“No.” His thumb moved briefly along her jaw. “It’s the opposite of a complaint.”
She looked at him in the fading light—at the steadiness she’d been leaning on since she’d come back, at the patience he’d offered without being asked, at the man who’d driven through mountain roads and burst into her mom’s old house.
She’d spent ten years looking for something bigger and better than what she’d left behind.
All along, it had been right here waiting for her.
“I meant what I said,” she murmured. “About leaving being a mistake.”
“I know you did.”
“I just want to make sure you heard it.”
Something wound through his expression. “I heard it, Rowan.”
She nodded once and looked up through the oak branches at the sky going dark above them. Stars were beginning to appear at the edges—faint at first, then brighter as the last of the light faded.
There were things they hadn’t resolved. Real things. She had a career in pieces three thousand miles away and a legal process just beginning and a life she’d need to figure out how to put back together or walk away from entirely. Wes had a company in Baltimore and a dog and a life that didn’t currently include her in any practical sense.
None of that was small.
But none of it felt impossible either.
Not here. Not under this tree. Not with his hand still warm against her face and the carved initials above them like something that had simply been waiting all this time for them to come back and find it.
“We have things to figure out,” she said.
“We do.”
“It won’t be simple.”
“No.” He gazed at her. “But I’ve never been interested in simple.”
She smiled—a real one, the kind that came from somewhere deeper than performance and deeper than relief. “Neither have I.”
Rowan leaned into Wes’s side and looked up at the stars appearing one by one in the darkening sky.
She didn’t reach for her phone.
She didn’t check for headlines.
She just stood there beneath the live oak with the man she should never have left and let herself be exactly where she was.
For the first time in a very long time, that was enough.
CHAPTER 51
In the threeweeks since Rowan had returned to Refuge Cove, the mountains had gone from the bare gray-brown of late winter to the first soft green of spring. The air still carried a chill before noon, but by midmorning the sun had found its full strength.
Rowan stood near the back porch with a cup of coffee and watched as the property came to life around her.
Today was the groundbreaking on the new cottages that were being built. The whole family would be here as well as some lead members of the construction crew. Their guests had also been invited, but only Dana stood outside. The others had decided to watch from indoors, which was understandable with the newcomers on the property.
Caleb had strung simple white flags to mark the footprint of the new cottages. It was nothing fancy—just a gesture, a way of making the invisible visible, of saying:This is what’s coming. A small excavator sat at the far edge of the property.
Rowan caught Wes’s eye across the yard, and warmth spread through her. He talked to Wyatt near the fence, his coffee in one hand, and he looked . . . settled, she supposed. Content. Maybe even at home.
She was still getting used to being in such close proximity to him.
