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“What if youwantedto stay longer?” He held up a hand when her mouth dropped open to protest. “Purely hypothetical.”
“I’ve come too far with my career to not follow through now.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he said.
“Nathan and I have already started talking about my replacement.”
Impatience heated his tone. “I’m not talking about the goddamned job. I’m talking about us.”
“There’s nous. I thought you understood that when you knocked on my door tonight.” Rowan pinched the pillow tighter against her breasts.
Harrison’s frustration faded as quickly as it flared. He nibbled his thumbnail for a moment—an anxious behavior she’d never seen from him. “I just meant—if you—someday—changed your mind. About us.”
“I’m not built forus,Harry. I’m messy, selfish, impatient—”
“Stop.” He bolted all the way up, glorious in his nakedness. “Say that again.”
“What? I’m messy, I’m selfish—”
“Not that part.” His chest noticeably rose and fell as he breathed faster. “The part where you finally called meHarry.”
“I didn’t—” Rowan squeezed the pillow tighter and frowned. “This is hard for me. I didn’t expect to be so—so f-fond of you.”
“Ah, Christ.” He pressed the heels of his palms against his forehead. “Kill me now.”
This had gone far enough. She stretched her legs to get up.
He snatched her arm, then quickly let it drop. “I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before.” He gestured between them. “Whatever this is.”
“Thisis two consenting adults, enjoying sex.”
He went silent for a while, scratching the sheet with a fingernail.
“I guess you got what you wanted, then,” he said.
“And you didn’t?” Rowan fired back.
For a moment, he studied her. Then he grabbed the pillow out of her hands and flung it across the room, pushing her back to the mattress. With a knee, he nudged her thighs apart.
“Not yet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Harry
May was a time of vivid transformation. The vineyard wore a mellow green haze, and the roses at the ends of the trellis posts exploded in crimson. Between the rows, the cover crop bloomed, a sea of dainty purple flowers.
Harry loved watching Rowan work. She was steadfast and strong, thinning shoots in the vineyard, tending Ma’s perennials, caring for the sheep. He often saw her giving impromptu ecology lessons to Alice and Grey after school. One day, they peered into a nest of baby birds in a low shrub by the greenhouse. On another, Harry saw the three of them on the ground by the sheep barn, butts in the air, investigating a huge toad. They weeded flower beds for Ma, planted veggie seedlings for Dad, and scattered marigold seeds around the raised beds. One afternoon, the trio made mud pies in the greenhouse, and Harry later learned they’d been quietly celebrating Rowan’s birthday with her. She hadn’t told anyone else.
The visceral joy she took in engagement with nature was contagious, and the kids thought she hung the moon. Harry agreed.
Whenever he could get free of the rigorous schedule Duncan and Dad kept him on, Harry was by her side. In the greenhouse, they restored cabinets with new hardware, and refinished tablesand benches until every bit of wood in the place gleamed smooth. Duncan installed new floorboards to replace the warped ones, then buffed and sealed the hardwood to a fresh shine. They’d spent four whole days up and down ladders, with brushes and long-handled squeegees and buckets of soapy water and vinegar, cleaning the calcium deposits and years of grime from each individual panel of glass. It was smelly work, and the vinegar burned the blisters and scrapes on his hands. But Harry had loved every wet, messy moment of it, because he’d spent it with her.
While tilling the flower bed around the front porch of the main house, they’d found a vintage Olde Philadelphia coffee tin full of antique marbles, and a few ancient matchbox cars. Rowan had done a pirouette of delight when they uncovered a big bed of purple-tipped asparagus poking out from an overgrown area near the bank barn. Harry learned the difference between pill bugs and sow bugs, about spur pruning versus cane pruning, and that hummingbirds use spider silk to bind their tiny nests. She taught him the scientific names of at least a dozen wild birds on the land, and the same for twice as many plants. He loved listening to the Latin roll from her tongue. Rowan was ceaseless in her desire to share knowledge, to cultivate in others that same affection and appreciation for the world around them. She was a born nurturer, whether she admitted it or not.
It was bittersweet for him, really. Sinclair was growing more and more insistent in her emails, asking him when he might come back to work, pressing for a return date. There had been a time when practicing medicine had infused him with the same enthusiasm Rowan had for the natural world. Harry wasn’t sure if he’d ever find it again, and he’d give anything to have even a glimmer of the passion she had.
Every night, when the sky dimmed and spring peepers began to sing, Harry and Rowan belonged to each other. Often, they’d shower off the sweat and grime of the day together, lingering there under the rainfall showerhead until the water ran cold. He’d untangle ride-along twigs and leaves from her hair, and she’d gently extract splinters from his hands. Some nights, they would stay up past midnight, breaking each other’s backs against the mattress of his big bed. Other nights, they’d quietly curl up on opposite ends of his couch, Rowan with her laptop, and he with a book. They’d make impromptu late-night meals together, and he’d been amused to discover she was a terrible cook. She’d been delighted to find he was an excellent one. Their conversations were effortless, and the silences were, too. Rowan hadn’t made a small-talk joke in weeks.
