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Who wouldn’t. No matter what.

He lost sleep worrying about her. At least, that was what he kept telling himself. But after a week, he finally realised how much he was missing her. Missing every goddamned thing about her. Missing her as though she’d always been in his life, and suddenly, he didn’t know how to do things without her. He didn’t even have the distraction of getting out on the muster. With his arm in a cast and sling, and his ribs hurting like hell, the best he could do was coordinate things from the sheds. But that wasn’t enough. It didn’t distract him from her, and it didn’t exhaust him, so he kept going back to the house each night and holding his breath, hoping against hope that she’d be there.

He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew he’d rather be working this out with her, not apart. He’d give anything to have her back on the station to talk to. To hold hands with. To wrap in his arms and hold close to his body.

On the eleventh day, the envelope arrived. He recognised her neat handwriting on the front immediately, and it was though his heart exploded through his whole body. His breath ran fast, as if he’d run a marathon, and his fingers were too fumbly to open the envelope properly. It was padded, and when he finally unsealed the back and reached inside, his fingertips glanced across something hard and small. He felt for it again and groaned when he pulled out her engagement ring. He held it in his hands, staring at it as though somehow he could magically make her reappear along with it.

He felt inside the envelope. Paper brushed against his hand. With his heart now back together and thumping hard at the base of his throat, he pulled the note out and scanned the two short lines quickly, before balling the note up and throwing it on the ground with a muttered oath.

Tate—

I forgot I was wearing this until I’d left the station. Thanks for letting me have it for a while; it’s very beautiful.

Sarah

It was in that moment he decided he needed to find her. He had to see her. He had to talk to her. They couldn’t leave things like this, after everything they’d been through. Damn it, two weeks ago they’d been planning their wedding, and now he didn’t even know where she was.

As the thought occurred to him, he looked down at the envelope, his heart bursting apart again, and ran his finger over the postmark. It had been sent a couple of days after she’d left—that was rural post—from a shop in Rose Bay.

With a renewed sense of hope, he pulled out his phone and typed a text to Rex: Do you still have that investigator on retainer? I need help with something.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SARAH KNEW THAT, at some point, she would have to properly plan out her next step. She couldn’t stay holed up in a little Airbnb in Sydney for ever. She had to think about where to live and work, and she knew that would all require some proper research. It made sense to start with childcare centres, for their baby, to find a really great one that worked in a way she approved of, and then start looking for jobs at schools nearby. She knew that made sense. But every time she started to even think of doing the necessary research, her body felt impossibly heavy, her mind weary, and she told herself she’d do it the next day.

But the next day turned into the next, and the next, until two weeks had passed and she was still in a sweet little one-bedroom apartment, with the ticking time bomb of a pregnancy and no clue where she wanted to be and what she wanted to do next.

She was exhausted.

Exhausted in a way she’d never known.

At first, she’d put it down to pregnancy, but with each day that passed, it became harder to keep lying to herself.

She was bereft. Grief had seeped into her soul and walked alongside her. She had felt it before, when her mother died, but this was different. This wasn’t like death, with a clear line in the sand of loss; this was more ephemeral and constant. This was eating her alive.

Knowing that Tate was on the station, being able to picture him there, imagining him, having him haunt her dreams. It was all so impossible.

She closed her eyes and felt the air from out there crackling over her skin, the sun beating down on her. She heard the rustle of the leaves, smelled their eucalyptus oil. When she ran her hands under water, she saw the pool, and remembered how it felt to swim with Tate. The moonlight was evocative of the station, too. She had taken to sitting on the small balcony of the apartment with a peppermint tea each evening, and staring up at it. Remembering Tate, imagining him looking out on the very same moon.

Separation was almost unbearable. She so often almost weakened, and decided to go back. To hell with her heart; surely nothing could be worse than this?

If it weren’t for the baby, she might not have left the bedroom. But knowing she was the host for their little one forced her to at least eat, and to eat healthily, and also to move her body. She went on gentle walks each morning, around the beautiful historic suburb with the leafy streets and trendy coffee shops. Each morning, she’d make her way down to the ocean and stare out at it. She knew it was vast, but having been on Ironbark Ridge Station, nothing felt quite so expansive and unending as that. She longed to be looking at, not rolling white-capped waves, but gentle undulations covered in dry desert grass, red soil beneath her feet rather than white sand.

But she’d probably never return.

It was too hard to even contemplate stepping back into that house, the one Tate had told her she should think of as hers. Too hard to think of anything to do with Tate, so she did her level best not to. Only he was there, like a pulse, beating through her, even when she was assiduously trying to forget him.

And then, one morning, when she got back from the beach with her coffee in hand, he was there. Actually there. Though she blinked her eyes rapidly, sure she’d imagined him, because she’d been thinking of him in that very moment, remembering the way he looked in the mornings, so sexily dishevelled and devourable.

But, no. Tate Carrigan was standing at the front door of her apartment building, holding a brown paper bag and wearing a grim expression as he scanned the building.

She thought about hiding. Turning and disappearing around a corner, at least until she had her breath, and could cope with meeting him again. But she couldn’t. Not yet. Having not seen Tate in the flesh for over two weeks, she couldn’t do anything but stand still and stare, drinking in the sight of the man who looked so at home on his rural property, but also so completely right here, too. If a little too…much, somehow. Her breath caught in her throat, and her mouth felt dry, her tongue too big to work. She stared at him, and her brain seemed to turn to mush, so she had no idea what to do. It was as if the world had stopped spinning.

Her fingers trembled as she lifted her hands to her lips and pressed them there, wanting to say something, but not remembering how to even speak in that moment. And then he turned, his expression so classically Tate—impatient and confident to the point of arrogance—reminding her of the very first time she’d met him, when he’d loomed out of a thunderstorm and taken over her heart completely.

Their eyes locked, and she could barely breathe. His gaze ran over her body, then returned to hers, and all she could hear was the pounding of blood in her veins. His arm was still in a cast, and when he walked towards her, she was reminded forcibly of the accident, and the fact she’d nearly lost him for real. He could so easily have died that afternoon, and without knowing how she felt.

Even though he hadn’t returned her feelings, she was still glad she’d been honest with him. Everyone deserved to know they were loved, and that was something Tate had never really had, his whole life.