By the time the last car pulled out of the driveway, the sun was only two fingers away from the horizon. It was that shimmering golden hour right before sunset where everything seemed to glow. Alone, Izzy propped her trusty beach cruiser against the shed, and walked out to the pier to check on the upwellers one last time before leaving.

Their newest crop of baby oysters had gotten plenty of attention tonight, and after all the hands that had been on them, she wanted to make sure the systems were still functioning properly. Carefully inspecting each of the tanks, she adjusted the tilt of a few buckets, checked the water pressure in each of the pipes, and spread a few of the babies around that had gotten clumped up.

Satisfied they were safe for the night, she wiped her wet hands on her shorts and looked out at the water. She could still feel the endorphins pumping through her—that same natural high she always felt after a successful event. But the buzz seemed stronger this time, fueled by a deeper emotion she hadn’t experienced in several months.

Pride.

She’d forgotten how good it felt, how badly she’d needed it. Wanting to hold onto it—to let the emotion wrap itself all the way around her—she lingered on the pier, listening to the water lapping against the pilings and watching the colors in the sky shift from blue to gold.

When she’d replayed the entire evening in her mind, soaking up all the memories, she thought back to all the places she’d lived in her life—the farms of her childhood, the military bases during her years of service, the brief stint in Baltimore after she’d left the Army—and tried to remember if any of them had been this beautiful.

Or this peaceful.

For the first time since crossing the drawbridge five weeks ago, she wondered what it would be like to stay here. She’d been on the move her whole life. Every location had been chosen for her. Even the house in Baltimore that she’d bought for her grandmother had been tied to a job; the only reason they’d moved there was because her grandmother had secured a position as a domestic worker with a family in that city.

Now that her grandmother was gone, did she even want to live in Baltimore anymore?

She guessed, when it came down to it, she didn’t have much choice. From what she’d heard from Colin, employers weren’t exactly lining up to call her in for an interview. She’d go wherever she could find work. The same way she’d done in the military. The same way she’d done with her mother and grandmother as a child.

A faint jingling of dog tags drew her gaze over her shoulder. Surprised to find Zoey lumbering toward her, she reached down to pet the chocolate lab as soon as she was close enough. “What are you still doing here? I thought your dad…” She trailed off as Ryan walked out of the shed. “Hi,” she said, straightening. “I didn’t see your truck. I thought you’d left.”

“I parked behind the office,” he said. “I was unloading some boxes on the second floor and saw you out here.”

“I wanted to check on the nursery,” she said, a little embarrassed at having been caught out here so long after the party had ended, “make sure all the pipes were still running after so many people had touched them.”

“I always check everything before I leave,” Ryan said, but he didn’t seem to mind that she was still here. If anything, he seemed glad to have the company. Stopping a few feet away from her, he leaned his arms on the edge of the tank and looked out at the water.

The last rays of sunlight warmed his profile. There were more blond streaks in his hair now than when she’d first met him. His skin was several shades darker, and the muscles in his arms were more defined than they’d been at the beginning of the summer. A vision of him shirtless—when he’d changed into his Pearl Cove Oysters T-shirt earlier—swam into her mind.

Her body responded instantly, the same way it had then. She felt the sharp tug of attraction, the tightening deep in her belly, and braced herself for the memories of the last time a man had touched her.

But they never came.

Instead, Zoey leaned against her, nuzzling her hand for a chin-scratch.

Izzy let out a breath, marveling at the fact that she was alone with a man she was attracted to and she wasn’t freaking out. Determined to face her fears a little longer, she followed Ryan’s gaze out to the water. “What kind of boat is that?” she asked, eyeing the graceful sailing vessel that had caught his attention.

“It’s a skipjack,” he said, “one of the Bay’s earliest oystering boats. They’ve been used to dredge oysters for over a hundred years, but they’re unique to this area. You won’t find them anywhere else.”

“Do people still use them to…dredge for oysters,” she asked, testing out the new verb.

