Page 52 of Good Directions

“Am I wrong?”

“If they made better life choices, then maybe I wouldn’t have to.”

I laugh again. “Okay, little Miss Bossy Pants.”

“We…” She sighs, putting her sandwich down, looking up at me. “We actually don’t talk all that much. They don’t understand me.”

“How so?”

Sawyer pauses, tilting her head, examining me. As if no one has ever asked her this question.

Picking her BLT back up, she takes a bite, clearly buying herself some time before she has to answer. Fine by me. I don’t have anywhere else I have to be. Anywhere else I want to be either.

“Both of them are a lot more like my parents. Carefree, laid-back. Work to live type of people. Taylor dropped out of college to work with them and Morgan just never went. My personality always seems to…” She looks up at me, vulnerability written all over her features. I inch into her, silently urging her to continue. “Clash? I guess that’s the word. Sometimes I wonder if my interest had been oceanography if they would have been more apt to listen when I talked about what I was studying, but deep down, I know it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“If it makes you feel any better, my ag knowledge surpassed Auggie’s in about the third grade…”

Sawyer half chokes, half laughs, covering her mouth with her hand. My heart sinks for a second, hating that I don’t get to see those pretty pink lips as she reacts.

“But I bet he listened. He seems like he would have let you talk his ear off.”

I shrug. “To a point. And then he sent me off to hang out with the Adlers. Cary’s family has been in charge of horticulture for Hayes Industries for three generations. I might be vice president of agriculture and produce, but I’m nothing—Hayes would be nothing— without my chief horticulturist, and my best friend is the best damn one there is.”

“He is pretty sharp.”

“You should see his daddy and granddaddy too. Put the three of them together, oh boy…” I whistle, raising my eyebrows. “They’re the ones who nursed this grove back. When I was a kid, this was just a field. Don’t get me wrong; it was my happy place, where I could come out here, get some alone time.”

“Just you and the stump?” she teases.

I laugh. It’s a good sign that she feels comfortable enough to joke.

“Exactly.”

“So, how old are these trees?”

“We planted these eight years ago, the summer I turned thirty,” I tell her. “Being a soil expert, I know you know all about the earth getting “peached out” and taking fifty years to restore, but how much do you know about the actual tree?”

“Very little.”

I pop up to my feet and hold out a hand. Sawyer looks up at me, skeptical for a second, then takes it, letting me help her up. I don’t let go of her, interlacing my fingers with hers, leading her toward one of the full peach trees, the branches heavy with the beautiful fruit.

“It takes about three years from planting until you have a tree, or at least what most people think of as a tree, and then four to five until you get fruit. The average tree lives for about fifteen years.”

“That’s it?”

I nod. “Yup. We start picking in mid-May, and we go until late August. In a perfect season, we get a good one hundred days of fruit. The key is listening to the trees.” Sawyer’s eyebrow quirks upward and I can tell she wants to comment, but I don’t let her. “The tree tells you when it’s time. You feel the soft tips on the bottom of the peach. That’s how you know. So every morning you come out and go what’s ripe today? We’ll visit the same tree six or seven times in a two-week period sometimes.”

“Seriously? So when I buy a peach at the grocery, it hasn’t been sitting in some warehouse for forever?”

“Not during peach season. At least not a Hayes peach.” I reach up, pressing my thumb to the bottom of a peach, feeling for a soft tip. This one is much better than what I grabbed earlier, so I twist it off the branch and hand it to her. “Everything happens really fast once it comes off the tree. We’re talkin’ days, not weeks, to get it processed, shipped, and into stores.”

Stepping into her, I rest one hand on her hip, tucking the rogue piece of hair back with the other. Her breath hitches, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have to stay just like this. To not make some stupid move that would annoy the fuck out of her.

Which is the last thing I want to do.

Because Sawyer is different.

And she has me hypnotized.