taylor was standing fifteen feet away. I let him go alone.

The party kept going through more introductions until Taylor yelled at all of us to rehearse the reception dance. Belly flinched at the mention of it but got up without a word and headed upstairs to practice. The guys stayed downstairs, which would have been fine except Denise pulled a chair into the middle of the living room to watch us. I was never big on dancing, especially not in front of people, and I kept losing the count. Denise had to keep restarting the music. She looked at me and laughed. “You were right, Steven, this is so cringe,” she said, pressing play again. She couldn’t stop laughing the whole time, which somehow made it easier to bear.

When we were done we finally went outside for more beer pong. The girls were still upstairs when Redbird came out carrying two of Belly’s new vases.

“Guys, we can use these for kings cup after beer pong,” he announced, holding them up.

“Actually those are—” I started.

“It’s a party, Conrad,” Jeremiah cut in. “Lighten up.”

I looked at him. “You know what, you’re right,” I said, because if he wasn’t going to care about the wedding, I didn’t know why I should.

We played a few more rounds before I went inside to grab waters for everyone. I found Belly in the kitchen collecting empty cans off the island.

“Hey — what are you doing? I’ve got that.” I took the trash bag from her. “You should be outside enjoying all of that,” I said, nodding toward the back door.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I know.” She started to say something else and then a crash came from outside, glass, something big.

We both looked toward the back. I winced. “They have the hurricane glasses out there. That might have been one of them.”

She laughed, sudden and real. “Well, at least they’re being put to good use.”

That got me laughing too.

Then Jeremiah appeared in the doorway. “So, bad news. We broke one of the vases.”

Belly immediately turned back to the counter and started wiping it down, not meeting either of our eyes.

“Mm, yeah, we heard,” I offered. “I’ll go clean that up.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.” She was already heading for the supply closet. “You’ve done enough around the house. Let Jeremiah and I clean it.”

Jeremiah watched her for a moment then turned and gripped my shoulder. “Yeah we got it Con, we’re good right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Everything’s great.”

He nodded with slight tension in his eyes and went after Belly. I stayed where I was, listening to the party through the open windows

Song: “Belong to you” by Sabrina Claudio feat 6lack

Authors Note:

This chapter was less about the party and the aftermath of the bath moment.

One of my favorite things about slow-burn romance is that sometimes the loudest moments happen in complete silence.

After the bathroom scene, Conrad and Belly are both trying to convince themselves that nothing changed. But once you’ve almost crossed a line like that, every glance, every touch, every shared moment carries a different weight. They’re speaking an entirely different language now although one they know well. One made up of restraint, longing, and all the things they can’t bring themselves to say.

I wanted this chapter to live in that tension. Sometimes love isn’t found in grand declarations. Sometimes it’s in the way two people keep finding each other, even when they’re trying their hardest not to.

— Cyndy

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

I smiled knowing Belly had probably stayed with her mom for the weekend. I got up later than usual, tired from the weekends events. Downstairs I made myself some eggs and coffee, the burner clicking twice before it caught, the smell of butter hitting the pan before I’d even set my cup down. The house was already getting stuffy from the summer heat. I walked around opening them one by one, the salt air pushing in slow.

It was warm but a gorgeous day and I decided I wasn’t going to waste it in the house fixing things. I went out back and grabbed my surfboard.

The waves were bigger than usual as an aftermath of a storm further north. I could see it from the shore, the swells rolling in longer and heavier than they should have been for a morning this calm. I caught some really good waves and for a while my mind stayed clear. Just the drag of the water beneath the board, the cold spray against my chest.

It was getting later, the sun beating down on the back of my neck, and I had drifted a little further than my usual spot. I told myself I would catch one more good wave then swim to shore and walk home.

As a wave began to swell I started paddling and stood as it crested but then I lost my balance and tumbled forward. The wave was bigger than I had anticipated and it barreled me under, a hard disorienting roll, the board yanking at my ankle, the water white and loud all around me. I momentarily lost my orientation as the board pulled me forward, the strap still tight around my ankle. Next thing I knew I felt a sharp shooting pain on my thigh.

I willed myself not to panic and reached down to untie my ankle. Then I kicked up as hard as I could. I was running out of oxygen.

When I broke the surface I gasped for air, the warmth of it almost shocking after the cold underneath, and was able to momentarily ignore the pain on my leg. My surfboard bobbed on the water and I swam towards it knowing I needed it to help me get to shore.

By the time I got on the sand my leg was bleeding pretty badly, warm blood running against my skin. I didn’t have anything to tie around it and my shorts were too hard to rip a piece off.

I left my board on the sand and walked home. The walk felt longer than it ever had, the sun on the pavement, the sand still in my shorts, the slow throb in my leg deepening with every step. I was tired and I was in so much pain by the time I made it to the porch, but I needed to clean the wound and stop the bleeding as soon as possible.

I hadn’t thought about Belly being home until I went through the kitchen door and there she was at the table writing. Her head was bent, hair falling forward over one shoulder, pen moving in that unhurried as she concentrated on something. The kitchen smelled like coffee I’d made hours ago and the faint sweetness of whatever fruit was going soft in the bowl by the window. I tried to quietly limp behind her but she heard me. Luckily she didn’t turn all the way around. Still, she noticed my wincing.

“Are you ok?” she asked, still writing.

“Yeah, all good, just had a nasty wipe out and got cut by my fin,” I said, heading for the stairs.

“Is it bad?” she asked as I started to climb.

“No, not bad at all,” I said breathlessly.

The stairs were pulling at the skin on my leg with each step and I thought I would faint right there as blood dripped down. I’d have to clean the stairs later. Somehow I made it to the bathroom. It felt very bright when I got there, afternoon light bouncing off the white tile.

I grabbed a washcloth and dabbed water on it to try to clean the wound first but the burning sensation was unbearable. A groan slipped out of me and I knew I had fucked up as I heard the stairs creak. She was coming up.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub so the wound would stop bleeding all over the place and pressed the towel to it.

“Conrad, that doesn’t look like nothing,” Belly said from the doorway, her face the color of the tile beneath her.

I didn’t look up to meet her eyes. I was too nervous to see what I would find there.

“I got it to stop bleeding,” I said, pressing harder.

“Ok, don’t stop putting pressure on it. Have you cleaned it yet?” she asked, worry coating her words. She was already moving to the cabinet under the sink, pulling things out, lining them up on the edge of the basin; hydrogen peroxide, cotton pads, gauze still in its packaging.

If I wasn’t in so much pain I would have laughed that she was playing doctor with me.

“Just with water,” I offered breathlessly as she started rummaging through the drawers. She knew this house as well as I did but in her panic it took her a moment to find whatever else she thought she needed.

I felt lightheaded but tried to hold it together. Another grunt escaped my lips. Luckily she was too busy prepping a cotton pad.

She sat on the rim of the bathtub with the supplies, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off her arm. She had a deep furrow between her brows and she was pushing her hair back in concentration, her whole focus narrowed down to the task in front of her.

“Ok, you’re going to let go of the towel and I’m going to apply the hydrogen swab to it,” she said sternly.

I looked up at her and shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle it from here, you can go,” I said, trying to create some distance between us. I could feel her breath on me. She was close. Too close.

“Really Belly, I’m fine. I’m the one in med school, remember,” I said, trying to persuade her to leave.

Her scent was enveloping me and I was too delirious to have her so near.

“Conrad, you’re clearly badly hurt and you may be a med student but it will be easier for me to do it, so will you please just let me help you for fuck’s sake,” she said, her voice shaking.

She placed her hand tightly around my bicep. “Let go of the towel,” she insisted, trying to pull my arm back from the wound. Her touch felt warm and I was hesitating, but then she took her other hand and gently stroked mine, removing it from the towel. It was a soft touch but it felt like electrical shots through my body that had nothing to do with the wound.

I let go.

She gently removed the towel. I hissed and looked up at her, her face had drained of color. When I looked back down I realized the gash was longer and deeper than I had thought. I probably needed stitches but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She was panicked enough.

“Okay okay, shit,” she said, looking around before reaching over and grabbing the shower head from the bath.

I watched her turn on the water, messing with the knobs until she felt it was just warm enough. She looked at me briefly and our eyes locked. There was an intensity in her look but she glanced back down and began to gently wash the blood off my thigh and lower leg. The water ran pink against the porcelain of the tub.

Blood had caked into my leg hair and wasn’t rinsing off easily. She looked back up at me and I nodded ever so slightly.

She began to gently stroke my leg, rinsing the blood off, her fingers moving in careful methodical strokes. The sound of the water was soft and steady. Outside I could hear the ocean. The light through the bathroom blinds lay in warm strips across her knees, across her hands still moving. My breathing became ragged and I pretended it was because of the wound and not because of her touch.

It had been a long time since I had felt her hands on my body like that.

She looked up at me and I closed my eyes trying to hide the emotion in them from her.

She went back to rinsing and cleaning my leg. I took a deep inhale willing my heart to steady. She turned off the water and the silence that replaced it felt charged. She grabbed the cotton pad soaked in the peroxide. I watched her look at it then grab the bottle to soak it some more.

“Just pour it on the wound from the bottle,” I said. “No more pressure.”

She looked up at me, biting her lip, set the cotton down and grabbed the bottle. Her hand was trembling slightly around it. “Ok,” she said softly.

She didn’t give me a warning before pouring it on the wound. I hissed out in pain and careened forward into her, my forehead resting on her shoulder. The pain was blinding. I tried to bite back a grunt but it came out anyway. It burned like hell. I laughed at how much it actually hurt, that helpless delirious laugh that comes when pain crosses a threshold.

I was dripping sweat at this point and I watched a drop land on her thigh as my head buried deeper into her shoulder. I could feel the damp cotton of her shirt against my face. The warmth of her shoulder. That salt-and-coconut smell of her hair, the same as it had always been. I was in pain but I would be lying if I said I didn’t lean in more than I needed to in that moment.

