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  “But isn’t it easy for you to imagine, too, that their lives there are nothing but being hurt and angry? This is hard for me to explain, so bear with me, but because you don’t see them often, all you see is the hardest parts of everything they feel, all at once, without any perspective on what they probably feel most of the time.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice was quiet, like she was really listening to what he had to say.

  “I just mean that they have lives. Just like you do. They’re living them. You laugh and have fun. So do they.

  “You can’t feel guilty for having a life. I respect your grief, just like you respect and share theirs. Just because you are living a life that you wouldn’t have lived without Russ, just because they have a life that’s different without him, it doesn’t mean it’s not a life with good days. It doesn’t mean no one is supposed to love. Or laugh.”

  He felt like his arms and legs were more disconnected from his body the longer she was quiet.

  Like his heart had stopped.

  He believed, really believed, what he had just told her, but if it wasn’t possible for her to understand, he was lost. He would lose her.

  Nina did know how to nurture and grow something so that it was loved, and so that it provided love. Sam thought that maybe she believed she had simply made something other people could love, and all she had to do was work and work and make everything that she did good, and others would believe in it, feel compelled to give to it, nurture it, and that would provide life and its penance.

  Sam understood.

  He was a boy who had felt useless and wanted nothing more than to help. He found his own way to it, and even found what gifts he could focus on to come closest to a meaningful life. If he just made everything around him work, he would work. If Nina could just make everything around her deserving of love, she could love.

  He had also grown to understand, since losing his mother, since medical school, how wide open life is to death. How it wasn’t really a transition, how everybody was right up against it, all the time.

  Death was a companion that wasn’t concerned with the life you had made, because to death, all life was the same. It was just life.

  It could be lost, and what was left to sift through? But those who survived weren’t the concern of death, not at all. Death had to be what concerned everyone who lived. Sam had started to think about this all the time, what everyone he loved understood about him and would always understand about him. What about his life he could help them know.

  He hadn’t gotten comfortable with death; if anything, it scared him more than ever. He still had so many questions for his mother. That was the main thing she had left behind. Questions and stories and mystery. This was especially true for Des and PJ. He knew things that they didn’t, had some understanding of both what their mother would have wanted them to know and what his mother loved about them.

  Tonight he had felt that in Betty, too. Felt that her own grief for her best friend had been folded into what she knew Marie would have wanted her to do.

  To help them know their mother, because their mother couldn’t know them.

  He was certain there were parts of Russ that only Nina knew and understood, and that Russ’s parents yearned for. When they yearned for Nina, when they made her feel that they yearned and grieved for Russ and Nina’s potential child, Sam thought that really, they grieved everything they didn’t know and could never know; even if Russ had lived, they couldn’t have known those things.

  Death made you grieve things that might not have ever been yours.

  It just did.

  It took so much that it seemed liked death took everything.

  Sam had watched his dad die, watched his horrible struggle and battles, and quit smoking, quit every habit that anyone had ever said was bad.

  No virtue followed, though, no safety from dying. Tay, after all, was young and strong and treated her body with virtue. If death didn’t recognize whether a life was filled with love, it was likewise unable to know the choices a body had made.

  Sam had struggled to quit anger and fear, which were probably a lot worse than pie, if only for what you left everybody else to deal with after you were gone.

  “So you think that all I need is to see my family more?” Nina asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Well, I don’t know them, but what you’ve told me makes it sound like they love you and are good people. It sounds like your parents must have had a hard life when they were young, and maybe you don’t know everything about how hard it was, but that they loved you, and the life they have now is pretty great. Russ’s parents loved you and extended their family to yours. So yeah, I think this might be one of those cases that “more” fixes things.”

  “I think you’re being wise.”

  “Yeah? I’m not used to that.”

  “I know, but it’s true. It’s hard though, for farmers to get away.”

  “Your parents and Russ’s parents, from what you’ve told me, have worked hard to have it a little more easy than they might have, years ago. You too, I think, have worked really goddamned hard so a lot of the burden of running a farm is shared. Maybe—” Sam paused, wondering if he should push it.

  “What?”

  “Maybe there was something going on with Russ so that he couldn’t see that he would never have to do everything on his own. Maybe when he told you that he didn’t want to farm anymore, wanted a different kind of life, it was really that he couldn’t see how to make a life with you that just belonged to the two of you.”

  “Maybe.”

  They sat listening to traffic. To the junebugs.

  “Also,” Sam said, “you made this whole big thing here. I know you did it with the family you built here, but at first it was just you.”

  “That’s true and not true.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I think what you’re trying to tell me is that maybe I did all of this with more help from my family, from my parents and in-laws, than I ever completely understood.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  He leaned over and kissed her temple.

  “You know what?” Sam asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m pretty fucking smart, I think.”

