I pressed my palms into the sawhorses and closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe I was in here.

All I could smell was sawdust and turpentine. Everywhere I looked I saw him. Climbing the ladder with a bucket of paint. Arguing in the office about a bill someone refused to pay. But they were only memories. Dad was gone. He wasn’t going to barge in here and tell me I was doing this all wrong. He would know a better way to do it. He always had a better way than I did.

I picked up a tattered piece of sand paper and braced it between my hand and a piece of juniper. I smoothed the wood with the rough surface. The more I moved it back and forth, the sleeker the wood looked. I ground it harder, repeating the motion.

I got lost in it. The movement. The stillness of the barn. What it meant that I had opened the doors to his sanctuary.

Ten minutes later, Cole entered the boathouse.

He stopped a few feet short of where I was sanding. “I can’t believe it.”

“Don’t say anything.” I gritted my teeth.

He folded his arms over his chest. “You weren’t in the house. Didn’t think you’d actually be in here.”

I nodded. “Needed something to do.”

I heard him break the seal on a beer. “Need one of these?”

I grinned. “Hell yeah I do.”

I threw the sand paper down and took one of the beers. “Thanks.”

“So, you opened the barn back up. Does that mean anything?” he asked, taking a seat on one of the empty sawhorses. His feet shuffled over wood shavings that littered the barn floor.

“No.” I chugged. “Means I needed to sand this juniper.”

“Right. Right. So it has nothing to do with a certain blonde who is leaving the island?”

My eyes shot to his. “What are you talking about?”

“I ran into Shirley when I bought the beer. She said Sierra has to head back to Texas in a couple of days. Something about work. You didn’t know?”

“Huh. No, I hadn’t heard. Good for her.”

“Man, really?”

“What the fuck do you want me to do? She doesn’t want to stay. Some people leave and come back. Some don’t.”

“And you’re giving up on her? She came back, man. She’s trying to do the right thing.”

I tipped the cold bottle to my lips. “The right thing? She was forced to come back here. Don’t cut her any slack. She’s here because she has to be.”

Cole shook his head. “I knew her in high school too. Don’t forget that.”

“And you were here when she left.”

“I was. But she was a kid. We all were. You seriously going to hold a grudge like that?”

“No. I don’t give a shit what she does.”

“You’re not going to call her?” Cole grilled me. “Because that’s what this is all about. The sanding, opening the barn, the pissy mood—it’s Sierra.”

I shook my head. “Nah, it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have taken her out to the Dock House or the Cape. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking opening up that shit back up with her.”

I kept my head down and focused on smoothing out each bump in the plank’s grain. Sanding was good. It kept me from thinking. But Cole was pushing hard to make me face things about Sierra I didn’t want to admit.

“Ok, ok. I’m just trying to help you out. Seems like you’re making a mistake from where I stand.”

“Stay out of it, Cole. It’s complicated.” I groaned.

Cole threw his hands in the air and took a step backward. “I’m out. You do what you’re going do.”

“Thanks. I think I can handle Sierra.”

He turned before he walked out of the doors. “For the record, it’s good to see the lights on in here again.”

I did my best impression of a smile. “Thanks, man.”

“You bet.”

I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist and tossed the sandpaper in the open trash can. I had already gone through two sheets on just a few boards. They were rubbed raw. And underneath it all I felt the same way. Raw. Open. Staring pain and grief in the face under the dark cloak of uncertainty.

Sierra. Fuck. What was I going to do about that girl? The vein along the side of my neck pulsed with anger. Why should I be surprised she was running so soon? Wasn’t that what she did? She’d left at the most painful time in my life. Right as my parents sat me down and told me my mother had only months to live.

And where was the girl who loved me? The one who had my back? The one who pushed me toward my dreams? She had vanished like foam on the beach. Washed out like a cold wave on a December beach.

And that’s what she would do again. Leave.

But for fake’s sake, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, or about what had happened in that cove on the beach. She was infuriating, stubborn, quick-tempered, argumentative, and temporary. Had always been—I just didn’t know it back then.

I picked up another prickly sheet of unused paper and laid it rough side down on the next board.

I had plenty of experience with summer flings. At twenty-six, I had spent my share of summers fucking vacationing girls at the beach and I knew the drill. Someone always got too attached, no matter what the upfront agreement was. And it was never me. The last time I’d even thought about feeling something toward a woman ended the day she drove over the bridge.

I sanded deeper and longer strides into the plank. This was the way it had to be.

Thrashers groupies followed me to every city. They waited for me in hotel lobbies and outside of the locker room. And hell, they were smart women. Beautiful women. Women who would have done anything to make me happy. And for night I let them. But that’s all I could give them—one night.

There was no reason to get involved with her further. She had called me out on the revenge sex, and I’d managed to stay away for a few days. Our trip down memory lane was over.

Flashes of her long legs crept into my mind. Those lips, and the way she dug her nails into my back. The way she purred under my touch and leaned into my body every time I got close. That innocent look she still had. The good girl image with bright blue eyes that screamed a purity so damn alluring I wanted another look. Another touch. Another taste of the girl I had made mine all those years ago. Because when it came down to it, she had been mine. She was mine first. She had been untouched and naïve. She’d needed me. She’d depended on me. And I’d protected her as if she were a treasure. My treasure.

Oh hell, what am I doing? I tossed the paper on the floor and grabbed me keys. There was a hot-tempered blonde I needed to see.