Maude’s hand squeezed my arm. “Maybe it was both.”
“I know the will said I had to stay for a year and then I could sell if I wanted,” I went on, looking up at the house that had tried so hard to be both prison and sanctuary. “But I don’t want to sell. I wouldn’t dream of selling. This is my home. I love it. I love … this.”
I gestured clumsily—at the porch, the marsh, the yard where kids would eventually run, at the cluster of dangerous men and the women who’d somehow agreed to love them.
Maude’s eyes shone. “Then it’s settled,” she said. “You’re exactly where you’re meant to be.”
Behind us, footsteps creaked on the porch boards. Gideon’s hand brushed the small of my back as he came to stand beside me, warm and solid and very much mine.
“Stealing her,” he told Maude, bending to kiss her cheek. “You can yell at me later.”
“I always do,” she said fondly. “Don’t scuff my new floors if you start waltzing in there. And don’t you dare let anyone put their drink down without a coaster.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, dead serious.
She shook her head and disappeared back inside, muttering something about men who thought power-washing counted as cleaning.
Gideon watched her go, then turned to me. The look on his face made the world narrow down to just us.
“Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi.”
He took my hand, thumb rubbing over a spot of white paint I’d missed near my knuckles. “You got something here,” he murmured.
“You got something … everywhere,” I shot back, eyeing the smear of sawdust on his shirt.
“Rude,” he said. “True, but rude.”
I smiled. It felt easy. It felt like breathing.
“How’s your suite at Dominion Hall?” I asked, because teasing him about his absurd upgrade made me happy. “Still pretending you don’t like the nice linens?”
He snorted. “They’re too soft. You sink.”
“You sink?” I repeated. “You have a room bigger than my entire Chicago condo and you’re complaining about the thread count?”
He squeezed my hand. “I like it fine,” he admitted. “Especially now that you’ve filled it with pillows and plants and whatever that throw is that keeps trying to eat me.”
“It’s called texture,” I said. “And you love it.”
He did. He loved the suite he’d been given at Dominion Hall, even if he pretended otherwise—the one near Caleb’s and Jacob’s rooms, close enough for them to knock on walls at each other like teenagers. We stayed there some nights when we needed to be close to the war room.
But as much as I’d had fun decorating those high ceilings and ugly-fancy sconces, hanging photographs and bringing in small pieces of us, the inn was home.
This porch. This marsh. This man standing in front of me like he was about to jump out of a plane.
“Walk with me,” he said suddenly. “Just down to the end of the steps.”
Suspicion flickered. Behind us, the noise on the porch dimmed like someone had dialed it down on purpose.
“Is everyone staring at us?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “Come on.”
He led me down the steps to the spot where he, Ethan, and Lucas had stopped Sam Jarrow from getting any closer. The place where my life had split cleanly into Before and After.
The air still felt thinner there.