“Very few,” Ryan answered. “Their heyday was in the late 1800’s, when our oyster harvests were at their peak. The decline of the oyster population hit them hard. There are only about twenty skipjacks left in the Bay now, and only about five or six of those are still dredging commercially.” He nodded toward the one in front of them. “That’s Billy Sadler’s boat. He takes tourists out on sunset cruises to bring in some extra cash in the summer. It’s what a lot of skipjack captains are doing now.”

Izzy wondered how they felt about that—being the first generation to witness their livelihood fall into history. It couldn’t be easy. But, then again, what was the alternative? If they didn’t want to do what Ryan was doing, at least they still got to go out on their boats, talk about the good old days, share their favorite stories with people who were interested enough to pay money to hear them.

“Speaking of random oyster facts,” Ryan said, turning to face her, “how did you know all that stuff about Wellfleet?”

Izzy smiled, remembering the conversation she’d had with the man in the pink shirt earlier and how much she’d enjoyed chipping away at his pretentions. “Paul asked me to help him come up with a plan for how to launch your two brands at the end of the summer. I figured I should start by looking at what some of the most successful farms are doing to market their oysters first—see if there was anything we could learn from them. Once I started digging into their websites, I guess I got a little excited.”

“Clearly,” he said, with a note of laughter in his voice.

“You went to graduate school up there, right?” Izzy asked. “In Massachusetts?”

Ryan nodded. “I lived in Woods Hole for six years.”

“Did you ever consider staying up there?” she asked, wanting to satisfy a curiosity that had been nagging her ever since learning about those other farms. “If you’d opened a farm in New England—where the waters are saltier and the oysters already have a great reputation—you wouldn’t have had so many battles to fight.”

“I prefer to make things difficult for myself,” Ryan joked.

He was making light of it, Izzy thought, shifting slightly so she could get a better view of his face. But there was nothing lightweight about any of the decisions he’d made. She knew, now, why he’d come back here. He’d come back because this was his home, because these waters were suffering, and because this was where he could make the most difference.

In opening a farm on the Chesapeake Bay, Ryan had known exactly what he was getting into. He’d known he would face resistance, not only from future consumers, but from some of the islanders—people he’d grown up with. And, somehow, despite the risk, he’d managed to convince his father to join him as well.

Remembering how strangely he’d reacted to the photographs of the two of them earlier, she asked, “Do you think your father had a good time tonight?”

“I’m amazed he stayed as long as he did. Cocktail parties aren’t really his thing.”

Izzy smiled. “Yeah, I picked up on that.”

Ryan’s gaze drifted out to the water again. A pair of kayakers had paused at the edge of the marshes to watch the sun sink into the horizon. All around them, the surface of the water shimmered, reflecting the shifting colors of the sky. “That table you set up—the one with the pictures of my father and me. It almost made it seem like we were close.”

“Aren’t you?” Izzy asked, surprised.

Ryan shook his head. “He wishes I were teaching on a research ship or working in a lab somewhere.”

Izzy’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“He thinks I made a mistake in moving back here—that I’m wasting my degree and wrecking my chances of ever having a career in academia again.”

“Do you want to have a career in academia again?”

“No.”

“Then…I’m not sure what the problem is.”

Ryan looked at her. “He doesn’t want me here.”

“Of course he does,” Izzy said, rolling her eyes. Coop Callahan might be a man of few words, but there was no doubt in her mind that he loved his son. “He believes in you.”

Ryan laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

Izzy paused in the middle of petting Zoey. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head slowly.

Izzy stared at him. She couldn’t believe this was how he saw his relationship with his father. How could he be so intelligent about so many things, and so dense about this? “Your father gave up his livelihood for you, Ryan. He turned his back on the only world he’d ever known to work on this farm—because you asked him to. And when you decided to team up with Will and Colin, and hire a bunch of veterans you’d never even met, he went along with it. He might not know how to say it to your face, but he believes in you.”

