At that moment, Anders walks round the back of the table and comes to a stop, in full, clear view.
My breath hitches.
Unlike his brother, there isn’t a hint of caveman about him. He’s clean-shaven, his skin kissed with a golden tan, and he has eyebrows that are bordering on sharp. He’s wearing his black-and-mustard-checked shirt open over a faded black T-shirt, and the phrase “effortlessly cool” comes to mind as he leans over, lining up a shot. A few strands of his dark blond hair fall across his eyeline, but he doesn’t push them away before striking the ball. I hear a clunk from the ball shooting straight into a pocket, and a split second later, his eyes lift to meet mine.
The air holds in my lungs as he slowly straightens up, our gazes locked across the crowded room. My heart flutters. And as seconds tick past, the flutter becomes a thump that ricochets off my rib cage. I watch, fixated, as his eyes seem to darken.Then his brow furrows and he breaks the contact, raking his hand through his hair.
Blood rushes to my face and I reach for my drink, feeling as though my pulse has been hijacked. Luckily, Bailey is preoccupied speaking to Casey and doesn’t notice how choppy my breathing has become.
Anders doesn’t look my way again, at least not to my knowledge. I keep feeling my attention being pulled toward him, an inexplicable draw that’s impossible to ignore.
In the end, the only way I can distract myself is to shift in my seat so that Bailey is entirely blocking my view.
3
You’re being ridiculous now. Dad and Sheryl’s house is right there!” I exclaim, pointing across the river. “Go home!”
Bailey and her hilariously inebriated husband have walked me as far as the bridge, but they should have turned off a couple of minutes ago.
“Okay, fine,” Bailey concedes, launching herself forward and throwing her arms around me so forcefully that I stumble backward and almost fall over. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow,” she promises. “We can nurse our hangovers together.”
“You’re at work tomorrow,” Casey reminds her, wobbling.
“Not until noon,” Bailey replies. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she adds to me.
“It’s a plan.” I grin at her, already looking forward to it.
It’s 11 p.m., which means it’s four o’clock in the morning back in the UK, but I feel oddly awake and exhilarated. The only sounds I can hear are the rushing water beneath the bridge, my ankle boots scuffing the asphalt, and the odd car humming away in the distance.
As much as I enjoyed my half sister and her new husband’scompany tonight, I find I’m kind of glad to be walking this final stretch alone. It’s nice to have the mental space to be with my own thoughts for a while.
As I leave the last streetlight behind, the night sky becomes illuminated over my head. The full moon is shining like a torch high above and not a single cloud mars the brightness of the stars. The air smells of freshly cut grass and as I lower my gaze from the sky to look at the field spread out before me, I gasp with wonder. Tiny lights are hovering above the knee-high crop, twinkling and flashing like fairy dust.
Fireflies. Or lightning bugs, as Sheryl calls them.
I’ve seen the odd one on previous trips to Indiana, but I’ve never seen so many together in one place. The sight is nothing short of magical.
I have a sudden urge to be among them. There are two narrow tracks straight ahead, carved out by tractor wheels, which are more than wide enough for a person to walk along.
A breeze lifts my sweat-damp hair away from my neck. A split second later, I hear the crop whispering as the wind blows through it.
On impulse, I start forward, straight onto one of the tracks. The earth is dry and crumbly beneath my ankle boots and the incline slopes gently downward. I don’t know how long I walk for—ten, twenty minutes—but I’m not sure the smile ever leaves my face. I’m hypnotized by the fireflies, the open air and darkness, the starlight and the moonlight. The sense of freedom.
I reallyam“free” now. Free and single. For the first time since our breakup, the thought of being alone doesn’t frighten me. I feel content, almost like my old self again. A surge of euphoria rushes through me.
I come out of the field onto a long strip of freshly mowedgrass, but here the fragrance mingles with something even sweeter. Ahead is a field of maize and punctuating the moonlit sky are fronds—or flowers—protruding from the top of each ten-foot-tall stalk. I walk forward, away from the knee-high crop and its glittering fireflies, and soon find myself inside a forest of maize. After a couple of minutes, I come to a stop.
What the hell am I doing? I could get lost in here. Feeling a small spike of panic, I turn around and walk back the way I think I came, but I’m not certain I’m heading in exactly the same direction.
The sound of a very loud mosquito causes me to tense up, until I register that what I’m actually hearing is a motorbike. I’m sure town is up the hill, but this noise is coming from the other way and it’s growing louder.
I run toward the sound and emerge from the maize at the same moment a burst of light streaks across the strip of grass to my left. I hastily jump back and press myself against the stalks, but too late. The light scorches my face and a man shouts with alarm as the engine lets out a desperate scream before falling silent.
I open my eyes to see a dark mass in front of me. The headlamp blinded me so I can’t make out much more than that.
“What the hell?” the man exclaims in an American accent, as he wrestles his bike off him and scrambles to his feet.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
