Page 98 of Bend Toward the Sun

“Rowaaaaan!” he shouted, dramatically drawing out the last syllable.

She took a big breath and sprinted to the lake.

Harry treaded water a meter or so out. A cabin was faintly visible behind her, but there were no vehicles there, and no lightson. She dropped Harry’s stuff to the warm wood surface of the dock and slipped off her shoes.

Let them see.

Her clothes joined Harry’s in the haphazard pile, and Rowan dove fearlessly into the cloud tide.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Harry

“Let’s go back and make some pancake noises,” Rowan had murmured against Harry’s mouth on the dock after their impromptu swim, both of them still bare naked and stippled with goose bumps.

They’d hastily tugged their clothes over lake-water-wet skin, and walked most of the way back up the valley slope with fingers linked tight. Harry tried to ignore the ache in his throat when she eased her hand out of his just before they emerged from the cover of the Chardonnay rows.

She was leaving today.

After a frenzied and inelegant quickie against the slick shower wall, Rowan didn’t linger with him in the bathroom. Harry could see her mounting anxiety about being discovered there, plain as the sun now blazing in the summer sky. People were starting to arrive for work in the vineyard, and each rumble of tires along the gravel lane in front of the carriage house represented another pair of eyes who could discover their secret. She’d promised to stay until he finished so they could say a proper goodbye.

For a moment, Harry turned the water as hot as he could stand, letting it blast his neck and shoulders. The steam churned thick around him, just as the fog had shrouded them this morning at the lake.

Cloud tide.

It was almost cruel, this plot twist. Rowan had finally given him full access to an intimate part of her past, right before she was going to leave. So many things were in scalpel-sharp focus now—her issues with trust went far deeper than the mystery guy named Noah. Maybe it wasbecauseshe was leaving that she felt empowered to share with him. Maybe she felt safe to show her hand now that she knew she’d soon be walking away from the table.

But Harry felt a spark of hope, too. She’d wanted to tell him she loved him as they stood there in the fog. He was sure of it.

She was leaving today.

Just tell her you love her, asshole.

He punched the shower faucet off with the side of his fist and forced out a wet breath.

She was leaving today, and she would leave again.

What if you went with her?

Harry dried off and pulled on a pair of shorts. He was still toweling his hair when he emerged from the bedroom. No trace of Rowan—only the hum of the fridge and the creak of his weight against the floorboards.

“Hey, you still here?” Harry said, expecting her to emerge from the little laundry room, or come in from the back deck.

She didn’t.

It wasn’t like her to not say goodbye, especially since she’d promised to stay until he finished his shower. Harry scratched his jaw, looped the wet towel over the back of a chair, and poured fresh coffee, puzzled. In the middle of the narrow kitchen bar sat Rowan’s mug. He’d bought it for her just after she began spending the night—it had a wide handle and said in big block letters, OOPS, I WET MY PLANTS. The coffee inside was still hot enough that a slow-motion curl of steam rose from it.

Harry froze midsip with the rim of his mug against his bottom lip. Lying next to Rowan’s mug was a small array of envelopes.

Themail.

He hadn’t left it on the bar. It had been in a clip on the fridge, blank sides out. Rowan would have seen it there when she refilled her mug. Maybe she’d taken the clip down out of idle curiosity.

Fuck.

It didn’t matterwhyshe’d looked. In the stack were two unopened envelopes from Lena, a piece of junk mail from the dealership where he’d rented his truck, and a letter from Nicola with a check for his share of the sale of their old Subaru. Harry looked down at her familiar slashing handwriting, and his guts bottomed out.

The return address sticker plainly read,DR. NICOLA BALDWIN BRADY. Below it, their Los Angeles address.