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Harry’s head snapped up. Through the sliding glass door to the deck, he saw Rowan slip into the vineyard. She was taking the incognito route back to her place on the hill.
Coffee sloshed over the rim of Harry’s mug, burning his hand as he banged it down onto the polished granite. He was out the door and sprinting across the lawn before he remembered he was still barefoot and shirtless.
She moved fast. Fast enough that by the time he was in the vines, she was already out of sight.
“Rowan!” Harry shouted.
No reply. A stone jabbed into his heel as he ran. A red haze of pain burst behind his eyes.
Harry half skipped, limping as he ran. He surged out of the far side of the vineyard, squinting against the overbright sun. A twiggy grapevine cane had lodged between his toes. He impatiently bent down to yank it free and fling it away.
Rowan vanished into the meadow.
Ithadto be the fucking meadow.
“Rowan! Stop. Please,” Harry called, skidding to a halt afew yards short of the weedy path into the tall vegetation. He couldseespiderwebs from where he stood—there weren’t many in the shoulder-high grasses yet, but there were plenty along the ground, dew-bright and sparking silver in the vivid morning light.
Harry bit down hard on his molars, swallowing an impotent roar of frustration. The sound emerged instead as an agonized whimper-moan behind clenched teeth. He fucking hated himself for being so pathetic.
Angry tears sprung to his eyes.
“Rowan.” It came out as a croak.
The breeze in the grasses suddenly became the monotone crackle of rain on an ambulance roof. Harry’s knees nearly buckled. Fingertips curled involuntarily into palms, short nails digging, clawing, until the strain of it made his knuckles creak inside his skin. The air in his lungsburned. He was desperate to exhale, inhale, swallow, scream—anything—but his throat locked tight, tight enough that the muscles in his neck and chest had gone rigid.
Breathe.
“Let’s breathe. We’ll do it together, okay?”
Harry would remember that moment in the meadow last autumn—the way his hand felt against her warm chest—until the day he died.
Breathe.
Harry gulped air. Breathed a choking breath. Lurched forward one step. Two.
“Well, that’s perfect. In nature, when you survive, you win.”
“Rowan!” he shouted, racing forward on the path.
Harry caught up to her fast. “Please stop,” he gasped, and she froze with her back to him. The shoulders of her filmy T-shirt were darkened from the shower-damp fall of her hair.
He closed the distance between them, wincing at the debrislittering the meadow path underfoot. His attention shifted to the tall vegetation on either side of them.
He wouldnotlose his shit right now.
Rowan turned. Harry smelled the sunscreen on her skin, and the familiar herbal scent of her shampoo. The evening she’d showed up at his place with that shampoo and pink toothbrush in her little overnight bag was seared into his memory. It had been her wordless way of saying,Hi, I’m here, and I plan to stay awhile. They’d recklessly, joyfully taken each other against the kitchen countertop, and knocked an entire bowl of brownie batter to the floor. More than a month later, Harry was still finding places where the chocolate had splattered and dried.
“Someone will hear you,” she hissed. Her eyes dipped to his bare chest before diverting away to the meadow.
“Let them.”
Silence.
“Please,” he repeated.
“Harrison—”
Oh, shit.