  Nina laughed. “You only just figuring this out, Opie?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “I am.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She had taken Sam Burnside upstairs, even though what she should have done was to send him home and go to bed. Tomorrow wouldn’t be any easier than today, even with Adam’s help, and it would start just as early.

  She wanted Sam, though.

  She wanted him inside her, she wanted his hands moving over her body, she wanted to feel him move over and under her, hear how he said her name.

  Just a little, too, she wanted the risk to her heart, to do things that softened him and made it impossible for him to hold back how he felt. Sam Burnside was not a moderate man, and she found herself a little bit tired of moderation.

  After today, after doubting herself, doubting she could ever slow down and have a life without there being consequences to everyone who depended on her, she needed to test her doubt.

  Sam and his love, his insight, were asking her to.

  When they were inside of her apartment, he said, “What do you need?”

  She leaned against him. Put her ear against his chest.

  “Not to think.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, against her neck. “Don’t do that.”

  Then he shaped his hands over her, from her nape to her ass, pressing tight. On his way back up, his hands came under her skirt, and he slid his fingers into the elastic of her panties, opened her with his fingertips, rubbed his hard dick against her hip.

  She closed her eyes.

  He pulled her T-shirt off.

  He unhooked her bra, and then she almost yelled, made a surprised noise, when his mouth was instantly licking her nipple
, firm, his thumb at the other.

  Their hips were circling together, he was just breathing over her nipples, brushing his lips across them, making them hard and tight and pinched. It took all of her energy to keep herself from telling him to stop, because it was too much, it was actually too much—she wanted to shove away from him and get his mouth back to hers, to her neck.

  But she let him keep playing instead, let the shiver that skated close to irritation and pain change into something else, because she couldn’t think of anything but what he was doing to her, right now, and the not thinking was more important than pleasure.

  Then there were his teeth, his pinching fingers, and she didn’t want to be standing anymore, she wanted to be spread out and held down, she wanted to press the pulse between her legs against something hard, and she didn’t even realize she had shoved her hand under her panties until she felt Sam drag her arm up over her head and pin it against the wall.

  “Just let me, baby.”

  But she couldn’t stop her hips and she needed pressure, so much, she needed it hard, so bad, she rubbed her thighs together and that was even worse because she was so wet that there was no friction, just hotness, just wetness, just Sam’s mouth behind her ear, his hard body against her aching breasts.

  Then he was kissing her, and for a while, that was better. It was better, his mouth and his tongue as desperate as hers, better because she could hear the sounds he made. He sucked her bottom lip and he moved away to breathe and to find a deeper angle, and one hand was guiding her jaw and the other was still pinning her wrist, and she just let herself go, breathing hard and bucking and sweating and moaning and none of it mattered because her neediness gave him something.

  She was giving him herself, which was what he wanted. This was what she was, needy, needier, the more he kissed her.

  Every kiss was both what she needed, and what he wanted.

  “Nina,” he said, smoothing her arm down, pushing her hair back off her forehead.

  She opened her eyes to look at him. This close, she could see the lines on his face where he missed with his sunscreen and zinc cream. She could see how the freckles gathered over the bones. She could see how he must have looked as a child. She could see that place between his eyebrows where a deep wrinkle was starting.

  His gray eyes—looking at her face, too.

  “What?”

  “I was going to take you over to the sofa.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think so.”

  “I want to.”

  “Me too.”

  She wasn’t sure of what she was saying. She was throbbing, close to coming but not at all close at the same time, topless and warm. She wanted the rest of her clothes off, so as he moved away, she yanked her skirt and panties over her hips.

  He brushed the back of his hands over her belly, and she reflexively sucked in.

  He laughed. “Ticklish?”

  “Kind of. I’m getting a little soft there.”

  “I like it. I like all your muscles, and then these …” He put his big hands over her breasts and squeezed a little. “This …” He brought his hands down again over her pooch, shaping it like he had her breasts, and she had to laugh.

  “Yeah?”

  “I do. There’s so much naked.”

  “Like more surface area of naked, is this what you’re saying?”

  He grinned at her, and he was so handsome, so beautiful, his hair, his freckles, his old-fashioned face, that she laughed.

  “Yeah, more surface area. More naked.”

  Then he pulled off his T-shirt, and toed off his shoes, dropped his jeans.

  More naked.

  He was blushing hot pink from his throat to the divide between his pecs, his auburn hair silky, even around his erection.

  She played with that trail, all the way down, before grabbing him at the base, stroking him, running her thumb through where he was dripping, shining, more pink. He grabbed the back of her neck, watched her hand, bucked.

  It was sexy, quiet. She was getting slick and wet between her thighs and it felt really good; her boundaries were fading and she was nothing more than the warm air around them and an urgent pulse.

  He reached between her thighs and slid between the lips there, found her clit, rubbed alongside it, and she had to bang her head back against the wall when the jolt hit her from her clit all the way inside.

