Page 47 of Sawyer

I’m getting good at that. I’ve been doing it for weeks.

Over the ripple of his pectoral muscle, I spy my phone on the bedside table. I put it on Do Not Disturb when Sawyerknocked on my door. Clark’s been texting and calling more often lately, and with added pressure from my father, I feel myself growing weak. If Clark keeps calling, and my father keeps insisting that I give him another chance, I feel like I might give in.

Stop it. Don’t think about Clark. Not right now.

Especially when nothing has ever felt more right—not in my entire life—than this summer spent in Sawyer’s arms.

I close my eyes again, concentrating on Sawyer’s heart.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Live in the moment, Ivy. Live in the moment.

It’s good advice. When I don’t take it—when I think about leaving him—it feels like someone’s reaching into my chest, putting their fingers around my heart like a cage, and trying to rip it from my body. It comes as close as I’ve ever imagined it would feel to die a painful death.

“You okay?” he asks me, the rumble of his deep voice making my eyes open.

“Mm-hm.”

“You’re quiet, princess.”

I lean up on his chest and tell myself to smile. And despite the chaos in my mind, it comes easily. It’s so easy to love him.

Stop it. You don’t love him. That’s not allowed.

“It’s intense sometimes,” I say, pressing my lips to his skin and lingering there.

“Always,” he corrects me. “It’salwaysintense. Since the first time.”

He’s right. It is.

The first time I had sex with Sawyer, I didn’t know it couldbelike that. I didn’t know it couldfeellike that. Those first few weeks, we were like an addiction to each other. We couldn’t get enough of touching each other, making love to each other, bathing together, just being together. Being apartwas agony, even if our separation could be counted in minutes. Coming together was nirvana, but never enough. And that was back before my feelings for him had crystallized. The way I feel now is so much deeper and more dangerous than it was at the beginning of the summer. The way I feel now—

Stop it. Don’t think about your feelings for him. They don’t matter.

Live in the moment.

“Do you have to go back to Dyea?” I whisper.

We coordinated our work schedules to be free this afternoon, but I’m never sure how much time we have. Sometimes he has to go back to work, or I do, or we both do.

“Nope. Not until tomorrow morning.”

“Same. Free until nine a.m.,” I say, tracing our names on his chest with my fingers.

“That tickles.”

He reaches for my hand and presses my fingers to his lips, then lowers it back to his chest, his hand flush over mine. His fingers shift, weaving through mine until they’re braided together.

Another breeze winds its way through the window as a second ship’s horn bellows.

Time to go. Time to go.

“Late August,” sighs Sawyer, reaching for the bunched-up blanket beside me, and pulling it over our bodies. “Starting to get chilly. Are you cold?”

I lean up and grin at him. “I’m from Fairbanks, southern boy.”

His face cracks into a wide grin, and he chuckles, letting go of my hand to run his fingers through his messy dirty-blond hair.

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