Page 36

ANTON

Early morning sunshine cascades up over the horizon, the brightness pushing its way forward, telling everything to wake up. Me included.

Throwing my truck in park, I stretch, letting out a yawn, despite how awake I feel. How alive I feel. More than I have in a long, long time. Every fiber of my being is reenergized—like a toy given a new set of batteries. All thanks to a soil specialist.

Someone I never saw coming.

A knock on my truck door startles me and I jump, turning to see Calvin, a longtime seasonal worker for Hayes, greeting me with a smile.

I open the door, stepping out, taking in the older man.

His scraggly beard has some gray mixed in, and his overalls are permanently stained with the distinct red of the Georgia clay, but he still looks the same as he did every summer while I was growing up, out here helping us pick peaches.

Maybe just a little older now. From looks alone, one would never be able to tell he had a stroke last year .

“Morning, Calvin,” I greet.

“Morma,” he replies, his slurred speech obscuring even the single word.

He returns the once-over, eyes scanning me up and down, before meeting my gaze again, a knowing smile tugging at his lips. I look down, even though I know exactly what he’s noticed. I’m wearing the same thing I was yesterday.

Busted.

Calvin waggles his eyebrows, laughing lightly, waiting to see if I’m going to offer an explanation. Not that I owe him one. I’m a grown-ass man who doesn’t owe anyone anything. Especially not one of my employees.

“It’s not what you think,” I say, brushing it off.

Because it’s not.

I was on my way home to change. Checking on the saplings is nothing more than a pit stop along the way.

And so what if I didn’t spend the night in my own bed. Actually, technically, I did. It was simply my bed at my parents’ house. Errr, well, in my old bedroom. Which counts. Sorta.

But after making my teenage fantasy a reality, discovering that two people do fit in the shower—although it’s tight—and then a fabulous taco dinner with my parents, there was no way I was going back to my house.

There was no place else I wanted to be than right next to Sawyer all night long.

Even if it meant spending the whole evening with my parents, including listening to Auggie pause every five minutes and explain what was happening in the episode of Slow Horses that they were watching, since my mother was clearly not keeping up. Or paying attention. Take your pick.

All of that meant I didn’t get a chance to hear about what Sawyer had been up to that had resulted in getting so dirty, but she can tell me about it this morning. Or better yet, show me .

“Swa, swa,” Calvin says, playfully elbowing me.

I nod, smiling and shaking my head, no clue as to what he said.

The stroke hit him hard, and out of nowhere, and he’s worked like a madman in rehab to get back to his old self.

Watching him this past summer out in the fields has been a wonder.

He’s slower than he used to be, but not by much.

His speech, though, is rough. And I have to admit, I don’t speak the new language.

Cary does a damn good job, and the new hire we have in the production plant, who is fluent in ASL and moves his hands around in a flurry of activity that I can’t even begin to follow, can hold a solid conversation with him. I am now reliant on them.

“Let’s go take a look at the saplings, shall we?” I say, nodding toward the grove. “Then I need a shower before heading to the lab.”

Calvin mumbles something, following behind me as I amble over the berm toward the grove.

The morning sun hits me directly in the eyes, blinding me for a moment.

A couple more steps forward adjusts my angle against the offending rays, and I can see again.

Although, the view that greets me makes me wish that I couldn’t.

I stop dead in my tracks, stomach plummeting, pulse skyrocketing. My whole world tilting off its axis.

I can’t believe what I’m looking at. Better yet, what I’m not looking at.

My saplings are gone.

I blink once, twice, a third time. Each instance harder than the last, as if it will somehow change what is before me. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t.

Not all of them. But an entire section. A good hundred-plus trees.

At least. No—maybe not that many. Right?

That would be crazy. I quickly try to math it out, because there were some holes already from saplings that didn’t survive the freeze.

And no one could have moved that many trees that quickly. Could they?

Then again, they did. I’m staring at the evidence.

“What the…” I mutter, unable to get it all out.

Calvin says something, but I don’t hear him. Not completely. And not just because I don’t understand him when he talks. No, my ears feel like they are filled with cotton, and there isn’t anything that is going to get through them right now. My trees are fucking gone. Gone.

I just need to breathe…

Fuck.

Seriously, I need to breathe. Panicking is the last thing I need to do.

Except, this is my worst nightmare. Everything I have been fighting against all summer.

When I woke up that morning in April and saw frost on the ground, all I could think about was losing trees.

Specifically these trees. And now, they’ve disappeared.

My stomach roils, acid churning on itself, the emptiness turning to queasiness the longer I look. I don’t even want to think about how many peaches that would be in a single season on those trees. Over all the seasons.

FUUUUUUCK…

I pull out my phone, ready to send an ARMADILLO text.

That would make two distress texts in less than five months.

Before this, I can’t remember the last time I sent one.

Hell, I can’t remember the last time any of us sent one.

Not seriously anyway. The one Hux sent of Gus’s smudged hand with what we later discovered to be Margeaux’s phone number doesn’t count.

Calvin taps me on the arm as I type, and I look over at him, realizing how calm he is. That the barren and empty grove isn’t a surprise to him.

“Calvin, how long has this been like this?” I ask, heart racing .

“Yennyay.”

What? I pause, running that back through my mind, not wanting to ask him to repeat himself.

“Yesterday?”

He nods, sighing. Okay, so this is new. It’s not like I missed something a week ago. I can work with that.

“What happened? Were you here?”

