I didn’t hesitate.
“Whenever you want. Tomorrow. Next month.” I bent and pressed a kiss into her hair. “I just want it to be real.”
She stilled, then smiled in that quiet, certain way she had when she meant every word.
“It’s already real.” Her hand slid over my heart. “It’s been real for a long time.”
She fell asleep wearing my grandmother’s ring.
I lay there watching the moonlight catch the gold, the soft gleam where it rested beside the plain band we’d bought in a rush eight months ago. Two rings now. One born out of necessity. One chosen freely, deliberately. The difference between surviving and staying.
Riley shifted in her sleep, her fingers finding mine without waking, the way they always did now. Automatic. Like her body had learned the shape of me, learned where safety lived, even when her mind had let go.
Down the hall, Mia slept in her own room. The door cracked open. The nightlight was on. The first night since the clearing. A small thing, maybe. But my chest ached with how big it felt.
A week ago, I’d been kneeling in the dirt, blood everywhere, certain I was watching my life end in front of me. Certain I’d waited too long, loved too quietly, wasted what mattered most.
Now Riley was here. Warm. Breathing. Wearing my grandmother’s ring like it had always belonged to her. Talking about a wedding we didn’t need but wanted anyway.
I let that truth settle. Let it sink past the fear, past the habit of bracing for loss.
Funny how it worked. You spent years afraid to want too much, afraid that wanting was an invitation to lose—and then you almost did. And suddenly the fear felt small. Petty. A terrible use of the time you’d been given.
I wasn’t going to waste any more of it.
I pressed a kiss into Riley’s hair, breathed her in, and let my mind wander forward for once without flinching. The wedding. Mia in a dress she’d complain about. Cal giving a toast thatwould wreck everyone. This porch, years from now, arguments about coffee and chores and whose knees hurt worse.
I’d spent thirty years on this land. Thought I knew what loving it meant.
I’d been wrong.
It wasn’t the place. It was the people.
Riley. Mia. A family I hadn’t planned for, had fought for anyway, and somehow—against every odd—got to keep.
I closed my eyes.
Not hoping. Not bargaining. Just knowing.
We weren’t just going to be okay.We were already there.
CHAPTER 20
Riley
Eight monthssince a desperate proposal in a firehouse kitchen. Eight months since I gambled everything on a stranger and a lie.
The final hearing was today.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of my blazer for the third time. The same thrifted blazer I’d worn to every hearing. It fit better now. Or maybe I did.
This time, my hands didn’t shake.
Liam appeared in the doorway, already dressed, watching me fidget.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” I smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle, more habit than anxiety. “I actually am.”