I knew I would never have her this close again. It was selfish but I chose to blame it on the blood loss.

I could feel her heartbeat through her thin shirt. It began to beat harder. She shook her head but didn’t push me away. “Come on, Dr. Fisher, don’t be such a baby. It’s just a little scratch,” she said nervously, trying to ease the moment.

I grunted as the pain finally caught up to the moment.

“Ok, one more step,” she said, more to herself than to me. Then she put gauze on the wound, pressing it down. I winced and my hand almost reached to grip her thigh, instead I curled my fingers around the cold porcelain rim of the tub as she wrapped it. The light had shifted while we’d been in here, going golden and low, the strips through the blinds longer now, lying across the floor. Time with her both slowed and went too fast.

“Almost done, just hang on,” she said, and I pressed my head more into her, panting.

“Ok, I’m all done,” she said, running her hands against the makeshift bandage, smoothing it down. The touch was softer than it needed to be.

“See, you’re all better,” she murmured.

I didn’t move. I was physically better but emotionally I was falling apart. Her scent wrapped all the way around me, that warm smell I had spent years trying to file away somewhere it couldn’t reach me. Her breath on my neck. Her lingering touch on my leg. My head against her shoulder feeling the warmth of her.

Every part of her consumed me in that moment. And I let it take me. I leaned my face into her chest, inhaling her deeper. Her hand absentmindedly still lightly stroking the bandage.

Every moment I had spent trying to stay away. Trying to keep her out of my thoughts. Trying to be the better man — it all slipped in that moment.

I pulled back and up slowly, my face inches from hers. The late sun lit the warm honey flecks in her eyes. She looked at me, our eyes locking, and her lips parted as I trailed my eyes to them. Her breathing hitched. “Thank you,” I whispered, and I knew she could feel my breath on her lips as her eyes briefly fluttered closed. When she opened them again I was looking straight at her.

“Yeah, of course,” she barely whispered, inching her face closer, her control slipping away in a way I hadn’t seen in a long time. If I moved one more inch, our lips would meet. A water droplet from my hair trailed down my face to my mouth and I licked it off. I watched her eyes follow.

I wanted to kiss her. To consume her mouth. I wanted to take her right there on the bathroom floor. I could see the fire in her eyes. She was overtaken by the moment too. The memory of what we once were. I knew if I wanted to I could break everything and have her. But I had made a promise to myself and to mom. I needed to be the better man.

“Belly,” I barely whispered.

She was breathing heavily. “Yes, Conrad?” she asked.

I closed my eyes to try to break the moment. I wanted to ask her if I could kiss her. “Do you mind helping me get up?” I asked instead. “I probably need to lie down.”

She didn’t pull back like I hoped and I couldn’t either. We were like magnets, unable to separate.

“I think you lost a lot of blood and I don’t know if sleeping is a good idea,” she whispered, her breath warm on my lips.

I smiled. “That only applies to concussions.” She smiled back and I was losing control. I closed my eyes tight, trying to think about anything but her.

When I opened them again she was closer. She leaned a little further and her nose touched mine. Her lips parted again and I started to tilt my head, inching closer — but at the last moment I turned my face away and buried my head in her shoulder, gripping her arm, feigning that a sharp shooting pain had overtaken me.

I couldn’t sit that close to her for another second. I would lose all control.

I braced against her and willed myself to stand. She stood too, helping me up. I exhaled shakily and I turned away from her as fast as I could. I didn’t need her to see the physical evidence of what her touch had done to me. I needed to break the moment. She would never forgive me if I stole this from her.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, stumbling, and she grabbed my hand to help me walk. Both of her hands gripped mine for support. If she looked down, she noticed what she had done to me.

“I’m good,” I said, trying to turn my body away from her. “Are you sure? Can you walk?” she asked, worried.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be good. I can walk,” I said quickly, pulling my hand out of her grasp and walking out of the bathroom. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding once I was in the hallway.

I walked straight to my room and lay on the bed, one hand rubbing over my chest. My heart was beating so rapidly, only this time it wasn’t anxiety. It was something else entirely.

I had never had much control around Belly. I had to work very hard at it. But Belly had been careful and measured all these years. What the fuck had just happened. She had been different today. Unguarded in a way she hadn’t let herself be in a long time. If I would have let it happen, we would have kissed. I would have ruined everything for her.

Song: “Dispose of Me” by Omar Apollo

Authors Note:

This was my favorite scene from the entire three-season series.

It was beautifully shot, painfully quiet, and somehow carried more tension than scenes with a hundred words of dialogue. You could feel everything they weren’t saying. The longing. The restraint. The history. The way two people can want each other so completely and still choose not to reach across that final inch.

For me, this scene has never been about the injury. Conrad and Belly have spent years denying themselves even the smallest moments of closeness. Suddenly, they’re forced back into each other’s space, and every glance, every brush of a hand, every breath feels charged with everything they’ve spent years trying not to feel.

This chapter was my love letter to one of the most beautifully acted and emotionally restrained scenes in The Summer I Turned Pretty. I only hope I captured even a fraction of what this scene made us feel.

— Cyndy

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

Ernie used to own the seafood restaurant I spent summers working at. He was a fixture of the community, everyone knew him and he knew every kid, local or visiting. He prided himself on learning everyone’s names and never forgetting them, and even as he began to age his memory stayed sharp.

Ernie had been in his seventies back in my high school days, and even though he was likely pushing closer to eighty now, he was still agile. He’d given up running the restaurant and left it in the care of his nephew John, who no one seemed to like. John was an asshole, and the restaurant had stopped doing as well once he took over. I felt bad for Ernie watching the business he’d built start to crumble, but Ernie seemed to be enjoying retirement just fine.

Before getting to his house I stopped at the convenience store and bought a pack of Lucky Strikes. I didn’t smoke anymore, but back in high school Ernie and I used to take breaks together and bum cigarettes off each other. It was our little secret, people thought I was too young to be smoking and him too old.

It was during those smoke breaks that I felt a sense of relief from all the pressure of adolescence. He often offered advice my own father couldn’t. In a way, over the years, Ernie filled the father role for me during the summers in Cousins. He never pushed. He’d just light up, look out at the water, and let the silence do the work until I was ready to talk. And I always ended up talking with him.

I grabbed a pack for old times’ sake and smiled pulling into his driveway. I hadn’t seen him much over the years since I’d stayed away, and the guilt of that sat heavy in my chest as I knocked once out of courtesy before letting myself in. “Ernie? You home?”

“You better have brought me a cigarette, boy,” he shouted back, as if no time had passed at all. He didn’t even come to greet me.

I made my way to the living room and found him sitting in his recliner, staring at a TV that wasn’t even on.

“I didn’t bring one,” I said. “I quit. And you should have too by now.”

He turned to face me, bushy eyebrows raised, face more worn with wrinkles. “Then you’re of no use to me. Get the hell out of my house.”

I stayed frozen for a second, and then his face split into a grin and he laughed so hard his whole body shook.

I made my way further into the house and sat on the couch across from him. I offered him a cigarette even though I was against him smoking now but it was Ernie. He waved his hand. “You’re right, I should quit,” he said, grabbing it and tucking it behind his ear. I sighed in relief.

I put the pack back in my jeans. He handed me the remote and I put on one of the westerns he liked, volume low. I got him water and a bowl of peanuts and for a while we just sat in each other’s company. He didn’t reprimand me for being away so long. I caught him up on my life in California, and he listened the way he always had; leaning back, eyes half closed, absorbing every detail.

“So my brother’s getting married next weekend,” I said finally, wanting to get it off my chest.

He turned to me. “What, you think just because I’m old I don’t hear gossip anymore? It’s a small town, boy. Everyone’s talking about a Fisher boy marrying Belly.” He paused, reading my face the way only old people could. “But you know, when they said a Fisher boy was marrying her, I thought—” He trailed off.

I tried to smile at him and failed.

He was quiet for a moment. Then, “You remember that summer, when you blew off work to hang out with her and you took me fishing to try to make it up to me.” He turned his body to face me. “You were having a shit time with your dad but you still seemed so happy. Your whole face lit up when you talked about her.”

I laughed at the memory. “You kept us out there an extra hour until I told you about her.”

He didn’t smile back, just looked at me steady and serious.

“I saw the way she’d find excuses to come into the restaurant when you were working,” he continued, “and I saw your face every time she did. You think I forgot that?”

“Anyways,” he said, “what was I saying. Oh yes — sweet girl. I remember her always curtsying at me when she was little.”

I laughed at that. “That’s because we convinced her you were actually a prince.”

He nodded, laughing too. “I figured that out and I never corrected the lie so there’s that.” Then he added,” So she’s marrying the wrong Fisher, it seems. Tell me something, son — are you going to mope and cry about it, or are you actually going to do something?”

I almost choked on a peanut. Coughing, I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.”

He laughed. “Oh come on now. I’m not senile. You loved her then and you love her still. You’ve always loved her. I knew it the moment I saw you both together — that was it for you. She was the one.”

He took a slow breath and his voice quieted. “You were going through too much for a young man your age. Your mom and all that. But I remember watching you with her. You looked like you could breathe again.”

His words settled over me. “Ernie, you may not be senile but I think you forgot to take your meds today.”

He squinted and waved me off, his hand paper-white, the veins visible through the skin. “Show’s back on. We’ll finish this conversation later, you hear me,” he said, wagging a finger before turning back to the TV.

At the next commercial I leaned forward. “Do you really believe in love that much, Ernie? That there’s someone for everyone? That you can actually find the one person in a world full of billions?”

He sat up a little straighter. “Of course I believe that. I lived it. My Elizabeth was the one for me. The only one. And I miss her every day she’s not here. I’m just waiting for the day I get to see her again.” He paused. “Now make yourself useful and grab me a beer, will you?”

