“You want to come in?” he asks.

I shake my head, hugging my arms around my shoulders. It’s almost seventy degrees out but I’m freezing. Is this what heartbreak feels like? Like a hot skewer in my chest and I’m too cold and can’t take a deep breath and want to cry all over Oliver’s awkwardly naked shoulder?

Heartbroken sucks. I want to kick it in the nuts.

“Look, Harlow,” he starts, before pulling me in for a hug. “Aw, pet, you’re shaking.”

“I’m freaking out,” I admit, leaning into him. How could Finn just leave town? “Oliver . . . what the fuck?”

He pulls back and looks down at me. Way down at me. Holy shit Oliver is tall. “I’ve known Finn for a long time,” he says slowly. “It takes a lot to get him upset, and even more before he shows it.” He winces a little and then says, “I can tell you’re upset, too, but he basically grunted out a few words, said we’d talk soon, and then walked out to his truck. I dunno what’s going on with him, or why he left or . . . anything, really, that might help you feel better. You sure you don’t want to come in?”

I shake my head again. “He didn’t tell you what happened?”

Oliver laughs a little. “Finn rarely tells us much of anything. He usually tells us things after he’s got them all figured out. If there’s something going on with him, and he confided in you, then he wasn’t lying when he said it first.”

“Said what—oh,” I say. He’s talking about the I love you. Ugh. Punch to the gut.

He bends, catching my eyes. “Call him, yeah?”

Chapter FOURTEEN

Finn

I DID A LOT of things in San Diego that weren’t stereotypical Finn Roberts: sleeping in, watching TV, buying Starbucks coffee, not working a steady fifteen hours a day. But this—driving away as the sun sets over the water—is the first familiar feeling I’ve had in a long time.

Oliver came home while I was packing and watched me warily from the doorway. “You want some coffee for the road?” he’d asked.

“Yeah, that’d be good.”

Things had been the slightest bit tense between us, and I knew there were probably a hundred questions Oliver would ask if given the chance. In turn, he knew there were about a hundred reasons why I wouldn’t answer any of them, and so once my bag was closed, we walked to the kitchen, stood over the Keurig in silence, both of us watching the final drip drip drip of coffee into the cup below.

“You can’t have this one,” he said, turning away from me to spoon in more sugar than any human should probably consume in one sitting.

“Of course I can’t. It’s your Aqua Man mug, you think I want to lose an eye?”

He glanced up at me, smiling weakly. “No, you can’t take that one because yours will take a few minutes to brew and I wanted the chance to talk to you before you left.”

“Ah.”

“I know you have some stuff going on.” He let the sentence hang for a moment, suspended in the air while he walked to the fridge and retrieved a carton of half-and-half.

I felt a flash of panic, worried that Harlow had decided to get even with me after all, and told him everything. But she hadn’t; I knew this even without hearing what else he had to say. Harlow may be a lot of things—meddling, naïve, impulsive—but disloyal is absolutely not one of them.

He returned to the counter and opened up the carton, checking the date before continuing without missing a beat. Like we were just having a casual conversation after work, like he wasn’t giving me yet another chance to open up. Which of course, I didn’t.

“Just know that you can talk to me.”

“I know,” I said, grateful that Oliver never seemed to push. “Thanks.”

And that was it. He handed me my coffee, gave me a long hug that would have bordered on awkward even for Ansel, and I left.

I pulled out of his neighborhood and headed straight for the I-5, not glancing even once at the road behind me.

THIRTY-THREE HOURS AND one horrible, sleepless hotel night later, I’m home. I pull into my driveway—the sound of gravel crunching beneath my tires is like a lullaby—and see my house for the first time in weeks. It weird to be home and see how small and alien everything familiar looks after I’ve been out in the wide-open world for what feels like forever.

It’s in these moments I realize just how different my world is from Harlow’s. How much quieter. Instead of buildings crowding overhead, my view here is nothing but towering evergreens, crystal blue water and sky; color in stretches that seem to go on forever. I’m almost completely surrounded by forest, so much so that even the smell of the water on the back side of the house is eclipsed by the heavy scent of decaying trees and foliage out front. There’s no traffic, no noise, and it’s entirely possible to just start walking and go days without ever seeing another person.

The air feels wet—everything feels wet—and my boots squelch in the grass that needs mowing along the drive. After weeks in the California sun, the temperature takes me by surprise. By next month the storm season will be here, and in just the few weeks since I’ve been away, the leaves have started to change, the ground is littered with spikes of orange and red and brown. I climb up the porch and fish out my key, kicking away even more leaves that have gathered in little clumps around the mat. The lock opens easily and the door swings wide, the screen door closing with a creak and a groan at my back.

My house is a tiny two-bedroom, but it’s clean and comfortable, and just a few steps out the back door puts you right on the water. I managed to buy it in one of our better years, and I’m grateful now to Sensible Finn who thought ahead and bought a house, rather than dumbass Colton who bought a gas-guzzling Mustang and a condo all the way in Victoria.

It’s stale and musty inside, and so I set down my bag and walk from room to room, opening the windows to air the place out. It brings in the chill, but it’s worth it and almost instantly the house is filled with the scent of salt and pine. A set of glass doors along the back wall leads out onto a deck where the only view is miles of blue and green, the tree line so thick in some places it stretches clear down the bank to the water’s edge.

I leave the doors open and force myself to the kitchen to find something to eat, and quickly realize the mistake I made not grabbing something on my way through town. The fridge is practically empty but I manage to scrounge up a can of soup and some peaches I find in the pantry, and stave off starvation until I can make it to the store tomorrow.