Page 11 of Sawyer

But even greater than my need for murder is my need for advice. And with Hunter in Seattle with his fiancée, Paw-Paw trapped in the kitchen with Gran and my sisters, and my dad running errands with Harper, my only hope for some male advice is my older brother, Tanner. Hoping he’s not indulging in some “afternoon delight” with his still-new bride, I leave the lodge and knock on his cabin door.

McKenna answers—fully dressed, thank god—almost immediately.

“Sawyer! Come in!”

“I don’t want to bother you,” I tell her. “Just looking for Tan.”

“He went fishing,” she says. “Said he wanted to catch dinner.”

I’ve noticed that Tanner and McKenna often have dinner in their cabin, and sometimes I envy them and their alone time.I don’t think I’ve eaten a meal without Gran, Paw-Paw, Dad, Parker, and Reeve my entire life. Don’t get me wrong. I love my family…but they can also be a lot sometimes.

“Anything I can help with?”

I shake my head. “Nah. It’s okay.”

She steps onto the porch and sits in one of two rocking chairs, pointing to the other.

“I give good advice,” she says. “I promise.”

I sit down across from her. “How do you know I need advice?”

She shrugs. “Just a feeling.”

Unlike my sisters, who prefer to beat information out of me, McKenna’s more laid-back approach makes me actuallywantto talk.

“You ever met Ivy Caswell?”

“I have,” she says. “I mean, I don’t reallyknowher, but we’ve said hello.”

I take a deep breath. “You ever had a complicated relationship with someone?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Were you and Tanner complicated?”

She chuckles. “You were here for it. You know the answer to that!”

My brother told me once that the first time he saw McKenna, he thought she was a teenage boy. If that’s not complicated, I don’t know what is.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, rocking back and forth, and I’m grateful for the way McKenna doesn’t force me to say more right away.

“Want some tea?” she asks, rubbing her hands together. “It’s a little chilly out.”

“Sure,” I say.

She pops back into the cabin to make tea, and I think about what I want to ask her, about what I want to say, about what’s weighing down my heart. When she returns, I take the tea and let the hot mug warm my hands.

“If someone’s engaged,” I say, getting right to the heart of the matter, “they’re off the market, right? Even if you feel like there’s unfinished business between you, you can’t make a play for them, right? It’s too late. It’d be wrong.”

“I don’t know about that,” she says, blowing on the steam rising up from her mug. “Marriage is one thing. Marriage is a binding contract, emotionally and legally. But an engagement isn’t legal or binding. In my opinion, theintentionto get married is totally different frombeingmarried. An engagement gives the couple time to plan, you know? They plan their wedding, obviously, but they also figure out where they want to live, how to divvy up their finances, whether or not they want kids. An engagement is the time to sort out the big stuff that comes after the vows are spoken. Sometimes an engaged couple might find, during that planning process, that theyweren’tmeant to be. An engagement gives you the time and space to change your mind.”

I mull over what she’s saying, putting it into context where Ivy and I are concerned.

“Did I hear that Ivy got engaged?” McKenna asks nonchalantly, taking a sip of tea.

“Yeah. To her college boyfriend.”

“Has she been with him for a while?”

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