Page 21 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

Logan’s shoulder sways, but he presses higher. With shaking fingers, I manage to grab hold of the pear. It glints as it snaps free.

“Got it!” I exclaim.

Logan curses, then staggers.

We both fall. He reaches for me, grasping for my shoulders, but it’s too late. I land on my back, Logan on top of me.

“Shit, I’m so sorry!” I nearly shout at him. “I—”

I stop short when I realize his hand is cradling the back of my head, his nose hovering just above mine.

Neither of us moves.

We’re chest to chest, mouth to mouth. As close as we were that summer afternoon when Logan yanked me behind a stack of picking bins to avoid getting assigned another job by his mom. We ended up pressed together in the shadows, breathless and still as we waited for her to pass. So close I could feel his heartbeat knock against mine.

Just as it did that day, Logan’s gaze travels from my eyes to my mouth. I feel his thumb twitch against the back of my head, a shadow of a stroke.

My heart thumps: once, twice. And, oh no. It’s been fourteen years. I ended an engagement only a month ago. I’m barely holding the line against an avalanche of grief. All of that should speed bump my heart’s reckless careening down these memory-slicked tracks. Yet the way I used to feel about Logan—that intense bleating in my teenage heart—seems to be pure muscle memory, just as familiar as riding a bicycle or driving a tractor.

Because all I can think about is how he smells like the orchard: musk and earth and something just on the edge of sweetness. All I can think about are his lips.

A rumbling sound reverberates through the trees. We both twist to find a Subaru peeling up the soft driveway.

“My aunt’s here,” I say, throat tight.

Logan swallows and pulls himself away.

Chapter Five

“Show it to me,” Val demands as she hurtles toward us, ignoring the booted limp that’s threatening to slow her warpath. Her hair is a wild mess and damp at the ends, which I assume means she skipped blowing it dry before she careened over here.

She smacks me in the chest with a book called Arbory Health in the Pacific Northwest and wrestles the offending piece of fruit from Logan. Her scowl deepens as she turns it over, catching the pearlescent tint in the thick, white coating.

“Definitely strange, right?” I ask. “Like for sure this isn’t irrigation water or residue from a pesticide.”

She doesn’t answer right away, still too absorbed by the offending fruit. “This is the first you’re seeing this?”

“Well, no. You and me saw that one odd pear last week.”

“That was—” She cuts herself off. Swallows. “Was that the first you saw of it? Last week?”

“I…Yes? But I haven’t been out here as much as I should have been in the last month. Why do you ask?”

She mutters, not by way of answer but more to herself, “ ’Cause it turns out I might have been wrong about something.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, just keeps her lips pressed tight. I don’t like the look in her eyes. It reminds me too much of the face she made when Uncle Martin told me he needed a CT scan. Val was hovering in the background of our video call, shooting sharp glances into the screen, even as Uncle Martin assured me that everything was going to be okay.

I believed him for a long time—well past the time he stopped believing it.

“So, you know what it is?” Logan asks.

Val startles and squints up at him like she’s just registering his presence. “Logan Wright. How you doing, kid?”

He nods. “Shouldn’t complain.”

“And your brothers?”