The Cherokee Purples were at late-season peak. He’d known they would be. He’d been tracking them since July, watching the acidity curve change as the heat of summer pressed on, noting the way this year’s pattern was doing something to the flavor profile he hadn’t seen before and had been documenting carefully. They were extraordinary this year. He’d predicted they would be, and the knowing had become a baseline fact.
He walked the row in the early gray of five a.m. and touched the fruit the way he always did; not picking, just assessing the pressure and give that told him what he needed to know. Everything he needed to know about this row he could get through his hands without thinking about it.
Which was good because he was thinking about other things.
He had been awake since three-thirty. Not anxious—just awake. The particular wakefulness that came after a dream couldn't top reality. The kind of awake that your brain wanted to think about and your heart wanted to relive all night long.
He'd kissed Ivy. Not once, not twice. He'd lost count of how long they stood in her doorway kissing. But they had eventually stopped as her neighbors had tried to get past them.
He hadn't gone inside. It would've gone too far if he got her truly alone, and there was so much more they needed to discuss.
So he'd come home early and lain in bed awake all night long and confirmed what he already knew: he was halfway to falling boots over roots for Ivy Lopez.
How could he not? The woman was his pin-up girl in a chef's hat. She had an amazing palate. She talked about food the way a sportscaster who loved the game would. And she tasted like a dream from her fingertips to her cheeks to her mouth.
Yeah, he was a goner. So he'd gone to the rows.
Boyd arrived at six, which was either coincidence or he’d seen Finn’s truck at the end of the drive and known.
He came through the gate with his own coffee and found Finn in the Cherokee Purple row and didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just walked beside him in the gray morning with the ease of a man who had done this for years and had learned when to wait.
At the end of the row, Finn sat down on the empty crate he’d left there the day before. Boyd stayed standing.
"You like her," Boyd said.
Finn looked at the next row.
"I know that’s not news, but I think you’ve decided you’re allowed to, which is news. But probably bad news in that orderly head of yours."
Finn had told Boyd about Sloane three years ago, in pieces, the way he told things that required more than one conversation. Boyd had just listened, and asked a few questions, and at the end had said: that was real, and it hurt, and it isn’t a prediction for future relationships.
Except he'd been wrong.
"She might not stay," Finn said. “Ivy. She might leave after all of this is over.”
"Doesn't make her Sloane."
The morning was cool, the first real turn of the season, the shift that happened overnight and changed everything.
"With Ivy, at least she puts the camera down. Sloane always wanted the story."
"Yeah," Boyd said.
“Ivy wants to keep us private. Some parts, at least. The kissing part, at least.”
"That's a good sign," said Boyd.
"She grew up here," Finn said. "She has ties. Eva —Fran's wife. That's her cousin."
"And now she has you."
Finn pressed his lips together, as though he didn't think he was enough of a reason to stay. Instead of looking at Boyd, he looked down the row."She might still leave. I'm ready to give this woman my heart after a few kisses, and she might still leave."
Boyd didn’t say anything.
"She has a life outside this. Work that moves. Places she goes." Finn’s gaze stayed on the lines of the field. "I don’t. Here, this farm, the restaurant, that's my endgame."
Boyd nodded once.