I stood and went to his fridge, noticing how clean everything was; the kitchen, the counters, the lawn freshly mowed outside. I brought him a beer in a cold glass. He liked it cold like that.

Walking back into the living room I noticed how frail he was looking in the recliner. I had failed him the last few years. He’d helped me through some of the darkest stretches, offering advice and a listening ear through all those shifts. Besides Belly, he was the person I had opened up to most, and I hadn’t been back in years.

“Hey Ernie — who’s been helping you out since I’ve been gone?”

“Boy, you left me high and dry for years. What did you think, I wasn’t going to find a replacement? I did. John.” He smiled, as if he’d read my thoughts and was enjoying himself.

“John as in your nephew?” I scratched the back of my neck. “I didn’t know you two were on talking terms again.”

He took a sip and leaned back. “Eh, we made up a couple years ago. I’m sure he’s just kissing ass so I leave him something in my will, but he’s come around. Helps me out a lot. And at the end of the day, he’s family.” He set his glass down and looked at me. “Family is the most important thing in the world. Don’t you ever forget that.”

I laughed, stretching out across the couch. “Ernie, half an hour ago you told me to do something about Belly marrying my brother. So which is it?”

He whipped his head toward me. “Now listen here, because I’m only going to say this once. Family is the most important thing — other than love. Love trumps family. And if she’s the one for you, all bets are off. Family or not, you fight for the one.”

Then he turned back to the TV and dropped it entirely. We didn’t bring it up again for the rest of the night.

When I left I promised to come by every week. He hugged me at the door and I felt lighter than I had in weeks. That was the thing about Ernie. He had always made me feel better when things got rough. He’d known it then and he knew it now — that there were things I’d only ever said out loud in that parking lot, in the dark, with smoke and salt air between us.

Song: Noah Anthony - “Balance Act”

Authors Note:

Ernie has always been one of my favorite characters to write because I think every once in a while we meet someone who changes our lives without ever realizing it.

For Conrad, Ernie became the father figure he needed during the summers in Cousins. He never tried to replace Adam, and he never told Conrad how to feel. He simply listened. Sometimes that quiet presence is exactly what a young person needs.

I’ve always believed that the people who shape us most aren’t always the ones we’re related to. Sometimes they’re a coach, a teacher, a mentor, or an old restaurant owner who sees a hurting kid and makes room for him.

One of my favorite things about Ernie is that he sees Conrad clearly. Long before Conrad is willing to admit it himself, Ernie recognizes what Belly means to him. He also reminds Conrad of something he’s forgotten—that love is worth fighting for.

This chapter is my thank you to the people who become family without sharing our last name.

— Cyndy

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

The place was quiet and a little too nice, the kind of shop where people were catered to with expensive alcohol to try to offset the expensive price tags. Dad and Jeremiah were already there when I arrived, drinking scotch and debating fabrics like they had nothing better to discuss. I was immediately escorted to the center of the room. I stood on the platform getting measured and tried not to look at either of them in the mirror.

I was miserable. They were having a great time.

I could tell how hard Jeremiah was trying to bond with dad but, dad kept gravitating toward me. Fussing over my lapels, asking the tailor questions about my jacket. I felt the familiar pang of it. He’d always done this, poured his attention into me like Jeremiah wasn’t standing right there. I used to think it was just firstborn favoritism. Now I wondered if it had cost us more than I’d understood. Two brothers aimed at the same things, the same expectations, the same everything, until eventually we’d ended up wanting the same person too. Not something either of us planned. Not something dad would ever see his part in.

I brushed his hand off my shoulder and handed him back his scotch, then steered him toward Jeremiah. “Go talk about his suit,” I said. “He’s the one getting married.”

I watched them fall into easy conversation and sat back with my drink and told myself this was just a normal afternoon. It almost worked.

On the ride home I got a photo from Laurel, her and Belly at the bridal shower, Belly laughing at something off camera. I couldn’t help it. I smiled before I could stop myself, and dad caught it and elbowed me, asking who the girl I was texting was. I said a girl I’d been talking to for a while. Close enough.

A little while later Jeremiah’s phone buzzed and he looked up grinning. “Laurel went to the shower.”

“That’s great, Jere.” I kept my voice even. “Really happy for you two.”

He looked at me for a second, then said, “Hey — Belly mentioned there’s a girl you talk to on the phone sometimes. You want me to add a plus one?”

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

“Smart man,” dad said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “Don’t bring sand to the beach. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of options at the wedding.”

Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Belly’s not having bridesmaids. Just Taylor as maid of honor, and her and Steven are kind of—” He trailed off.

Dad blinked. I looked out the window.

“There is one friend coming though,” Jeremiah offered, leaning forward. “Anika. She and Belly are really close. She’s single.”

“There’s no point,” I said. “I’m not staying long. Going back to California after.”

“All the more reason,” dad said, and he and Jeremiah exchanged a look and I let it go.

I watched the road and thought about California. What it would look like to go back. What it would feel like to be somewhere Belly wasn’t.

Dad turned the music down.

“On the subject of women,” he said, “there’s something I wanted to tell you both.” He paused in a way that made it clear he’d been working up to this. “I’m seeing someone. I’d like to bring her to the wedding.”

Neither of us said anything.

He talked about her the way he always talked about things he’d already decided, as a formality, not a conversation. She was great, the timing had finally been right, he thought mom would have wanted him to be happy. I watched him and waited.

Then he said her name.

Kayleigh.

“Oh,” Jeremiah said. “Okay. Good, dad. I’m glad you found someone.”

He didn’t know. He’d never known about the affair, never known it had been her. To him it was just the name of a girl dad worked with.

“How long have you two been together?” I asked. Casual. Careful.

“We’ve cared about each other for a while,” dad said, “but the timing just finally worked out. We’re ready to give it a real try.”

The timing finally worked out. I felt my hand close into a fist against my knee. Jeremiah’s palm landed on my shoulder — quick, firm — and I looked at him. He didn’t know the whole story but he knew enough to know something was happening in the car.

“Good for dad, right?” he said.

I held it. For Jeremiah, I held it. “Right,” I said.

I kept my fist closed the whole rest of the ride.

At the restaurant dad circled back to my love life and I let him go on for a minute before I got tired of it. I set down my menu.

“Hey dad there’s something you should know.” A pause, “The reason I haven’t gone back to California all summer is because I got fired.”

He put his menu down. Jeremiah went still.

“The clinic internship. They let me go.”

Dad’s face moved through several things before settling somewhere between disbelief and disappointment. “Well. At least you didn’t quit. Like you did with everything else the moment I told you I was proud of it.”

I smiled tightly at him. “My life stopped revolving around what you think of me a long time ago. I mean that genuinely, not as an insult.” Dad flinched anyways.

Jeremiah looked between us.

“The salmon sounds good,” I said changing the subject that had clearly made them both uncomfortable. I didn’t think they would be bothered by my failures.

“Wait — you actually got fired?” Dad still couldn’t seem to process it. “You?”

“I made a mistake. A significant one. My boss told me to get my head straight, so that’s what I’m doing.” I picked up my menu again. “I’m figuring it out.”

Jeremiah nodded slowly, not quite meeting my eyes. “Good for you, Con, pushing forward. Moving on. For real.”

“You’re still in med school,” dad said. It came out like a question he needed confirmed before he could breathe again.

“Yes, dad. Still in med school.”

He exhaled. Picked up his menu. “Steak sounds better to me than salmon.”

I shook my head, “Dad you know all the red meat can lead to a heart attack right?”

“Right” he said smirking and proceeded to order the steak anyway.

I thought telling them would feel like relief— like setting something heavy down after carrying it for too long. It didn’t. They moved past it too easily, the conversation filling back in around it like water, and I was left sitting with the same hollow feeling I’d been carrying all summer. Like nothing I said ever really landed.

Halfway through dinner Jeremiah’s phone lit up. Belly, calling from the party. I could hear her voice through the speaker, bright and a little giddy, before he stepped outside to take it. When he came back in he was smiling.

“She’s having a really good time,” he said. “She said having Laurel there changed everything.”

I looked down at my plate. Took a sip of water. “Good,” I said. “That’s really good.”

We finished dinner and drove to dad’s to have drinks and smoke some of his cigars on the back porch. The three of us, just talking. Not about the wedding or California or anything that required careful navigation. Just the Fisher men, the way we used to be before everything got complicated.

I let myself have the night. I didn’t let myself think about what came after.

Song: “The Great Divide” - Noah Kahan

Authors Note: Author’s Note

I’ve always believed one of the quiet tragedies of The Summer I Turned Pretty isn’t the love triangle.

It’s the relationship between Conrad and Jeremiah.

Siblings who are close in age often spend their entire childhoods being compared without anyone realizing the damage it’s doing. Who’s smarter. Who’s easier. Who’s more athletic. Who’s more outgoing. Who needs more attention. Even when parents don’t intend to create competition, children often grow up believing love and approval are things that have to be earned.

I think that happened to the Fisher boys.

Adam probably never would’ve admitted he had a favorite, but children notice things adults think they’re hiding. Conrad noticed. Jeremiah noticed.

And whether Adam meant to or not, that imbalance planted seeds of resentment that neither brother fully understood until they were adults.

By the time Belly came into the picture, they weren’t just two brothers who happened to love the same girl.

They were two boys who had spent years unconsciously chasing the same things.

Approval.

Validation.

That’s what made the rivalry between them so heartbreaking to me. Belly wasn’t the beginning of it. She was simply the place where years of unspoken hurt finally surfaced.

One of the things I wanted to explore in this chapter was Conrad finally recognizing that. For perhaps the first time, he sees that Adam’s favoritism didn’t just shape him, it shaped Jeremiah too. And while neither brother chose the roles they were given, they both carried them into adulthood.

I don’t think Conrad and Jeremiah’s story is only about Belly.

I think it’s about two brothers who loved each other, but spent years believing there wasn’t enough room for both of them to be enough.