Ryan continued to regard her skeptically, but at least he wasn’t laughing anymore. Izzy wondered how long it would take him to recognize the truth. Shaking her head, she looked back at the sunset, at the shots of pink streaking through the sky.

“What about you?” Ryan asked. “Are you close with your parents?”

“My parents are gone.”

“Both of them?”

Izzy nodded, tracking the path of a blackbird over the marshes. “I never knew my father. He died before I was born in the village where my family lived in Mexico. I was raised by my mother and grandmother.”

“Did you grow up in Mexico?”

“No.” Izzy shook her head. “I was born here. My mother was pregnant when she and my grandmother…made the crossing.”

Ryan was quiet for a few moments, processing what she’d just said. “What happened to your mother?”

“My mother died in the fields when I was thirteen.”

“What fields?” Ryan asked, confused.

Izzy said nothing, waiting for him to put two and two together.

“Wait…” Ryan said, his eyes widening. “You don’t mean…?”

Izzy looked down at her hands, which would forever bear the scars of her childhood, no matter how hard she tried to forget that time in her life. “We were working on a farm in Arizona,” she said. “It was apricot season.” She looked up, saw the moment the realization dawned on his face. “To this day, I still haven’t eaten one. I doubt I ever will.”

“Izzy,” Ryan said, his voice filled with compassion. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“What was I supposed to say?” she asked. “That I grew up in a family of migrant workers? That I spent all my free time as a child picking fruits and vegetables? That, when I was thirteen, my mother passed out from heat stroke and by the time my grandmother and I found her body, it was too late?”

“If we had known—”

“—you wouldn’t have asked me to work here,” Izzy finished. “I know. I get that. And it’s why I wanted to switch with someone initially. But I guess, in a way, I’m glad that Colin didn’t honor that request, because I know, now, that this farm is nothing like the ones I grew up working on as a child—and you’re nothing like the farmers I knew then either.”

She offered him a small smile, but he didn’t smile back. His expression was filled with such care and concern that it caught her off guard. She rarely talked about her childhood. She’d learned, years ago, that it wasn’t a topic most people were comfortable with. Most people in this country preferred to pretend that the immigrants in the fields were invisible, that they didn’t even exist.

She should have known that Ryan wouldn’t feel that way, that he wouldn’t be able to look away from this.

“Is that why you joined the Army?” he asked.

Izzy nodded. “I enlisted the day I turned eighteen. The military gave me stability, a steady paycheck, and respect—three things I’d never had before then. Strangers would stop me in the street and thank me for my service.” Shaking her head, she thought about the first time that had happened, how proud she had been. “My grandmother and I spent almost two decades chasing harvests, never knowing where the next job would be or how long it would last. We lived in so many different states and I went to so many different schools, it’s a miracle I even graduated high school.”

“How did you?” Ryan asked.

Izzy rested her hands on the edge of the tank, letting the tips of her fingers dip into the cool water. “We used to do my homework assignments together. The three of us—my mother, my grandmother, and I—would gather around the kitchen table after dinner each night and I would teach them everything I’d learned in school that day. Then, we’d make our way through each assignment, no matter how long it took, so that they got an education, too.”

She lifted her gaze to the sky, to the brushstrokes of lavender bleeding through the blue. “I worked in the fields with them after school, on the weekends, and all summer long, but my education was always their number one priority. It was the reason they came to this country, the reason they sacrificed everything—so that I could have a better life.”

Taking a deep breath, she turned to face him again. “I think, if your father is anything like my mother or my grandmother, he just wants you to take advantage of all the opportunities that weren’t available to him. It’s not that he doesn’t want you here. It’s just that he wants more for you—more than he had. It might be hard for him to accept that after everything you’ve accomplished, after all the paths you could have chosen, you chose this.”

Ryan held her gaze for several long moments. There were emotions in his eyes—emotions she couldn’t read and didn’t understand. The wind had quieted to barely more than a whisper and the sun had slipped below the line of trees to the west. In the distance, she could hear the faint clanging of drawbridge bells as the operator prepared to let one of the last boats through for the night.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “I should head back.”

