He was a sweetheart—always had been—despite the trouble that always seemed to follow him around.

Or, well, much of the time she was worried it wasn’t so much trouble following him as him seeking it out. And she couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling that maybe he’d brought it here with him. Into this idyllic world that had begun to feel a little like a bubble, so far removed from her life back home.

Not that Muir Farm wasn’t without its struggles. She’d witnessed Neil’s daily stress. She’d seen the ongoing effects of all the loss in Maggie’s life. Lilian and Indi had their woes, too, she was sure—take that absentee fiancé of Indi’s, for one. She might’ve even glimpsed a crack in Wilder’s carefree façade once or twice.

But even so, with every day she passed here, she felt more and more rooted to the land, to the sea, to Maggie’s yellow house. What would Maggie say if she asked to stay? What would Neil say?

Maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all. Maybe—

“So I did see what I thought I did.”

She blinked, realizing she’d stopped walking and Micah now stood a pace or two ahead of her. Staring again. And it wasn’t the cold ocean air she felt now, but a warmth in her cheeks that let her know her straying thoughts must show on her face.

“I didn’t realize you moved so fast, Syd.”

“Micah—”

He lifted his hands, palms out. “Hey, whatever fun you want to have on your vacation, I’m not judging.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone or what you’re insinuating.” Or his calling this a vacation. But that’s how he would see it, of course. Two weeks off work, a trip to the coast . . . he couldn’t know about the bond she’d formed with Maggie or the unlikely friendship with the sisters who hadn’t wanted her here in the beginning.

Or that however much he’d seen when he walked around the corner of the house was, in reality, so much more than the fling he obviously assumed.

“Okay, I’ll go ahead and ask. Why’d you come, Micah? I told you I’d be home on Sunday.” Just saying the words dug a pit in her stomach but she did her best to keep her voice lighthearted. “Figured you’d get in on the tail end of my trip? Have your own little vacation?”

Oh, that it’d be something that silly and inconsequential. A frivolous whim and nothing more.

But Micah’s silence said enough. He tipped his head, as if attempting to harness any warmth to be had from the sun above, and as she watched him now, she saw what she hadn’t earlier. The faint purple smudges under his eyes. The downward tilt of his shoulders. His hair, usually so copiously gelled, in disarray.

Of course, that could be from the overnight flights. From the blustering seaside wind. But no.

There were days when twenty-seven-year-old Micah didn’t seem all that different from eight-year-old Micah.