— Cyndy

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

I braced myself for a morning of working around the house and skirting around Belly. But when I walked in, she was nowhere. By midday she still hadn’t come home, and by that night I was worried enough to text Jeremiah. He messaged back to say she’d gone to Boston with him.

I wondered if she’d left after our day shopping together to put some distance between us, or if Jeremiah had asked her to go. I turned it over for two weeks before she finally came back.

They’d given me what I thought I wanted. And yet I found myself looking for her around every corner. Listening for her footsteps on the stairs as I lay in bed. The house felt different without her in it, and I didn’t know what to do with that, so I did my usual. I ran. I read. I fixed things.

It was late evening the day she finally showed back up. I’d made dinner and was doing a crossword at the kitchen table, headphones on, when I felt her before I heard her.

I looked up. She was standing in the doorway in a green dress, hair pinned back, and she must have caught the look on my face because she gave a small wave and ducked into herself a little, like she was sorry for interrupting.

I pulled my headphones off. “Oh.” I looked at her. “You’re back.”

“Yep.” She glanced around the kitchen. “I’m back.”

We held the silence a beat too long.

“You were gone a while,” I said, because apparently that was the best I could come up with.

She didn’t say anything. I picked up my fork and took a bite to have something to do with my hands.

“There’s leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry.” I’d been making extra every night in case she came home. When she didn’t, I’d eat it for lunch the next day.

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m actually not that hungry. I’m pretty tired, so I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

She still wasn’t looking at me directly.

“Okay.” I nodded. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” She glanced once at my plate and then turned away.

I knew her well enough to know she was avoiding sitting down with me. I just didn’t know why.

The next day dad called about suit shopping and mentioned, almost as an aside, that Belly and Jeremiah had been denied for another apartment because of his credit. Apparently he still hadn’t fixed it. And then it made sense. She wasn’t uncomfortable with me. She was embarrassed, not wanting the truth to come out. It did anyway.

Then dad dropped the other thing: he was covering the wedding, moving it to the country club. I knew that wasn’t what Belly had wanted. I stayed quiet. I didn’t want to ruin anything else for her. I hoped she would be relieved of at least the financial burden of the wedding.

Later, I was out front fixing the broken sprinkler head when she pulled up. She’d left me a note saying she was taking my car to the club, and I’d smiled at the note without meaning to. Now she was getting out of it in a short red dress, red lipstick, which meant she’d been doing something that mattered to her.

I looked back down at the sprinkler.

“Hello,” I said, keeping my voice casual.

“Hi.” Her face was tight.

She glanced at my hands. “Sprinkler’s been leaking,” I said. “Had to replace the head.”

“Okay.”

I asked how the club was. One word back. She headed toward the house. I stood and turned toward her. “Hey — I made lunch and left some in the fridge. Chicken again, but I added corn this time. And I made cookies.”

She stopped and turned, and I could see her trying to give me a real smile. “I’m not actually hungry, but thank you.”

“It’s fresh, so help yourself later if you want.”

She adjusted the strap of her purse. “Thanks. Also — do you mind if I take the car to Philly tomorrow? For the bridal shower?”

“Yeah, of course.” I replied too fast.

She started to turn and I stopped her. “Hey — did Laurel change her mind about going?”

She opened her mouth and closed it. Her eyes went misty. She shook her head, just once, and something in the gesture was so tired and sad that I had to look away.

“No,” she said softly before heading back in looking deflated.

I finished the sprinkler and went inside to wash my hands, talking myself in and out of getting involved in her business. I dried my hands and opened the fridge. She’d been home two hours and hadn’t touched anything I’d left her.

I closed the fridge.

“Screw it,” I said to no one, and pulled out my phone.

Mom would have done the same. I texted Laurel and asked her to meet me in person. That was always the only way to get through to her.

We met halfway at a diner she and mom used to go to. Loud and busy when I walked in, but I spotted Laurel in a corner booth right away. She looked tired. Thinner than she should have been.

“Hi, Connie.” She stood and hugged me, and held on a second longer than usual.

When the waitress came I ordered for both of us, even as Laurel started to say she wasn’t hungry. She and Belly were the same that way, when they were sad or stressed they stopped eating. I ordered for us both anyway. She smiled at the gesture and said nothing.

“I know we didn’t drive out here for just the food,” she said, leaning forward. “So what’s going on?”

I exhaled. “I want to talk about the wedding. And why I think you should go.”

She started shaking her head before I finished the sentence.

“Laurel.”

“I don’t even think I’m wanted there at this point. Belly seems to have it all under control without me.” She paused. “John will give in to her like he always does. She was always a daddy’s girl. And I know you and Steven agreed to be groomsmen, both of you too chicken shit to tell me. “

I said nothing and let her continue.

“And apparently Adam is paying for the whole thing now, and Taylor and her mom are helping make all the decisions as the unofficial wedding planners, so—”

“Taylor and her mom aren’t planning it anymore,” I said. “It’s Kayleigh now. As in the woman dad had the affair with.”

Laurel went still.

“Kayleigh is helping Belly plan her wedding.” It wasn’t a question. Her voice cracked on it, and the look on her face wasn’t anger — it was hurt, plain and clean.

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “Wait. You knew about the affair?”

“I’ve known for years. I heard them fighting one day. The only other person I ever told was Belly.”

I watched her take that in, watched her remember mom’s face the way I still sometimes did.

“I can’t believe you carried that alone for so long,” she said.

“You know me.” I picked up my coffee. “Secrets and carrying the world alone are kind of my whole thing.”

She laughed at that, but a tear slipped out anyway. She didn’t bother wiping it.

I set the cup down. “I think you should be there, Laurel. At the wedding.”

“So you think they should get married.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Then what do you think?”

I looked out the window for a second. “I think they love each other. And I think no matter what anyone does, they’re going through with it.” I paused. “But more than that, Belly needs her mom. She’s trying to hold it together but she barely smiles anymore. She’s quiet all the time. She’s not eating.” I stopped. Swallowed. “You should see her. She’s all alone out there and she’s only letting me in so far, and I’m not, I’m not enough for her this time.”

Laurel’s eyes went red. “Jeremiah isn’t seeing what this is doing to her. He’s not thinking it through.”

“He may not be serious about a lot of things,” I said quietly, “but he’s serious about her.”

She looked at me.

“I get it, Laurel. I do. But this wedding is happening. And if you miss it, I think you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it.” I finished.

The waitress came with our food and we both looked at it, letting it sit.

“You came here like a knight in shining armor,” Laurel said finally. “So let me ask you something honest.” I nodded for her to continue. “Why is it you having this conversation with me and not Jeremiah?”

I knew what she was really asking. I didn’t want to lie, so I gave her something else instead. “I just want her to be happy.”

She looked at me for a long moment. “And what about you, Conrad? Will you be happy?”

I shifted in my seat. “I’ll be fine. After the wedding, I’ll go back to California. I’ll be good.”

She didn’t look away. I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

She knew. She didn’t say it, but she knew that it was killing me inside.We ate the rest of the meal without talking much, and when we got up to leave she pulled me into a hug that lasted longer than I expected from her.

She didn’t give me an answer. All I could do was hope I’d gotten through to her.

On the drive home the roads were dark and quiet and I let my mind go where it wanted, which was a mistake. Belly’s face when I asked about Laurel. The way she’d shaken her head with so much sadness behind her eyes. How thin she’d gotten. Laurel’s question sitting in the car with me the whole way back — will you be happy — and the real answer I hadn’t given her.

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

I packed a small bag before either of them woke up and got on the road without knowing where I was going. I just drove. Eventually I found myself heading toward Boston, toward dad’s apartment, which told me about the state I was in. That somehow, being with my father felt like the better option.

My hands were tight on the wheel. I told myself I’d spend the weekend there and then head back to California. Clean break.

About an hour out from his place, something shifted. I’d gone to Cousins as a refuge and they’d followed me there. Why was it always me who had to leave?

I shouldn’t be the one that had to leave again. I was going to go back. Not for them, but for myself. I knew I had to stop outrunning it eventually. And there was still work to be done on the house. The gutters needed cleaning, the pool needed to be filled, a few sprinkler heads out front were broken. Things they weren’t thinking about while they planned their wedding there. Someone had to take care of moms house.

I let myself into dad’s apartment with the spare key. The place looked like no one lived in it. It was not small, just empty in a way that felt lonely. No clutter, nothing out of place, nothing personal. Dad was a workaholic and it showed.

I went out to a few of my favorite bookstores and a record shop, came back, made dinner. I was eating at the kitchen counter when I heard the door.

He didn’t look surprised to see me. “Hey Con. Finally made it up to visit your old man.”

“Something like that.” I said between bites. “There’s leftovers if you want.”

He smiled, but his face looked worn. Bags under his eyes, hair thinning, thinner all over. He went to the cabinet and poured himself a bourbon without responding, then came and sat across from me.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” He turned the glass in his hands. “Jeremiah. He’s doing well at the office, but I just — I think he’s too young for this. Getting married at twenty-two. I don’t know what to do. They both seem set on it.”

“Dad. We talked about this. The more you push against them, the further they pull away.”

He took a long sip. “I know. But Laurel’s been calling, asking me to find a way to stop it.” He exhaled. “I just feel like there has to be something.”

Setting my own feelings about Belly aside — which took effort — I agreed with him on the basic logic. Getting married at that age was irrational. It felt like they were doing it to prove something, though I couldn’t pin down what.

“You could let Jeremiah go from your office,” I said, before I could stop myself. “Cut him off financially.”

Dad went quiet, and I caught up to what I’d just said.

“But even if you did,” I added, “he’ll have access to the trust soon enough. You’d just lose him without actually stopping anything.”

He shook his head slowly, arriving at the same conclusion. “He’s been doing a great job at the office. I couldn’t let him go anyway.” A pause. “And you’re right. He’d never forgive me.”