She started to turn, but he caught her hand. “Stay,” he said quietly.

Izzy froze at the unexpected contact. She looked down at their joined hands, then back up at his face—all sharp angles and shadowy plains in the fading light. Her pulse jumped, skipping a beat. They were all alone, she realized. His closest neighbor was more than a quarter mile away. No one would be able to hear her if…

No, she thought. Don’t go there. Don’t let yourself go there.

Ryan’s grip was gentle, but steady. And somehow she knew, instinctively, that he would let go the moment she showed even the slightest hint of discomfort. Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t want him to let go that rattled her more than anything. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“I’ll drive you back,” he said, nodding toward the sunset. “The show’s not even over yet.”

It was such a simple request, one that, from the outside, seemed perfectly innocent, but she knew that his wanting her to stay had nothing to do with the sunset. “I don’t think—”

“Stay,” he said again. And there was something about the way he said it—the way his voice rippled over the water, pulling her toward him—that had her fingers curling, closing around his.

Ryan’s eyes never left hers as he took a step toward her. “I know I’m not supposed to say this.” He reached up, brushed the hair back from her face. “But watching you come alive tonight was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

Before she had a chance to react, to even consider what was happening, his mouth was on hers. And all the passion, all the heat, all the frustration he hid so carefully beneath that calm, easygoing cover shattered the last of her resolve. She felt something snap, break open inside her, and then she was kissing him back, like a woman who was starving.

“Izzy,” he breathed, pulling her against him.

Their bodies locked together, and the taste of him—salty, minty, masculine—shot into her like a drug. She could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the beat of his heart against her palm as she ran her hands up the hard muscles of his chest. She’d forgotten what it felt like to kiss without fear, to touch without fear.

To live without fear.

Ryan’s teeth scraped over her bottom lip and a small sound escaped from somewhere deep in her throat. His fingers threaded into her hair, tugging it free from the braid, and with every curl that slipped loose, she felt another piece of herself unravel. Her hands twisted into his shirt, pulling him closer. She wanted more of him, all of him.

She wanted…

The drawbridge bells began to clang again, signaling that the last boat had passed through for the night. Something about the noise—the subtle warning of it—had her easing back. Dazed, she looked up, into eyes the color of liquid smoke. She could see the longing in them—the same longing that was pulsing through every inch of her body.

“Izzy, I…”

A flash of light drew her gaze over his left shoulder. The first fireflies were beginning to come out for the night. The moon was a glimmer of pale white overhead. And all that was left of the sunset was a wash of dusky blues.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that they should probably talk about this. But she didn’t want to let go of this feeling yet. She wanted to hold onto it for a little while longer.

“It’s almost dark,” she said softly. “The others will start to worry if I’m not back soon.”

Ryan lowered his mouth to hers again, making it clear he was in no hurry for her to leave. She gave in to the kiss, just for a moment, before pressing a hand to his chest and pushing lightly against him.

He drew back instantly.

Izzy stared at him, stunned, when she realized that was all it had taken for him to stop. All the heat, all the passion was still there, but he’d pulled back the moment she’d asked him to.

She wondered if he had any idea how much that meant to her.

Ryan reached up, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear so tenderly it made her heart ache. “I’ll drive you back.”

A part of her wanted to say yes, just so she could spend a little more time with him. But she knew that she couldn’t walk into the inn like this. She needed some time to think first, to process what had happened, and she needed to do that alone. “No,” she said. “I’ll bike.”

Ryan nodded, even though she could tell that he didn’t want her to go. He kept her hand securely in his as they walked over to the beach cruiser. He waited for her to get settled, then leaned down and left her with one last bone-melting kiss before stepping back and watching her pedal away.

