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Unshed tears tighten my throat, but I take another, longer drink of wine to ease them away. She longs for him on his birthday, on their anniversary, but this night every year is mine. This is the night I can’t sleep.

Hours later, I’m lying awake in the darkness, staring at the blue shadows moving across the ceiling when I do what I always do. I get out of bed, pick up the small bag beside my dresser, grab my coat off the rack, and creep down the stairs and out to my car.

The oversized farmhouse is silent and dark when I arrive.

A street lamp sits high on a pole in the middle of the large yard separating the farm house from the foreman’s cottage a little farther down. I park behind the peach shed where no one will see and leave the bag and my keys inside.

I know this place so well. I’ve been coming here just about every day since I was a little girl, since my ma stepped in to help Sawyer with Noel and Leon.

Sawyer’s never needed anybody…

I go around to the ladder trellis reaching up to his second-floor window. I first climbed it the night after we buried my daddy. The night after we found him dead.

He said I could come to him if I needed somebody to talk to, and every year on this night I do just that.

The window is open a crack when I reach it. It slides without a sound, and I slip inside. He’s sitting up with his back against the headboard, but his eyes are closed. I hear his rhythmic breathing, and I know he’s fallen asleep.

It doesn’t matter. I go to the bed, leaving my jacket on the chair. The night is warm, and he’s not wearing a shirt. Silver moonlight deepens the lines of muscle in his arms, his broad shoulders. Sawyer works so hard, lifting crates of peaches, hauling boxes to the truck. He has the best body.

I can’t remember when he went from being the boy who held my hand and dried my tears to the man I can’t live without. I only know he’s owned my heart as long as I’ve been able to love.

Lifting the thin comforter, I slip in beside him and rest my cheek against his warm chest.

“Mm…” His voice vibrates against my skin. “Hey.”

Strong arms go around me, and I close my eyes, letting the warmth of his embrace relax my racing insides. I hold him, inhaling his scent of soap, cedar, and Sawyer.

“I tried not to wake you.” I sound so small.

“How you doing?” I love his voice, the low drawl, the touch of honey in his Louisiana accent.

“Same as every year.”

“I know, baby girl.” A large, callused hand slides up and down my bare arm, scratching my skin, waking my insides. “Let it happen. It’ll pass.”

Only the thinnest cotton nightgown separates my naked body from his, and I ache for him to want me again. One time will never be enough, and it’s been so long.

Ever since he came back from the military, there’s been this wall between us. He didn’t come back to me—he didn’t come back to anyone. Still, my heart waits for him, waits for the day he’ll let me in again.

Stretching my legs, arching my back, I search for his mouth in the darkness. My fingers fumble to his muscular neck, and I thread them in his soft hair, curling them and pulling his face to mine.

I don’t know if it’s because he’s drowsy or if it’s the darkness, but I manage to capture his full lips brie

fly. I push them apart, and our tongues meet. He kisses me back, before pulling away and settling me down at his side.

“You need to sleep.”

Squeezing my eyes shut against the tears, I nod and return to my place, sheltered at his side, under his arm, my heart irrevocably devoted to him.

2

Sawyer

My phone alarm lights up, vibrating in my face at six a.m., and I scramble to tap it off.

God, I hate this fucking time of year. I hate waking up at the crack of dawn. I hate busting my ass in the blazing heat all day for weeks without a break. I’ve hated it since I was sixteen and the world dropped out from under us, and I hate it now.

But you know what? I get my ass out of bed and do what needs to be done.