“They’re in love,” Julie said with satisfaction.
“They are,” William agreed. “And unless I’m very much mistaken, that young man just got some difficult news.”
“Medical discharge, probably,” Julie said softly. “But he has Jane now. And Trinity. That will help him through it.”
“Do you ever worry,” William asked, “that all this magic and all these wishes might be too much? That we’re meddling in things we shouldn’t?”
Julie considered the question seriously. “I worry sometimes,” she admitted. “But then I remember that all we’re really doing is giving people a chance. The magic doesn’t force them to fall in love or make difficult decisions. It just opens doors. What they do with those open doors is entirely up to them.”
“That’s a good way of looking at it,” William said.
They watched Gabe and Jane disappear into the inn, and Julie felt a deep contentment settle over her. Her family inn was fulfilling its purpose—providing a place where broken people could heal, where lost souls could find their way home, where love could bloom even in the darkest seasons.
“How many wishes left on that tree?” William asked.
Julie smiled mysteriously. “As many as it takes, my dear. As many as it takes.”
18
GABE
They were all gathered in the dining room: Trinity, Holly, Charlie, Jack, Logan, Christopher, Isabella, Maddy, Julie, and William. These people in front of him were all his family now. They had taken him in and treated him as such since the moment he and Christopher had arrived to surprise his mother, daughter, and aunt. They all deserved to know the truth about him.
A few days ago, they had gathered to hear Jane’s good news. That she did not have a hereditary disease. Now they were gathered in anticipation, waiting for Gabe’s news.
His eyes met Jane’s. She was sitting on one side of her father, Holly on the other. Trinity was between his mother and Aunt Charlie. Christopher was perched beside Isabella, with Maddy on his other side. Logan sat next to Aunt Charlie, and Julie and William were close to where Jane sat.
All eyes were on him. Gabe felt like he was standing beneath a hot spotlight, exposed and vulnerable in a way he had not felt since his first day of SEAL training.
He took a breath and began.
“You all heard that I helped a young girl and broke my leg a week before I joined you at the inn,” Gabe said, his voice steady despite the nerves churning in his stomach. “But there was a lot more to what happened that day.”
He could feel Trinity’s eyes on him, wide and attentive. His mother’s face was already creasing with worry.
“Obviously, I can’t tell you everything. The day my leg got broken, we had gotten all the hostages out of a compound,” Gabe continued. There were fifteen people. Including aid workers, journalists, and locals. The extraction was going smoothly. But there was one hostage left. A little girl, maybe seven or eight years old. She had been injured earlier and couldn’t walk on her own.”
Gabe’s hands clenched around his crutches as he relived those moments.
“I rushed back in to get her,” he said. “As I was carrying her toward the exit, I saw it. An IED was rigged to the doorframe. And then I heard a gunshot crack through the air. Someone had set a tripwire, and the shot triggered the explosive.”
Several people in the room gasped. Holly’s hand flew to her mouth.
“I had maybe two seconds,” Gabe said quietly. “I threw myself over the child. The blast hit us. There was debris everywhere. Something heavy came down on my leg, breaking it. And I took shrapnel to my thigh. It lodged near my femoral artery.”
“Oh my word,” Julie breathed.
“The pain was...” Gabe paused, searching for words. “Intense. But the girl was alive underneath me, crying but alive. And I knew I had to get her out of there before the building came down completely or before hostiles showed up.”
He saw Jane’s eyes glistening with tears, understanding flooding her face.
“I forced myself up and out of the debris,” Gabe continued. “Forced myself to move forward, ignoring the blood and pain. I carried that little girl to the extraction point, handed her off to my team, and then I passed out. I woke up three days later in a military hospital in Germany.”
The room had fallen completely silent. Even Trinity was staring at him with a mixture of awe and concern, even when he’d told her earlier, before this gathering. He didn’t want to shock her.
“That’s why my recovery has been slower than expected,” Gabe said. “The shrapnel is still there. It’s too dangerous to remove without risking massive bleeding. And I made the fracture worse by walking on it, by forcing myself to keep moving when I should have stayed down.”
“And then you damaged it again when you rushed down the beach.” Holly stood up abruptly, her chair scraping against thefloor. “Gabe...” She was gobsmacked, torn between anger that he had kept this from her and worry for her son. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you?—”