He poured another two fingers of bourbon and stared at it.

“I already feel like I lost you,” he said. “I don’t want to lose him too.”

I didn’t say anything to that. We sat there for a while, the kitchen quiet around us. I stood to clear my plate, and I was about to turn around and say something — that he hadn’t lost me, not entirely, that I was still angry but it wasn’t the same as gone — but he was already up getting ready to leave.

He stopped turning to face me, “I think I have to support him in this. Even if I don’t want to.” He said it softly, like he was still deciding whether he meant it. “Goodnight, son.”

His footsteps went heavy up the stairs.

Mom had always been the one who absorbed this kind of thing. The family stress, the hard conversations, the weight of whatever was falling apart. She’d handled it so quietly that none of us had understood how much she was carrying until she wasn’t there to carry it anymore. Now it sat on him alone, and I could see it.

I felt something close to sympathy. But I was carrying weight too, and I didn’t have the room to carry more.

He’d never really known how to be a father to us, especially as we got older and stopped being extensions of him. For a long time I’d been his favorite — I knew it, Jeremiah knew it — and I used to tell myself it was because I was the oldest.

It took me longer than it should have to understand it was because he thought he’d made me in his image. And for a while I’d let him. Good grades, football, the unspoken expectation of a business degree, a life that looked like his. I met his expectations because I had wanted to be like him. I had worshiped him.

The first crack came the year he forgot Mom’s birthday.

He’d been out golfing with friends all day, came home after she was already in bed. The next morning there were flowers on the counter. Jeremiah and I had already made her a cake, a card with our handwriting all over it. She’d cried a little when we gave it to her, the good kind. The flowers just sat there drying up on the counter without a water vase.

That was when I stopped putting him on a pedestal. When I realized he wasn’t perfect. Far from it.

And then he had cheated on her. Whatever respect I had for him vanished after that. She had seemed so broken after she found out.

He had hurt the person I loved most in the world, and she was slipping away from us more every day.

All that love and admiration I’d once had for him turned into anger. Maybe because anger was easier to carry than disappointment.

Then I started hating myself too.

For being so blind. For idolizing him. For giving him so much of my attention when Mom had always been the one who deserved it.

More than anything, I think I was terrified that no matter how hard I tried not to be, I would end up exactly like him.

That was when I went out of my way to become his opposite.

I quit football. Changed my major to medicine. Learned the names of everyone who worked in our house because he never seemed to bother. I made a point to treat people the same regardless of who they were. I tipped well. Looked people in the eye. Listened when they talked.

And above all else, I swore I would never become the kind of man who cheated on his wife.

I stopped going on runs with him. No more fishing trips. No more golf. No more anything that looked like a happy father and son.

Every time I looked at him, I saw what he’d done to her.

Some of that distance he deserved but if I was being honest, he didn’t deserve all of it. Deep down, I think I blamed mom’s decline in health on him, even though he had nothing to do with it.

After I lost Belly and then lost Mom, something shifted. I’d spent so long being angry at him that I hadn’t stopped to look at what the anger had done to me. What I’d let it cost me.

He’d hurt people. People I loved. That was real and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

But he was also just a man. A flawed, selfish, disappointing man.

Not a monster.

The monster version was something I’d created because it was easier than admitting the truth.

The truth was that I’d spent most of my life believing he was a hero.

And when heroes fall, they don’t just disappoint you.

They disappoint the version of yourself that believed in them.

It took me a long time to understand that.

A long time to let go of the anger and stop carrying the weight of it.

We weren’t fixed, him and me. I didn’t know if we ever would be. But somewhere along the way we’d found our way back to something more neutral, some version of each other we could both live with.

I stayed in Boston for the rest of the weekend. I wanted time with him but work kept pulling him away. I’d hear him leave in the mornings before I was up, the apartment going quiet around me. We had dinner one of the nights but other than talk of work and school, conversation was thin.

Monday morning, before Jeremiah was due back for work, I drove back to Cousins.

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Authors Note:

Song: “Unknown / Nth” - Hozier

Author’s Note

This chapter was one of the hardest for me to write.

Part of that is because Conrad’s relationship with Adam has always been one of the most complicated parts of his story. It’s messy, painful, and full of contradictions. Adam hurt the people Conrad loved most, but he was also his father. Those two truths have to exist together.

The other reason this chapter was difficult is a little more personal.

Like Conrad, I had a complicated relationship with my own father. While our stories are very different, I understand what it feels like to wrestle with disappointment, anger, and the impossible task of reconciling the parent you needed with the person they actually were. Writing Conrad’s journey toward forgiveness meant revisiting some of those emotions myself.

One of Jenny Han’s lines from the original chapter has always stayed with me:

“I was the one who had put my dad on that pedestal.”

That realization became the heartbeat of this chapter.

I don’t think forgiveness means pretending someone didn’t hurt you. It doesn’t erase the choices they made or the pain they caused. Sometimes it simply means deciding you don’t want to spend the rest of your life carrying that pain alone.

Conrad doesn’t leave Boston with a perfect relationship with Adam.

He leaves understanding that his father isn’t a hero.

He isn’t a monster either.

He’s just a man.

And sometimes seeing someone clearly is the first step toward letting yourself heal.

— Cyndy

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

“Conrad? Are you even listening?” Belly’s voice pulled me out of the memory and back into the kitchen.

I blinked and looked up at her. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

She kept going, still halfway through her rant about how the second people heard the word wedding, everything suddenly cost three times more.

It hit me then that this was the first night in years Belly and I had sat across from each other like this. Just talking. Cooking dinner. Existing in the same space without hurting each other.

And for one stupid second I caught myself wondering what would’ve happened if I hadn’t ruined it.

What our life might’ve looked like now.

How many nights like this we never got and never would.

“Weddings are ridiculous,” I said finally. “But it’s also hopefully a once in a lifetime thing, so I guess it makes sense people want it to feel special.”

She smiled and then we heard the front door open.

She didn’t look away from me until his voice carried through the house.

“Honey, I’m home.”

Belly shook her head once under her breath before standing quickly. “Jere, you’re back!”

He barely made it through the kitchen before she reached him. He caught her easily when she jumped into his arms and I looked away immediately, suddenly very interested in the half-empty wine glasses sitting on the table.

“Wait, you guys made dinner?” he asked, sounding genuinely excited.

I glanced over automatically, expecting tension. Maybe suspicion.

But Jeremiah just looked happy.

“Yeah, we saved you some,” Belly said, still half wrapped around him. “I can make you a plate.”

He buried his face in her neck. “Please. I’m starving. I could eat you too.”

Belly laughed softly and something sour twisted in my stomach.

“I was actually gonna start cleaning up,” I said before I could stop myself.

Belly turned toward me while Jeremiah’s arms settled around her waist.

“Oh, and I got you the best peaches today,” she said easily, like my tone hadn’t registered at all.

“Any chance we have strawberries instead?” Jeremiah asked. “I’m not really in the mood for peaches.”

My hand tightened against the edge of the table.

She’d thought about him. Gone out of her way for him. And he dismissed it without even noticing.

“No strawberries,” I said. “Looks like peaches are gonna have to be enough.”

Belly shot me a look at that, but Jeremiah either didn’t notice or pretended not to. He just kept absentmindedly tracing his thumb against her waist.

“All good,” he said easily, glancing around the kitchen before his eyes landed on the Michael’s bags sitting by the counter.

“Wait, you went to Michael’s? Bells, I told you to wait for me tomorrow.”

Belly slipped out from under his arms casually. “Yeah, but remember? The coupons expired today, so Conrad took me.”

Jeremiah’s eyes flicked to me for just a second.

I saw it immediately. The slight shift in his posture at that. The way his shoulders tightened before he forced himself to relax again.

Then he laughed it off.

“Wow, Conrad. Thanks, man.” He stepped toward me and slapped my shoulder a little too hard. “Seriously. You’re the greatest co-bestman.”

I laughed once without smiling. “Sit down and eat.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m starving.”

He loosened his tie as he sat down and pulled Belly into his lap automatically.

Belly laughed softly under her breath, one hand flattening lightly against Jeremiah’s chest like she suddenly remembered I was still sitting there watching them. She’d never really been big on this kind of thing in front of people to begin with, let alone with me in the room.

“Wow, this looks amazing, Bells,” Jeremiah said, reaching for the plate she slid toward him.

“Conrad cooked most of it,” Belly said. “I just made the fries.”

She leaned over to steal one and Jeremiah pulled the plate away at the last second with a grin.

“Absolutely not.”

Belly laughed again, reaching for another while he caught her wrist easily with his free hand.

They looked practiced together. Comfortable in the kind of quiet intimacy that only came from years of choosing each other over and over again.

My stomach tightened hard enough that the wine suddenly sloshed around, threatening to come up. I coughed into my first.

“So,” Belly said, curling one leg underneath herself as she looked at Jeremiah, “did your dad make you stay late doing a bunch of miserable finance stuff?”

Jeremiah laughed softly and loosened his tie another inch. “No, actually. It wasn’t like that.”

He leaned back in the chair, one hand still resting against Belly’s waist.

“Everyone left early for the holiday weekend, so Dad asked me to double check some numbers for this company we were supposed to partner with.” He glanced between us with a grin already spreading across his face. “Turns out they were being shady as hell with their projections. I caught it before they signed anything and Dad killed the deal.”

The pride in his voice caught me off guard a little. Not because he didn’t deserve it. Just because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard him sound that certain of himself around our dad.

“Jere, that’s incredible,” Belly said immediately, her hand landing against his shoulder. Her whole face lit up for him.

Then both of them looked at me.

Like they were waiting for me to say something too.

I pressed my lips together for a moment and nodded. Then added, “That’s great, Jere.”

His grin only widened. “Actually, I’ve got even better news.”

I took a slow sip of water.

