I grabbed her hand and pulled her out the back door of the farmhouse she’d grown up in and toward our barn.
It was the same barn where I’d shown up in a snowstorm two decades ago with a crumpled list and a desperate prayer that she’d forgive me, although we’d remodeled it over the years so that it would last another fifty or more.
Her parents had signed the whole property over to us when they’d decided to downsize, unable to keep up with the acreage anymore. We’d renovated the kitchen and added a master suite on the first floor and turned the old barn into a proper stable for the horses our daughters had insisted they needed. The property was chaos most days—four kids, two dogs, a dozen chickens, and a rotating cast of friends and teammates who seemed to treat our house like a second home.
I loved every second of it.
Ava had taken over the local dance studio after college instead of going into marketing, but she’d used her degree toboost business, and I’d made sure to get her AC fixed so she wasn’t melting in the summers.
Twenty years we’d been together now. There’d been countless sleepless nights and soccer games and dance recitals and hockey tournaments. Arguments about money and parenting and who forgot to defrost the meat for dinner. It was real life, in all its messy, mundane glory.
And not once—not for a single second—had I ever been tempted to be anywhere else.
My father had been wrong about me. He’d been so wrong about what love could be when two people chose each other, every day, even when it was hard.Especiallywhen it was hard.
I’d expected the wanting to fade. That’s what everyone said about marriage, right? The passion dims, the spark dies, you become roommates who occasionally remember they used to have sex. I’d braced for it, honestly. Waited for the morning I’d wake up and feel restless, feel trapped, or feel that genetic curse my father had promised was my birthright.
It never came.
Instead, I woke up every morning next to the same woman and somehow wanted her more than the day before. Her laugh still made my chest tight. Her smile made me feel like the luckiest bastard alive. And when she looked at me—even if she was rolling her eyes at me for doing something ridiculous— I still felt like that nervous kid who couldn’t believe she’d chosen him.
“The kids will be home soon,” Ava said, her voice dropping.
“Then I guess we should hurry.”
“Would it make you walk faster if you knew I wasn’t wearing underwear?”
I stopped mid-stride, and swept her up into my arms before running the short distance remaining to the barn.
She was laughing even as she tried to speak. “Liam! Put me down.”
“No can do, Mrs. Farrell. What if the wind blows your dress up? Better to get you into the barn before someone sees what belongs to me.”
The barn had been renovated with new doors, floors, and proper heating for the horses. But every time I walked through those doors, I remembered. Snow in my hair. A crumpled list in my shaking hands. And Ava standing in the cold, looking at me like I’d destroyed her world and she wasn’t sure if she should let me try to rebuild it.
But we’d rebuilt it together. Better than it was before.
The horses huffed as we slipped inside, but they were used to us by now. I pulled Ava past the stalls to the empty one at the end—the one we’d never gotten around to filling, and that had become something of a private retreat when we needed a moment away from the chaos of the house.
The second we were out of sight, I had her pressed against the wall.
“Liam—”
I kissed her hard. Deep. The kind of kiss that said I know we only have thirty minutes but I’m going to make every single one of them count.
She kissed me back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer. I grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head, holding her there while I pulled back just enough to look at her.
God, she was beautiful.
Forty-one years old, a mother of four amazing kids, and she still made my blood run hot just by existing. There were laugh lines around her eyes now, and silver had started tothread through the golden brown of her hair. But her eyes were the same—filled with sharp intelligence, stubborn fire, and love so deep it felt like breathing every time she looked at me.
“I love you,” I said. “You know that, right?”
“You’ve mentioned it once or twice.” But her voice was breathless, her pupils dilating as I pressed my hips against hers.
“Just making sure. Never want you to forget.”
I kissed down her neck, nipping at the spot below her ear that always made her shiver even after all these years. She arched into me, and I released her wrists so I could slide my hands down her sides, gathering the fabric of that blue sundress in my fists.