It took about ten minutes for the feeling in her legs to return, for the fog in her mind to clear. Halfway through the marshes, she let go of the handlebars, running her fingers through the spray of wildflowers lining the side of the road. When the phone in her basket began to ring, she thought nothing of it. Figuring it was probably someone from the inn calling to find out where she was, she pulled it out and glanced down at the screen.

It wasn’t the inn.

It was a number she didn’t recognize.

Izzy stopped pedaling. There was only one person she was expecting a call from right now. Forcing herself to remain calm, she hit the ‘accept,’ button and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Is this Izzy Rivera?” a female voiced asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Alicia Booker.”

Izzy let the toes of her sneakers drag over the pavement as she rolled to a stop.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back sooner,” Alicia said. “I just checked my Facebook account and saw your message.”

“That’s okay,” Izzy said, amazed at how steady her voice sounded to her own ears. “Thank you for getting back to me.” She climbed off the bike, still gripping one handlebar with her free hand. “I think I mentioned that we served on the same base in North Carolina.”

“You did.”

Izzy took a deep breath. “I know this is going to sound strange, but I’ve been keeping track of some of the women who are still serving on that base, mostly through social media, and I noticed that you went off the grid a few weeks ago.”

The line went quiet on the other end.

Izzy’s hand tightened around the phone. “I don’t want to pry into your personal life. I just want to know if…you’re okay.”

Alicia said nothing for a long time, and when she finally spoke, her voice was hollow. “He did it to you, too, didn’t he?”

Izzy closed her eyes. She wasn’t the only one. Bradley had raped someone else. And she could have prevented it. “Yes.”

“Did he…?” Alicia paused and sounded uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Was he able to go through with it?”

“Go through with it?” Izzy asked, confused. “What do you mean?”

“He didn’t actually rape me,” Alicia said. “He just tried to.”

Izzy’s eyes widened. “He…didn’t?”

“I fought him off.”

Izzy flashed back to how fast it had happened with her, how quickly he’d rendered her completely defenseless. “How?”

“I was accepted into Ranger School last month,” Alicia explained. “I’ve been taking classes in hand-to-hand combat for over a year now, so I can prove to the men that I belong there. I’m not just after the tab. I want to join an actual unit afterwards.”

Izzy lowered the bike to the middle of the road, and slowly sank down to the pavement beside it. He hadn’t raped her? He’d tried, but he hadn’t gone through with it? “Did you tell anyone?”

“No. I took pictures of the bruises, just in case. But I’m black and blue from my combat classes all the time. It wouldn’t have been enough to hold up in court. And I don’t have any other evidence.”

“Neither do I,” Izzy said. “But if it happened to both of us, there have to be others.”

“I agree. And I want to do something about it. But I’m in the middle of a custody battle over my son right now. I can’t afford to have my name dragged through the mud. You know what happens to women who cry rape in the military. My ex’s lawyers would have a field day with this.”

Izzy’s gaze dropped to the bike, lying awkwardly on its side beside her. Yes, she thought. She knew exactly what happened to women who cried rape in the military. They were accused of trying to get attention. They were branded as sluts and liars. They were turned into outcasts from the very people they’d served alongside for years.

“Do you think you can find more?” Alicia asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” Izzy admitted. She’d been doing this research for months, and, so far, she’d only turned up one name.

“If you can find more, I’ll go public with you,” Alicia said. “I don’t think two is enough.”

How many more? Izzy wondered. How many more would it take for people to believe them?

“I’ll start asking around on my end,” Alicia said. “It could take a while, since I’ll need to be discreet about it, but I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“Thanks,” Izzy said dully.

“And, hey,” Alicia said, her voice softening. “I’m sorry…about what happened to you.”

Izzy nodded, even though Alicia couldn’t see her. Too numb to speak, she ended the call and slowly lowered the phone to the pavement. She didn’t know how long she sat there, but when she finally looked up again, all the color had drained from the sky. There was nothing but darkness, the croak of a bullfrog, and the rustle of marsh grasses against a fallen tree.