“Dad was seriously impressed.” He said looking over at Belly. “Softened him up enough that…”

Belly sat up straighter in his lap. “Enough that what?”

Jeremiah’s thumb brushed against the bare exposed skin on her stomach absentmindedly. “He’s in for the wedding.”

Belly stared at him for half a second before her whole face broke open.

“Wait. Seriously?” she breathed. “Jere, oh my God.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and he laughed into her shoulder while she kept repeating, “I can’t believe it. I literally can’t believe it.”

I stood too quickly, my chair scraping against the hardwood. “I should probably shower before the fireworks.”

Belly looked over at me, still smiling from the news. “Yeah, go. I’ll clean up down here. But come back fast, okay? They light them over the beach at nine.”

“Yeah,” I said, forcing something that almost sounded casual. “For sure.”

I turned toward the hallway before making the mistake of glancing back one more time.

Belly was still perched sideways in Jeremiah’s lap, gently pushing his hair back out of his eyes while he looked up at her with this quiet sort of satisfaction, his thumb moving slowly against her like he couldn’t stop touching her even for a second.

I looked away immediately.

I thought briefly about the nail gun still sitting up on the roof and decided I’d rather put a nail through my head than spend another second watching them like this.

Watching him touch her like that.

I walked upstairs before either of them could notice me staring.

The shower water was cold enough to make my skin ache.

I stood under it anyway, staring at the tile, hating myself for every thought I’d had downstairs.

For wanting things I no longer had any right to want.

I stayed there until my hands wrinkled and my body started shivering.

By the time I dried off and got dressed, fireworks had already started somewhere farther down the beach. The muffled pops echoed through the open windows while I pulled on a sweatshirt and headed toward my room.

I made my way to the window and looked outside.

Belly and Jeremiah were down on the back deck near the water, slow dancing barefoot beneath the string lights. Her head was tipped back laughing at something he said, one of his hands spread wide against her lower back while the other held hers loosely between them.

She looked happy.

Not complicated. Not uncertain. Just happy.

My heart sank heavily at the sight of it.

I had fucked up today.

I’d let myself get too comfortable. Too close to her. Gotten stupid enough to start imagining things that didn’t belong to me anymore.

I couldn’t let that happen again.

I couldn’t risk breaking the promise I made to Mom on her deathbed because a promise like that doesn’t stop mattering just because you want something else.

A promise like that is absolute. My eyes began to water at the memory, at watching everything I wanted with Belly slip away as fireworks continued to erupt in the sky.

I turned off the light and laid back against the bed, staring up into the darkness while memories of Mom’s last days pressed hard against the inside of my skull.

Her hair had thinned so much by then. Her body small beneath the blankets in a way that still didn’t feel possible to me. The oxygen tube sat beneath her nose and the morphine drip clicked softly beside the bed every few seconds, filling the room with that sterile hospital smell I still couldn’t stand years later.

Most days she barely woke up anymore.

But one morning that early spring, while sunlight spilled through the blinds in pale gold stripes across the floor, she opened her eyes and smiled at me.

“Hi, honey” she whispered, swallowing between each word. Her lips looked dry and cracked.

I grabbed one of the little cups of ice chips from beside the bed and held it toward her.

“Where’s Jere bear?” she asked softly, her eyes drifting around the room like she was trying to place herself back inside it.

I swallowed hard. “He got hungry. Went to grab food for us.”

Even saying the word food made guilt crawl up my throat. She hadn’t really eaten in days.

I stood halfway out of my chair. “Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head faintly. “No. Stay.”

Her voice was barely louder than the morphine machine beside her.

“Sit with me a little longer.”

I sat back down immediately but she frowned slightly.

“Closer, baby,” she murmured, lifting her hand weakly toward me. “I want to look at you.”

I slid the chair beside the bed and leaned closer until she could cup my face in her hand.

“My beautiful boy,” she whispered, stroking her thumb across my cheek.

Her hand felt fragile. Papery almost.

Temporary.

Even then I think part of me already understood I would spend the rest of my life missing that touch.

“You know,” she said softly, “when they first handed you to me at the hospital, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

She smiled to herself faintly.

“I actually looked up child modeling agencies because I thought the world deserved to experience your beauty too.”

She laughed weakly between coughs and her arm dropped back against the blanket.

“Then one day years later I pulled out your baby pictures again and realized you actually weren’t that cute at all.”

I let out a surprised laugh through my nose.

Mom smiled wider at that.

“Honestly, Connie, you looked a little like an alien.”

Her laugh filled the room softly and for a second it almost sounded like before.

I sat perfectly still listening to it, terrified that if I moved too fast the moment would disappear.

And all I could think was: how was I supposed to live in a world that didn’t have that laugh in it anymore?

“Jere was the cute one,” I said quietly. “Even as a baby.”

Mom smiled immediately. “Oh, he definitely knew it too.”

I hummed softly in agreement, keeping my eyes fixed on the blanket because I knew if I opened my mouth again my voice would break.

A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. I cleared my throat roughly and looked away.

“I can call Jere to come back.” I whispered.

Mom turned her head slightly against the pillow. “No.”

Her voice came out too thin and tired.

“Stay with me. Just us two a little longer.”

When she looked back at me again, another tear had already fallen. Her expression softened immediately.

“Connie,” she whispered, “I need you to know I’m not afraid of the end.”

I stared down at our hands because I couldn’t look at her when she talked like that.

“I can’t be,” she continued softly. “Because I know you’ll be okay someday.”

She paused to wet her lips and I quickly reached for the water beside the bed, holding the straw toward her carefully while she took a small sip.

“And I know Jeremiah will be okay too,” she said after a moment. “Because he has you. He always has.”

My breathing tightened painfully.

“He is so lucky he got to grow up with a brother like you,” she whispered. “And I’m the luckiest mother in the world that I got you for a son.”

The tears kept coming after that and I stopped trying to hide them.

“Mom,” I said thickly, shaking my head once. “I haven’t been that great of a brother lately.”

All I could think about was the distance that had grown between Jeremiah and me over the last year. All the resentment. All the things we never said out loud.

She frowned immediately.

“Yes, you have,” she said with surprising certainty. “You’ve always taken care of the people you love.”

A coughing fit interrupted her and I reached instinctively for the tissues beside the bed while she tried to catch her breath again.

When it passed, she looked back at me with watery eyes.

“And I know in my heart,” she whispered, “that you’ll always take care of him. Won’t you, Connie?”

The question settled into me like something permanent.

I nodded immediately. “Yeah, Mom. Of course I will.”

She reached for my hand again, squeezing weakly. “Thank you, my baby.”

I wrapped my fingers carefully around hers.

“I promise,” I said quietly. “I’ll always take care of him.”

Mom smiled then. Small and tired and full of so much love it nearly killed me to look at.

“I love you so much,” she whispered.

My throat tightened. “I love you too.”

I tried to hold myself together for her. I really did.

But then she looked at me with that same expression she used to have when I was little and sick or scared or heartbroken and suddenly I was just a kid again.

“Mommy,” I choked out, my voice breaking completely. “I don’t know how to let you go.”

The words tore out of me before I could stop them.

“I’m not ready. I’m never gonna be ready.”

And then something inside me broke open.

I bent forward carefully and laid my head against her lap while sobs shook through me hard enough to make my body ache.

Her fingers moved weakly through my hair while her own breathing hitched unevenly above me and then, softly, barely louder than a whisper, she started singing the lullaby she used to sing when Jeremiah and I were kids.

We broke together there in that moment.

At everything we were losing.

At all the things we would never get back again.

At a future we would never have.

I had kept my promise to her.

After I saw Belly and Jeremiah kiss at Brown, I did the only thing I thought I could do for him.

I left.

I stayed away. I tried to build a life somewhere else. Tried to become someone else. Even tried to be with someone else.

I might’ve been a screwup in a hundred different ways, but I refused to become a liar to my mother too.

That was why I had told Belly I was over her at the motel.

Why I told Jeremiah the same thing.

And I knew then all I could to to keep my promise was lie to them both.

But lying didn’t change reality.

Outside my window, fireworks continued to burst somewhere over the water.

And no matter how badly all of me still wanted her, her future belonged to him now.

Jeremiah could give her the kind of love that stayed soft. Easy. Certain.

The kind that didn’t leave bruises behind.

Belly deserved that.

She deserved everything I hadn’t been able to give her.

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

Laurel always insisted on the guest room when I slept over, even though I was fairly certain she knew by then that Belly and I were together in every sense of the word. She was practical like that. Don’t ask, don’t have to address it.

I had driven straight to Belly’s the night I found out Mom needed round the clock care at home. She had gotten bad. Nobody was saying how bad out loud because saying it made it real and none of us were ready for it to be real. I held it in the way I held everything in, quietly, and at considerable cost.

At Belly’s, I usually waited until the house went completely silent before slipping down the hall to her room. That night I was sitting up in the guest room reading when the door creaked open.

“Belly.” I kept my voice low. “It’s too early. Laurel isn’t asleep yet.”

Read more

Laurel always insisted I take the guest room when I slept over, even though I was fairly certain she knew by then that Belly and I were together in every sense of the word. She was practical like that. Don’t ask, don’t have to address it.

I had driven straight to Belly’s the night I found out mom needed round the clock care at home. She had gotten bad. Nobody was saying how bad out loud because saying it made it real and none of us were ready for it to be real. I held it the way I held everything back then; quietly, and at considerable cost.

When I stayed at Belly’s I usually waited until the house went completely silent before slipping down the hall to her room. That night I was sitting up in the guest bed reading when the door creaked open. The lamp was on low, the room smelling faintly of the cedar drawer liners Laurel used in every room of that house.

“Belly.” I kept my voice low. “It’s too early. Laurel isn’t asleep yet.”

She pressed a finger to her lips. There was a look on her face that meant she had already decided to stay and was not open to discussion.

“If she catches us she’s going to lose her mind,” I whispered.

