“I’m going,” Tiffany said. “With Dakota. Because I’m part of his life now.”
Selah smiled. “You’re part of all our lives now.”
The words landed somewhere soft in Tiffany’s chest.
“Are you still in pain?” Selah asked gently. “The wound, I mean.”
Tiffany considered the question. “Pain just means you’re alive,” she said. “And it’s good to be alive.”
Selah reached over and squeezed her hand. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.
“I called my parents yesterday,” Tiffany said after a moment. “Told them I was okay. That I’d been in an . . . accident but I was recovering.”
“How did that go?”
She thought about the conversation. Her mother’s distracted tone, the sound of the TV in the background. Her father asking if she needed money. Neither of them asking if she needed them.
“They were . . . themselves.” She shrugged, and it didn’t hurt the way it used to. “I think I’ve stopped expecting them to be different. They lost Skylar, and something in them broke. They don’t know how to love what’s left.”
“That’s a hard thing to accept.”
“It is.” She looked at Selah. “But I’m learning that family isn’t just about blood. Sometimes it’s about who shows up.”
Selah’s eyes glistened. She squeezed Tiffany’s hand again.
A pause. The breeze rippled the lake, sent patterns of light dancing across the water.
Footsteps sounded in the grass behind them.
Tiffany looked up to see Dakota coming down the lawn from the house. He was dressed casually—jeans, a T-shirt, bare feet in the grass.
He was devastating in the morning light. Not just handsome—though he was that too. Powerful in the way he moved, steady and certain. And she went to liquid in the way he looked at her, desire, hope . . . love in his eyes.
“Morning, Selah.”
“Good morning, Dakota.” Selah stood. “I’ll leave you two. See you in the Keys.”
She took Tiffany’s finished coffee mug, then touched her shoulder—a brief, warm pressure—before heading back toward the house.
Dakota watched her go, then turned back to Tiffany. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Hey, TJ.”
The nickname still made something flutter in her chest. Tiffany. Jayden. Both parts of her, woven together into something new.
“Hey yourself.”
He crossed the remaining distance and stood in front of her chair, looking down at her with that steady gaze she’d fallen in love with. The gaze that saw everything and accepted all of it.
“You were up early,” he said. “I saw you on the dock.”
Of course he had. He noticed everything.
“I was saying goodbye,” she said simply. “To Skylar.”
He nodded, understanding without needing details. Then he reached down, slid one arm behind her back and one under her knees, and scooped her out of the chair.
She gasped, laughed, clutched the Bible to her chest as her free arm went around his neck. “Dakota?—”
“Careful. I’ve got you.”