He reels back, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Throwing his arms out wide, he goes off, ranting and gesturing, one jumbled word after the next flying right over my head.

Languages have never been my strength, and at least with our workers who speak Spanish or some other foreign language, I have translation apps to help make up for my shortcomings. With Calvin, there isn’t an app for this. I do my best to follow along, but I got nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Other than panic. More and more panic as I realize that my trees are gone. Probably off somewhere dying.

I fought all summer to save these trees, to survive the worst peach season in over seventy years, only to have them stolen.

“Yennyay, so shjut asterisked Sawyer, and asher can…” he continues.

That’s when the wrecking ball hits me. Everything goes dark and fuzzy for a second, then comes back into focus, Calvin still muttering on, hand motions and all. But I caught that one word perfectly clear.

Sawyer.

“Wait, Calvin,” I stop him. “You said Sawyer. As in, my Sawyer?”

The possessiveness feels weird, especially since I’m asking this man to confirm or deny potential betrayal here. I also don’t know that he would know that he’s about to do such a thing.

Calvin nods, making the digging motion again. “Sawyer, ashercoo, an asher can.”

Sawyer asked them to dig up the trees…

Something in the back of my brain goes click. It’s a soft, shifting sound. Like something sliding into place. A latch snicking into place. Not a full-on snap or anything loud. A small, simple, little click.

But that’s all it takes.

Sawyer asked them to dig up the trees.

My trees.

That’s why she was covered in dirt. Because she’d spent the afternoon tearing up the sapling grove.

After everything we’ve been through this summer.

All the tests, questions, research—and I’m just talking in the lab, not even including our personal agreement—this is what she does.

Forget whether or not we can plant again to replace the trees we did lose, now we have all the saplings missing too.

You have to be fucking kidding me.

“Calvin, I have to go,” I grind out, turning on my heel.

I feel the tips of his fingers brush against my arm, the older man trying to get my attention as I storm off.

He continues to talk, his voice fading the farther I get from him, my focus on one thing and one thing alone—getting answers.

Which means finding Sawyer and asking her what the fuck she was thinking.

I’m in the car and back on the road in a heartbeat, heading for the lab.

I really should stick to my original plan—head home, shower, and change—to give myself some time to calm down.

But I can’t. I need answers. I need to know what gave her the idea to do this.

What made her think she had the right to pillage my field this way. Without asking me. Without telling me .

This is the kind of thing you tell someone. No matter what. Instead, she let last night happen. She let it all play out like she wasn’t holding on to some massive secret about the damage she did.

The sound of the road under my tires grates on my nerves with each passing second, making the normally short trip between field and lab feel like I’m circumnavigating the earth.

Each new thrum of my pulse in my ear feels like a tick of the countdown from an impending bomb.

And no matter how much I tell myself to relax, it seems to have the opposite effect, making my heart speed up and punch harder against my rib cage.

It’s that indignation that’s currently holding me together. Without it, the rest of me might fall to pieces.

I swing the truck wide, pulling into the greenhouse parking lot and slamming my truck into park.

It’s barely in gear before I’ve got the ignition off and I’m storming into the greenhouse.

The humid air slams into me, slowing me down for a split second, but I press forward, pushing past my best friend, who is examining a new batch of tomatoes.

“Morning,” he calls after me when I don’t say anything. “Isn’t that what you were wearing yesterday?”

Seriously? He fucking noticed that?

I stop, turning around to look at him. Cary lifts an eyebrow, his dark hair perfectly in place as always. Uptight Cary Adler wouldn’t look any other way, even when working in a greenhouse.

“Did you know?” I ask, not bothering to hide any accusation from my voice.

Because it’s possible he did. He and Sawyer were together yesterday afternoon. They’ve become friends this summer as they’ve worked together in the lab. Fuck, he was the one who invited her here to begin with .

“Know what?” He squints, looking me up and down like yesterday’s clothes hold the answer. “Is this a trick question?”

I calm slightly, his initial reaction enough to convince me he wasn’t some weird co-conspirator. But only slightly.

“So you weren’t in on it?”

“I would have to know what it is…”

I huff, my anger rising up again. There isn’t time to explain. Someone owes me an explanation. And that someone is in the lab.

“Anton!” Cary calls as I storm off.

But I don’t stop. I keep moving, fueled by this fire and a need to know what happened.

The door hits the wall as it opens with a loud bang, one that reverberates through the lab, shaking everything inside, including the Rube Golberg along the side. A couple of dominos fall, but thankfully it doesn’t set off the whole chain reaction. That is the last thing I need right now.

Sawyer looks up from her computer, her bright brown eyes full of concern as they land on me.

“Anton,” she exclaims, pushing up from her chair. She gives me a once-over, registering what everyone else already has. “Is everything okay? What happened to heading home to shower and change?”

I step inside, blood rushing through me at an epic pace, only one question flowing through my mind.

“What the fuck did you do to my saplings?”

“What?”

I inhale deeply, hating that she’s playing dumb. Because Sawyer Brown is anything but.

“You heard me. What…the fuck…did you do with my saplings?”

“I moved them.”

Snap!

That’s all it takes. Three simple words. The dam breaks inside me and rage surges, a tidal wave of emotion taking over. She has to be fucking kidding me.

“You did what?”

Shifting her weight, Sawyer’s expression goes hard. She crosses her arms, squaring off like she’s ready for battle. One thing I know about Sawyer—she doesn’t back down.

“I moved them.”