Belly clamped a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking, then pushed the door shut behind her. The latch clicked too loud in the quiet house. “Then we’ll just have to be very quiet,” she whispered back.

“That was your idea of quiet?” I whisper-shouted.

She laughed softly and crossed the room, crawling up onto the bed beside me. The mattress shifted with her weight and she tucked herself into my side immediately, her arms crossing my chest, her hair carrying the faint smell of her shampoo.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked, setting my book aside.

“I just want to cuddle. It’s cold.”

I pulled her in closer, she sighed and burrowed in, her feet finding their way between my legs. Ice cold, as always.

I laughed quietly at the shock of it. “Mmm this is nice.”

She looked up at me and I felt my heart hammer behind my ribs at the way she was looking at me. Open. Unhurried. Like I was home for her.

We lay there for a while. I felt her shift slightly and something in her went quieter.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. All good.” She smiled up at me but there was something underneath it, something sorrowful she was trying to press down. I watched her do it and didn’t press further.

“Prom is going to be great,” I said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

She pressed her face into me and I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, my fingers brushing the side of her neck.

“You’re right,” she said. “Prom will be great. And Susannah is going to be fine.” She said it with such certainty that all I could do was nod.

“I just know she’s going to be okay,” she said softly.

Back then Belly looked at the world like it was fundamentally good. Like it had an obligation to protect the people who deserved protecting. She believed it completely, in that unguarded way she had, and I loved her for it and it broke my heart at the same time because I knew things she didn’t. I knew how bad it had gotten. I knew what was coming.

I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t. Not that night. Not right before prom. I didn’t want to be the one to take that brightness out of her eyes.

My face must have given something away because she laid her hand against my cheek, her palm warm. “Are we good?” A pause. “You’re okay, right?”

“I’m okay,” I said, and kissed her forehead. “Better when you’re around. And we are perfect.”

She looked up at me, content and happy again, and I leaned in and kissed her softly.

She kissed me back gently at first, her mouth warm and slow against mine. I stroked the back of her head and she deepened the kiss, shifting until she was on my lap, her knees on either side of me, pushing me back against the headboard. She was in small underwear and an oversized t-shirt, her skin warm through the thin cotton. She pulled back and took my face in both hands, trailing slow kisses along my jaw, and when she pulled back I ran my thumb across her lips. She opened her mouth slightly. I stroked gently along the inside of her lower lip and she bit down softly on the pad of my thumb. I pulled my hand away slowly and explored her mouth with my tongue instead, my other hand moving from her hip to between her thighs, pressing against her core.

She moaned into my mouth.

My body responded immediately. I knew she could feel it. She grasped my face between her hands and kissed me deeper, her tongue stroking mine, and I kept my hand moving against her until she was making sounds low in her throat that I had to swallow along with my own. She ground against me and moaned my name once, just once, and it nearly undid me entirely.

She pulled back only long enough to pull her shirt over her head and toss it aside.

I kissed her jaw, her collarbone, lower, trailing down until I found the infinity necklace at her throat. I took the chain gently between my teeth as she ran her hands through my hair and tugged. I needed more contact with her. I flipped her onto her back and settled between her legs, bracing my weight on my forearms. The lamp threw warm light across her collarbone, her throat, the small chain lying against her skin. She ran a slow nail down my back and I kissed her neck, her breast, taking my time with her the way I always had, the way she always let me.

She bucked her hips against me.

I followed the path down her stomach, pulling her underwear off slowly, then my own. I settled back between her legs and she lifted her hips to meet me. I was right there, right at the edge of her, and before I’d even moved she ground her hips against me and whatever self control I had left evaporated completely.

When I pushed deeper into her she made a soft sound against my mouth and I brought her closer, her warmth surrounding me. She wrapped both legs around me and I let a sound out that she immediately covered with her hand. I bit gently at her palm and watched her eyes go wide before she gave herself over to it. She met me hungrily. Both of us moving, both of us trying to stay quiet and failing in small ways, hands and mouths finding every inch of skin. At some point she moved to flip me and as I rolled I caught the nightstand with my elbow. The vase with the white flowers hit the floor.

We both froze.

Silence. The old house settling around us, the sound of the wind faint through the window. We lay there listening for Laurel’s door, for footsteps, for anything. Nothing came.

She looked down at me in the dim light, smiling, and started moving again.

I watched her, the low lamp catching the lines of her, and thought — I have never wanted anything the way I want her. Not just this. All of it. Every version of her for the rest of my life.

We made love two more times before the sky began to lighten at the edges. She slipped out just as the birds started, back down the hall to her own room, the floorboards barely sighing under her feet.

Later that morning as I was leaving, Laurel came into the kitchen and asked casually why the vase from the guest room was on the floor. Belly was at the counter with her back to us and I watched her shoulders shake once before she got control of it. I told Laurel I must have knocked it over reaching for my water in the dark. Laurel looked at me for a moment longer than necessary, then decided to let it go.

That night was one I had kept like an old love letter, folded and put away. A thing I hadn’t let myself take out in a long time. And now it sat betweenBelly and I in the quiet of the room, present and unspoken, as I looked across the table at the girl who was marrying my brother in a few days.

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

Belly walked ahead of me, setting the bags down at the entryway and moving deeper into the house, opening the window to let the summer breeze in. I stood in the doorway for a moment watching her. I had almost lost myself completely at that peach stand. I shouldn’t have gotten that close. I could feel the slight distance she’d put between us since that moment and I didn’t blame her for it.

I told myself I’d go to bed. Clear my head. Let the night reset things.

She was facing the open window, putting her hair up into a bun. The breeze moved through the curtains around her.

“It’s a gorgeous night,” she said, not looking back at me.

I should have gone to bed, instead I wanted more time with her.

“Hey — all you had was a couple of peaches. If you’re still hungry I can make us something.”

She turned and leaned against the window frame. “I’m always hungry,” she said, and something in the way she said it made me take it as an invitation to stay.

I headed into the kitchen and hung the keys on the hook. Belly came in behind me setting more bags down and leaned against the island. I went to the pantry, telling myself I just needed to get through dinner without touching her again. Simple enough. I could do that.

“Conrad,” she said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Can I ask you something?”

My stomach dropped. I turned to look at her fully. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Scrunched her nose.

That was never a good sign.

“Do you,” she began as my heart hammered against my ribs, “do you eat anything other than grilled chicken?”

It took me a full second to register she was joking. I felt my heart rate drop back to something reasonable. “That’s literally the only thing I can cook well,” I said. “So yes. Grilled chicken.”

“Your chicken could use more seasoning.”

“I season it.” I argued, smiling.

“You absolutely do not.” She was already pulling something out of the freezer. “And can we please do something besides plain vegetables and quinoa?”

“Quinoa has essential amino acids.”

She laughed. “Tonight we’re doing fries. I’m sure those have benefits too.”

“Fine. Looks like I’m the sous chef.”

She clapped her hands once. “Perfect.”

“I’m wearing an apron though. I’ve seen your cooking.”

She grabbed a mixing bowl and passed behind me. “I’m not that messy.”

“You didn’t say behind,” I pointed out. “Haven’t you watched any cooking show? I could have crashed into you.”

She laughed. “Make yourself useful and get me the cooking oil, sous chef.”

I went to the cabinet and got it, stealing a glance back at her as I did. She moved around the kitchen with an ease I hadn’t expected, comfortable and confident in it, completely at home. I liked watching her like this more than I should have.

“Here, catch,” I said, pretending to toss the bottle.

She laughed and swatted my arm when I handed it over properly.

We fell into a rhythm prepping the chicken and fries. Her hair started coming loose from the bun and it took real effort not to reach over and fix it for her. To take it between my hands and twist it back up the way I used to. She must have felt it coming down because she pulled the hair tie out and retied it herself, and was about to reach for the spice jar when I stopped her.

“Cross contamination. You touched your hair, you have to wash your hands.”

And then before I could stop myself I tugged one loose strand gently.

She squinted at me. “Now you have to wash yours too.”

We both went to the sink. I started lathering up and felt her eyes on me.

“You can’t watch me wash my hands,” she said. “You’re a med student. You’ll judge.”

“I won’t.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Okay fine,” I said. “Let me show you how to do it properly.”

She watched me work the soap across my palm, the back of my hand, between each finger. Our eyes met for a moment over the sink and something moved through her face — warmth, or the start of it — before she looked away and reached for the soap herself.

I watched her for a moment before making myself look elsewhere.

“My hands have never been this clean, Dr. Fisher”, she announced, heading back to the chicken.

“I’m not a doctor yet,” I said.

She rolled her eyes.

I set the table while the chicken and fries finished. I grabbed a bottle of white wine from the fridge and held it up at her.

“Obviously,” she said. “We need wine with fries.”

I poured two glasses and brought them over.

By the time we sat down we were already two glasses in and she was reenacting the flower shop, doing an impression of me pointing at the peonies and explaining Mom’s wedding bouquet to a stranger while the florist stared. I watched her do it and felt two things at once — a fullness at how easy this was, and underneath it a quiet ache knowing I would spend the rest of my life craving this. Exactly her, like this, laughing across a table at me sharing a meal, laughing and happy.

“Oh, fuck off,” I said.

She stopped mid-impression and stared at me.

“I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.” I was still laughing.

“Conrad Fisher just told me to fuck off,” she said, delighted.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, not sorry at all.

She swatted my arm. “All good.” A pause, the corner of her mouth pulling up. “Dude.”

I looked at her. “Bro,” I said flatly, and clinked my glass against hers.

She lost it completely.

When the laughter finally settled I found myself just looking at her. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine, her eyes bright, and she’d just spilled some on the table in front of her.

I noticed. I looked away.

“Are you dying right now?” she asked.

“Why would I be dying?”

“Because I just spilled wine all over the table and you haven’t said anything about it. I know you want to clean it.”

I kept my face neutral. “What spill?”

