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The sun peeked over the horizon, sending weak light through the window to illuminate her body until it was a blaze of flame.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I ignored it. I didn’t give a fuck what was happening out there. The rest of the world could be on fire for all I cared.

I wasn’t going to miss these last moments with my wife.

My mistakes had cost her life. Cost our baby’s life.

My stomach heaved, burning with bile, and I laid my bloody head against the wood.

How was I supposed to go on without her?

Léonie always thought I hadn’t noticed her.

And I had never bothered to tell her the truth.

That I noticed her long before she noticed me. I had just been too suspicious of a trick. A plot. To let it show until that damned boar had forced my hand.

In fact, it could never have touched her because she didn’t know it, but my eyes had been on her the whole time.

That it had always been her.

And now—I could never tell her.

My long fingers wrapped around hers and I lifted her palm up into the sunlight. I knew every inch of her delicate hand better than my own. Every freckle. Every scar.

But as the summer light streamed in the window, I frowned.

Wait a minute. . . something was missing. . .

CHAPTER 11

Étienne

Afew summers ago. . .

I had been leaning back against a fence, passing cigarettes back and forth, the others wrestling and lobbing an occasional fist at each other, because French mountain families didn’t do play-fighting.

Everything was a test to see where you ranked in the pecking order.

I was at the very top. And I intended to remain there.

Faustine was talking, her hip jutted up again my thigh, but I wasn’t listening to her.

I was looking across the clearing at Léonie Pinoteaux, but she wasn’t looking at me.

Ever since I had killed that mad boar in front of her, she’d been extra careful not to get caught looking at me.

But I knew she wanted to.

Unlike most of the other girls, she never purposely tried to get my attention, never flirted with me.

She had my complete attention anyway.

Could she possibly be real? Was that sweet, open gaze real? Or was Léonie’s manipulative family using her to ensnare me?

Was her shyness real or faked?

Everything about her appealed to me, those thick bright red curls that she had wound wildflowers all through, her delicate fingers that were swishing gently through high grasses to find a few of the small juneberries, the way she was soft and gentle.