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That it made her what he’d done to her instead of who she was.

Jenny would never get back some of the things she’d lost, like certain years with her kids—but somehow, they were all here. All three of them had chosen, of their own volition, to stay in Cowboy Point. To live here, raise families here—or she assumed they would raise families someday, if that was what they wanted—and stay close.

Now she understood that she would go through the worst of it all again and again if she knew that it would lead her here.

It was like Peyton could read her mind, because she reached over and grabbed Jenny’s hand then, squeezing it tight.

Jenny looked around the room. Tennessee and Matilda were sitting together, sharing the big armchair in the corner. Matilda looked flushed and bedraggled, as always, and Tennessee had his arms wrapped around her with a look of contentment that Jenny knew Matilda had put there. Because content was never how she would have described him before.

Over on the couch, Finn and Kitty sat side by side and Kitty had her usual severe expression on her face—until, that was, Finn murmured something that made her laugh and melt into his side. On the other side of the couch, Cat and Wilder were tucked up together, looking absolutely at ease with that bone-deep, borderless intimacy of theirs. As if they viewed all of their limbs as shared.

And over on the other side of the Christmas tree, near the windows, Raleigh and Helena were standing together again with matching expressions on their faces. Like they were happy for the couple but also a little over the endless displays of coupled affection. Peyton followed her gaze, and nodded.

“I know,” she murmured. “You wouldn’t know it’s Christmas with those two. It appears they didn’t get the festive memo.”

“They don’t want that memo,” Jenny said, with a laugh.

Raleigh looked the way he always did, like the kind of cowboy a woman went to a certain kind of bar to find, and didn’t expect much from—unless it involved a motel bed, the potential of seeing God, and absolutely no chance of a repeat encounter.

At his side, Helena stood with her arms crossed, looking as if she wasn’t sure how all of this had happened. All of these weddings. These matchups. Jenny wondered what exactly she’d been expecting when she’d come all the way to Cowboy Point to find her family, because it clearly wasn’t this.

But in front of the tree, Ruthie took Dallas’s hands, and everyone quieted down.

“Dallas,” Ruthie said, smiling so wide that they could all hear the smile in her voice. “When we were twenty years old you promised me that I would never have to stand up in front of a bunch of people like this, and I believed you, but here we are anyway. That’s how you can be sure I love you.”

Everybody laughed at that, including the two of them.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you,” Ruthie told him, “and I loved you when we were apart. And I’m pretty sure I loved you even when I didn’t know who you were, because I came here to find you. I couldn’t stay away. And now I get to win, at last, the argument that’s plagued us as long as we’ve known each other.”

She moved closer, and tipped her chin up toward him. “I definitely love you more. It’s a literal, scientifically proven fact now.” Everyone laughed at that, too, maybe Dallas most of all, but she kept going. “Because I came up here and loved you as a stranger. So that must mean I love you the most in every universe, in every way, forever.”

The whole room burst into applause while the couple themselves looked delighted, then kissed about it for a moment. Until they separated again, and Dallas cleared his throat.

“Ruthie, I love you,” he said. “I’ve always loved you and I always will.”

Jenny felt tears prick at the back of her eyes as her usually stoic son did absolutely nothing to hide the emotion on his face.

“I promise you that we will never lose each other again,” Dallas said, beaming down at the wife he’d lost and then found again, right here at home. “I promise you that I will find you, no matter where you go. I promise that we can be whatever we want to be for each other, and it will be beautiful, because it’s us.”

“Us,” Ruthie whispered back.

“I want to build things with you,” Dallas continued. “I want to have babies with you. I want everything that we can imagine, and then more. And I’ve spent eight years without you. I don’t want to spend another eight seconds like that, so let’s not do that.” He smiled down at her, so fondly it made Jenny’s heart hurt. “Forever isn’t nearly long enough.”

That got even more applause, so they kissed about that, too. Then the two of them turned, smiled around the room, and even took a little bow, to make it stick.

And then it was a party.

Jenny and Peyton stayed where they were, sitting side by side on the smaller couch, watching all their children melt into their partners or charge around the room, making sure that everyone had a bit of the vow renewal cake that Kitty had made, the hot sandwiches that Tennessee had brought, and the spiked eggnog that Wilder claimed was a Carey family tradition.

But their attention kept getting caught by the two youngest Patricks.

“I have thoughts,” Jenny said after a while, nodding in their direction. Peyton followed Jenny’s gaze to where the two of them were talking intensely, as usual. “Raleigh really does get a kick out of defending that rancher to Helena.”

“He does,” Peyton agreed. “He likes getting a rise out of anyone, if he can, but he’s stuck on that Colton Dean when it comes to his little sister.” She lifted a brow at Jenny. “But I think he’s going to have other things to think about.”

Jenny inclined her head. “A schoolteacher, perhaps?”

Peyton hummed an affirmative. “When he looks at her, he seems… confounded.”