She burst out laughing. “Wow. California really did change you. Chill Conrad.”

“Super chill,” I said, deadpan, taking a sip of wine. She dissolved into giggles.

“You were literally itching to leave Michaels. You panic-bought me fake flowers.”

“I thought they’d look nice on the porch.”

She set her wine glass down and straightened up, dropping her voice an octave. “Oh, Belly. Look at these flowers. Very tasteful. Very porch like.” She picked up an imaginary bouquet and nodded at it seriously.

“That’s not what I sound like.”

“That’s exactly what you sound like.” She was already laughing at herself.

“What’s wrong with porch flowers,” I said, which only made it worse.

“Conrad.” She was still laughing. “Did those flowers not look familiar to you at all?”

I thought about it. I’d never bought Belly fake flowers. “They’re the same ones Mom had in that hideous vase in the guest room,” she said. “The ones I begged her to get rid of for years.”

It hit me all at once. “We knocked those off the dresser once. I swear you did it on purpose trying to break the vase.”

We both lost it again in fits of laughter. When I caught my breath I leaned back in my chair, wine glass in hand, and shook my head slowly.

“I remember that night so clearly,” I said, more to myself than to her.

The laughter faded. Something shifted in the air between us. She was looking at me with something softer but still careful in her expression and I looked back at her and neither of us said anything for a moment.

Four years ago. The guest room. The vase on the floor. I drifted back to that night.

Authors Note

Song: “All Too Well 10 Minute Version” Taylor Swift

This chapter scared me to write.

Not because anything huge happens. No declarations. No dramatic confessions. No big romantic moment.

Quite the opposite.

What makes this chapter important is how ordinary it is.

A trip to Michael’s. Making dinner. Drinking wine. Laughing over old memories.

For most people, those things wouldn’t mean much. But for Conrad and Belly, ordinary has always been the thing they struggle to hold onto. Their relationship has lived through grief, timing, distance, misunderstandings, and years of unresolved feelings. They’ve spent so long hurting each other that they almost forgot what it felt like to simply enjoy each other’s company.

That’s what this chapter is about.

Conrad starts the evening determined to keep his distance. He knows he crossed a line at the peach stand. He knows he should pull back. Instead, he finds himself doing what he’s always been most vulnerable to when it comes to Belly: falling into the easy version of them.

The version that laughs.

The version that cooks together.

The version that remembers the same stories.

The version that feels like home.

One of the things I wanted to explore here is how dangerous happiness can be for someone like Conrad. He’s spent years teaching himself not to want things he can’t have. But wanting Belly has never really gone away. It’s only gotten quieter.

Until moments like this.

The fake flowers, the hand washing lesson, the wine, the old vase story; none of those moments are particularly significant on their own. Together, though, they become something much harder to ignore.

A glimpse of the life they might have had.

And maybe still could.

Thank You for Reading,

Cyndy

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan

“I can stop if you want,” I offered.

She squinted at me. “No, you don’t have to do that. We already passed it.” But I didn’t miss the disappointment on her face.

I jerked the wheel and made a U-turn without thinking about it. She laughed as the car swung back toward the sign.

The tires crunched down a short gravel road to a wooden stand stacked with peaches. We got out and walked over. They ran on the honor system with a basket nailed to the post for cash. I watched Belly tuck a dollar in and smiled to myself, knowing full well she’d eat more than a dollar’s worth. I slipped a ten in behind her.

She went straight for the crates with a bounce in her step that almost made me laugh out loud. It was so easy to make her happy. Small things, ordinary things. A roadside peach stand in the late afternoon.

The sun was starting to set behind her, catching her in that warm late-day light. She took her time going through the baskets, turning each peach over in her hands, looking for the right one.

“Grab one too,” she said, holding up the one she’d chosen, satisfied.

I shook my head. “Can’t. Allergic.”

She squinted. “No way. Since when?”

I couldn’t blame her for not knowing. I’d never given people enough of myself for them to know things like that. “Always, technically. I eat them sometimes but they make my mouth itch. Not worth it.”

She frowned for a second, like she was recalibrating something. Then she laughed. “Okay, fine. But you’re going to miss out on this.” She pointed the peach at me once, a warning, and took a bite.

Her eyes closed the moment her mouth made contact.

She moaned.

Low and unguarded, completely unselfconscious, the sound of someone tasting something perfect for the first time. Except, I had heard that sound before. I had learned it. The specific pitch of it, the way it came from somewhere she didn’t guard or edit, somewhere deeply and entirely her. I had been the one to draw it out of her several times. I knew exactly what her face looked like when pleasure caught her off guard and she stopped trying to contain it — the way her lips parted, the way her brow smoothed out, the way she gave herself over to something completely.

Standing in a gravel lot during golden hour, I felt her moan hit me the same way it always had. Low and spreading, unable to stop its effect on me.

I stood very still.

“Holy shit,” she said, opening her eyes and staring at the peach like it had personally done something to her. She took another bite. Peach juice ran down over her bottom lip, trailed slowly down her chin, and she didn’t notice or didn’t care. “My god,” she murmured.

Watching her eat that peach, I remembered what that mouth tasted like. The specific warmth of it, unhurried, the way she kissed when she wasn’t thinking about anything else. Sweet and real and completely consuming. The memory arrived without invitation and I couldn’t shake it off.

I knew I had a stupid smile on my face but I didn’t care.

“That is the most perfect peach,” she said, finally looking up at me. Juice still running from the corner of her mouth even after she’d swiped at it with the back of her hand. “I want another one but I’m scared.”

“Scared?”

“There’s no way a second one could be as good.” She offered as her brows creased in annoyance.

I laughed and reached past her into the crate, close enough that she had to shift slightly to make room. I took my time picking one; soft but not too soft, the right balance of orange and yellow, just on the edge of ripe. I handed it to her.

“Test it,” I said.

She pulled her hair back off her face and bit in. This one was juicier than the first and she had to lean forward fast to keep it from running down her front, laughing as she did it, juice everywhere, completely unselfconscious in the way she was with her body and its pleasures. She had never been ashamed of wanting things. I had always loved that about her even when it undid me.

She held the peach in her palm and looked at it, smiling and sighing at the same time.

“Verdict?” I asked.

She laughed, breathless. “Yes. Just as good.” She took another bite and closed her eyes again and I thought about the last time I had seen her look like that. Eyes closed. Hair loose. Given over completely to me. A different version of us that didn’t have Jeremiah’s name running through the center of it.

I thought about the sound she made low in her throat the first time I kissed her neck, the way she’d gone still as I trailed kisses lower, and the way I had found that exact spot again just to hear it one more time. I thought about her hands, the way they moved without her meaning them to tugging at my hair. Her pulling me more flushed to her center, the way she tasted and felt and sounded when she found her release.

None of which was mine anymore.

None of which I had any business thinking about standing three feet away from her in the golden hour light while she ate a peach.

She opened her eyes and found mine.

She took another bite without looking away. Completely unaware of what she was doing to me, or maybe not entirely unaware — there was something in the way she held my gaze a beat too long, something in the slight curve at the corner of her mouth. Every nerve I had was lit and pulling toward her. I wanted to close the distance. I wanted to put my mouth to her chin and her jaw and taste the sweetness still running there, and underneath the sweetness, I wanted to taste her. That specific sweetness I already knew by memory and had never fully stopped wanting.

I clenched my jaw and stayed where I was.

She licked her bottom lip slowly, chasing the last of the juice.

I untucked my shirt before I could think better of it.

I stepped forward and pulled the hem up and brought it to the corner of her mouth. The juice had run further than I’d thought. I followed the trail of it slowly, the soft fabric dragging against her skin, and she went completely still. Her lips parted slightly. Her eyes came up to mine and stayed there, wide and dark in the fading light. I moved to the other side of her mouth, unhurried, then brought the fabric down along her chin, slow, following every place the sweetness had gone.

Her breath caught audibly.

Her gaze dropped to my stomach where the shirt was pulled up. Lower than that. Long enough that I knew she had seen exactly what she’d done to me. What she always did to me. What she had been doing to me without trying for as long as I could remember.

Neither of us said a word.

We stayed suspended in it, the two of us and the smell of peaches and summer, for what felt like a very long time and not nearly long enough.

Then she blinked. Stepped back. Her voice came out unsteady. “I should get some for Jere.” She turned toward the crates and put a deliberate step between us.

The spell broke open.

I dropped my shirt and put my hands in my pockets — partly to have somewhere to put them and partly to cover myself up where my excitement was clearly visible. I cleared my throat. “Yeah. I’ll wait in the car.”

I walked back to the driver’s side without looking back at her.

I sat behind the wheel and looked at nothing. The gravel. The wooden stand. The peaches. Trying to get my body to catch up with what my brain already understood. She had been thinking about Jeremiah. She was buying peaches for him right now, filling a bag, probably smiling. While all I had been doing was standing there drowning in memory and want, thinking about her mouth and her sounds and every moment between us that I had thrown away and could not get back.

Whatever had just happened was mine alone to carry and I needed to learn to carry it without showing it.

It took a while for my body to agree.

She got back in with the bag of peaches, set them on the back seat, buckled in. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at her. I turned the radio on low and she rolled her window down and let the summer air come through, sticking her hand out the way she always had.

I wanted to apologize. I didn’t know exactly what for. For stepping forward. For not being able to hide what she did to me. For knowing the sound of her coming undone and carrying it around like something I had a right to.

I didn’t say a word though.

I turned toward my window and watched the sun go down. Watched the light leave the sky — slowly and then all at once.

My heart went with it.

I had almost ruined everything. Almost. I told myself I would be more careful.

Copyright © 2026 by Cyndy Morgan
All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fanfiction and is an unauthorized, noncommercial, transformative work based on The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. All characters, settings, and original elements from the original series remain the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All events and dialogue not appearing in the original series are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 2026

Conrad’s Version
Written by Cyndy Morgan