“Aw,” I say. “That’s awfully nice.”
Faint color rises in his cheeks, and he waves me off. “Thought about doing it a good-neighbor fence, where the pickets alternate so neither of us sees the back, but I don’t like the way those look. So I did it this way.”
“And the lattice?”
The lattice strikes me as very un-Sawyer-like. It’s beautiful, ornamental, but it doesn’t fit his no-nonsense style.
“Thought you’d like it,” he says, with another of his eloquent shrugs.
It’s hard to express exactly how that makes me feel. Warm and fuzzy, and also a little terrified. Because this is a guy who—with a few words and a throwaway gesture—can make me feel like I actually matter.
Pretty much everything that’s happened to me in the last year has made me feel like I don’t. Trevor’s actions this year have not only hurt my feelings in the short term but also made me question every time I ever believed or trusted him, every time I ever felt safe and secure in his affections. Trevor did a bang-up job of making me feel like I didn’t matter at all, and never really had.
And then Sawyer Paulson goes and builds a few lattice panels and all of a sudden I go all soft and gooey.
Hmm. I may be in trouble.
I can’t even run away, because he lives here.
“Don’t you like it?” he asks.
There is a wariness on his face that I can’t stand, like the expression of a dog that has been beaten one too many times.
I sigh. “Sawyer. I love it.”