“Stay,” I said. “And I’ll show you.”
“Grant, I don’t know if—”
I put my hands on her shoulders. “I know. I get it. You had your heart set on something, and me being in the cabin changed everything. At least it did for me.”
She covered my hand with hers and squeezed. “It did for me too.”
My heart gave a cautious leap. “I’m sorry for being an ass yesterday.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said the things I did.”
We watched each other for a moment, the kind of fragile peace I was afraid to break.
“What do you want, Grant?” she asked softly. “What should we do?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “If these were normal circumstances, I’d ask if I could make you dinner. But nothing about this is normal. All I know is I don’t want you to go, not when I know what we could be.”
She stepped closer. “I don’t want to go either. I still need a fresh start. But maybe a fresh start doesn’t have to be alone.”
I closed the distance between us and slid my hand from hershoulder to cup her jaw. “The legal stuff will take time to sort out. In the meantime, why don’t we all live in the cabin? You, me, and Tuck. See whether Walt was right about us after all.”
“This is kind of crazy, you know that right?”
I nodded. “This has been crazy from the start, shouldn’t we keep it going?”
Her answer was to step fully into my arms and press her mouth to mine.
And for the first time since Walt was gone, the cabin didn’t feel like something I was clinging to, it felt like a place I was choosing. Not because I was afraid of being alone, but because I wasn’t anymore.
Epilogue - Six Months Later
Grant
If dragging your feet on dealing with a legal problem had been an Olympic sport, Kara and I would have taken gold.
We had to sort it out eventually. Kara needed to feel secure in her own future and that involved knowing her assets. That didn’t mean we had to figure it out right away though. The longer we waited the more time we had to figure out if we could really make this work for the long haul.
So far the answer was yes.
The mystery of why Walt had done what he did would probably never be solved, but neither of us cared. As far as we were concerned, the place belonged to both of us and always would. We were happy sharing space. We didn’t plan on ever being apart, and today, I was going to make that official.
“The lawyer called again,” Kara said, padding into the living room from her office.
We’d turned Walt’s old bedroom into a workspace for hersince she worked from home. We both knew we couldn’t keep the room as a shrine to him forever, but I also hadn’t felt right bending his niece over in his old bed.
“Did you answer?”
She shook her head.
“We should probably get back to him at some point,” I said, running a hand through my hair.
I was nervous. It was stupid to be nervous, but I was.
She dropped onto the couch beside me; the cushion dipping with her weight. The ring in my pocket felt like a live wire. She leaned into my side, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She was wearing loose-fitting sweats, her hair twisted up in one of those messy buns that made me want to bury my face in her exposed neck. To smell that shampoo of hers that was like catnip to me.
“Later, okay?” she said. “We can deal with it later.”
“Later,” I agreed. I kissed her temple, forcing myself to breathe steadily.
