What they didn’t understand was that he couldn’t do it again—“it” being have Evie and give her up. Be with her and then not. It was like this theory Jake had about air-conditioning. He hated it. It could be burning up outside, and he wouldn’t turn it on in his car—and he didn’t have it in his cottage at all. He said that going in and out of the heat was worse than just being continuously hot.

Sawyer could survive breaking up with Evie Abbott only one time, and he’d already done it.

He was gearing up to try to explain this without sounding like an idiot when Jake held up a palm, just like Law had done before. Sawyer’s words died in his mouth. Jake speaking really did have that effect.

“Sawyer.” Not only was Jake talking, he wasn’t even bothering to disguise the impatience in his voice. “Kiss the girl.”

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

When Sawyer showed up at Evie’s parents’ house to pick up Clara, he found her in a tizzy because she had fallen in love with one of the residences at the University of Toronto.

“Oh my gosh, Sawyer! Wait until you see it. It’s this old, Gothic building. It’s so awesome! It’s a Trinity College residence, so I have to get into Trinity, but oh, I loved it!”

“You’ll get in.” According to everything he had read, Trinity was the most competitive undergrad college at the university, but they would be idiots not to want Clara. In addition to having a mind-boggling GPA, she was the world’s greatest teenager.

“We also visited the housing office,” Evie said. “We looked at a lot of listings, but it seemed like apartments are really expensive—and pretty far from campus.” She winked at him—Clara couldn’t see her because she was still jumping up and down in front of Sawyer. That wink told him Evie had steered his sister toward on-campus options.

Which made him want to kiss her.

Which made him think of Jake telling him to kiss her.

Which was something he’d been thinking about lately. A lot.

“I met this girl named Lynn on the tour.” Clara was talking a mile a minute. “She was visiting with her parents from Nova Scotia. We totally hit it off. She’s going to study biology. I’m thinking I might ask her if she wants to room with me, assuming we both get in.”

“She seemed like a really cool girl,” Evie said. “And her parents were great, too.”

Sawyer hadn’t realized that the residence tour was going to be such a formal thing. He probably should have been there. But he also found himself not really minding that Evie had taken on a quasi-parental role. He trusted her judgment.