  He pressed against her, hot skin on her hot skin, his fingers just inside her. Licked her neck. It was amazing, it made her shiver.

  “Come on, Nina.”

  But he didn’t lead her away—he angled his cock, hard and gleaming, over the wet split of her pussy, rubbing the head over the hood of her clit, rubbing it hard, breathing hard, letting her feel the underside of him holding her open. She pressed her hand over where they were together and helped him circle over her there.

  It was just right, feeling dangerous, a deep throb, the constant urge to slip down around him, take him in, fill herself up. He somehow found her with his other hand, and slid slowly inside her with his finger. It made her squeeze her thighs together, a little.

  He eased back out, giving her chills, pressed against her nipple with his wet finger, licked his finger and her nipple together.

  “Jesus God, Nina,” he whispered against her throat.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Good. It’s good.”

  “You’re so good.”

  “There,” she said, and held him where the crown of his cock had snagged over her clit and moved her hips, making herself move slow, teasing herself with him, when she looked at them joined with sex and their hands, it didn’t look as obscene as his expression, how his tongue was touching the back of his front teeth and his brows were drawn.

  “You like that?” she asked.

  “Yeah, feels good, looks better.”

  She wanted to push him.

  “I want to fuck you.” She said that slowly. She let her breath move extra slow between her lip and her teeth when she said fuck.

  He shuddered. Stopped rubbing and circling, closed his eyes.

  “You close, baby?” She pushed her hips. They slipped together, frictionless.

  “Wanna come on you,” he whispered.

  “You thinking about that? About your come on me, right here, against the wall?”

  His thumb found her nipple, circled it. She could see his muscles heaving against his ribs with his breath.

  “I’m thinking of coming all over you, my fingers inside you, kissing you.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  But he didn’t, he just brought both his hands up, and cradled her face, and it shouldn’t have been possible for that to be sexier than what his hands had been doing, but the tenderness of it made her heart hurt and her belly flip and her pussy throb, all at the same time, so that when he kissed her, licked into her, she felt her eyes burn with tears, and it was so much worse when she heard him, how the noises he made sounded like begging, and he might be saying her name between breaths.

  It was only a few steps, really, to her bed.

  She took him there, and she helped him with the condom. He couldn’t touch himself, couldn’t touch her, without shaking and that made her want him inside her, to stroke inside of her for hours, because she would never get enough of it.

  He pulled her arms up again and held her wrists—when he nudged and stretched inside her, she scooped her hips back before he could thrust.

  “Look up at me,” she said even as he met her gaze.

  His forehead almost to hers.

  He pushed inside, and it was so hard not to close her eyes.

  She hooked her leg up around his waist to keep him close.

  It meant he could only really rock into her, but that was good, his body ground against her clit as he rocked, and looking into his eyes was so good, and feeling his hand around her wrists, the muscles in her arms pulling long and warm.

  “I love you, Nina.”

  And there it was, the risk she had taken
when she brought him up to make love to her, and that same tender swoop came over her like it had when he’d held her face and kissed her and made everything worse and better.

  She’d been chasing that risk, and she didn’t even know if the thrill of it was good or if it was bad, if the way it made this nakedness between them so much hotter meant it was good or it was bad.

  So she arched up and squeezed her muscles around him, and kissed him, slow and deep and then, when she was close but it wasn’t happening, she said, “Tell me again, Sam.”

  And he said, “I love you, Nina. I love you so much.”

  She came. She came and came, almost struggling against it because it was so good she never wanted to stop, never wanted to be anywhere but between that almost coming and coming, ever again.

  He rocked into her as she came apart, got tighter, and he never stopped saying it, I love you, I love you, and it was awful, but it made it so much hotter and better, it did.

  She needed him to tell her, for his heart to come to pieces all over her so that she could stop thinking of anything but their skin, their rough breathing.

  This pleasure, unbearable, was a naked man, a naked woman, and the distance between them.

  * * *

  He fell asleep so easily, she decided she would tease him about it later.

  Why shouldn’t he, though?

  Sam Burnside had the clearest, sweetest heart of anyone she had known. Even as he fought himself and struggled to understand the people he loved, fought them, he never withheld his love.

  Everyone Sam loved knew it.

  It’s why, she thought, watching him sleep, the people Sam loved weren’t as gentle with him as they should be. They were safe with him, his love made them perfectly safe. Safe to behave badly or to test how much love could bear.

  His love made their love better. When they tested it, they found love to be strong beyond measure, able to bear incalculable losses.

  She was using his love, too.

  Sam’s love was a certain force when nothing else in her life was certain.

  She couldn’t know if this would be a season that would signal the beginning of the end until harvest was in, a harvest already compromised by Tay’s illness and risks she’d taken more than a year ago.