Still, Sawyer should probably make sure there wasn’t actually anyone stuck on the roof. That was a long way up.

“Good morning!” he shouted. Karl had been right about the weather clearing up. The gray sky of earlier was fading, and the sun was starting to peek out from behind a cloud. “Moonflower Bay Police here. Is anyone up there?”

And then he knew. He knew. Before he saw her.

Like every good cop, Sawyer had learned to trust his instincts. He could puzzle out a crime based on not a lot of evidence. But this wasn’t that. This was a deeper kind of knowing. This was his body leading the way. Or, more accurately, his body giving out on him. He sagged back against a car, not trusting his suddenly weak legs to keep him upright. Or to run away, which right then actually seemed like the sensible option. He opened his mouth to draw a breath, but nothing happened. He just stood there—sagged there—moving his mouth like a witless fish.

Then she stepped into view, and Sawyer’s suffocation began.

The sun was fully out from behind its cloud now, and it backlit her. He had the absurd thought that it had come out from behind that cloud for the sole purpose of shining on her, like she was an angel who required illumination.

But if she was an angel, she was an avenging one.

It was Evie Abbott.

The only girl he’d ever loved.

A sudden, sharp pain in his chest added to the feeling that his body was shutting down.

When Sawyer thought about heartbreak, he remembered it less like breaking and more like emptying. Because when Evie had left town ten years ago—when he’d pushed her out of town—he hadn’t experienced it like his heart breaking. It had been more like his heart draining. Like all the happiness and life inside him had flowed out like the river rushing toward the bay. He’d been a fish then, too, flopping around in an emptied tank until all that was left was the dry, scaly shell of something that had once been alive.

The upside, if there was one, was that once your heart was empty, it was empty. Smart Evie, Evie who valued accuracy and precision, once told him that there was no such thing as “more permanent.” That night, the night he’d carved their names into the gazebo, into the town itself, felt closer to him now than last night’s shift.

“There’s no such thing as ‘more permanent,’ Sawyer,” she’d teased. “That’s like being kind of pregnant. You’re either pregnant or you’re not. A thing is either permanent or it’s not.”

A heart is either empty or it’s not.

And his was empty.

He’d thought.