A month has passed since Cole was caught and killed, and while I still mourn the loss of his life as I would that of any human being, I am glad that I no longer have to look over my shoulder every minute of every day. My family is safe.

I close my bedroom door and fall back onto the bed. I’m spending the night at Cabin 114, and tomorrow is the day I’ll marry Jake. I have no doubts in my mind that this is what I want, and Jake assures me he wants this too.

My Aunt Carole arrived today. She’s Adam’s twin sister and, technically, she’s my mother, if DNA is anything to go by. She and Gabby spent the evening arranging my hair in preparation for tomorrow, and they practiced my makeup. We all had manicures and pedicures, and now I’m tired. I just fed Hank one last time and he’s sleeping in a portable crib in the room with Gabby, presumably so that I can get some rest. Aunt Carole is with her, and she’s supervising the care of my youngest child. Laura is sleeping on the pullout couch and her daughter is with Freddy.

Freddy had surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder and he has been here all summer, along with Laura, recuperating. I thought it would be strange having my husband’s ex-wife, his best friend who cheated with his ex-wife, and their love child around, but it really hasn’t been. The ten years that Laura and Jake spent together made them really close friends who share some memories that Jake and I don’t share, but aside from that, there’s nothing there except fondness.

I reach back to adjust my pillow so I can crawl under the covers, and I hear a tap on my window. Immediately, my mind goes to Cole, but then I remind myself that he can’t hurt me anymore. There’s no way he could be tapping on my window.

Someone raps on the window again. I open it and Jake looks up at me. “Come outside with me,” he whispers. His green eyes gleam in the moonlight, and he smiles at me. My belly drops just like it did when I was sixteen years old.

“It’s two in the morning,” I whisper back.

“I know, but I miss you.” He motions for me to come out.

“I’m not dressed,” I protest.

He waggles his brow at me. “Even better.”

Jake’s standing in the dark with a tiny flashlight in his hand, and he shines it at his own face. He hasn’t shaved since this morning, and beard stubble shadows his jaw.

“This is bad luck,” I remind him. “Go away.” I start to lower the window, but he reaches out and grabs it.

“We’ve already had our share of bad luck,” he says quietly. “Come out and play with me.”

I look toward the door.

“I’ll bring you back before Hank gets hungry. I promise. I just want you for a little while.” He puts his hands together like he’s praying and the flashlight shines up toward the heavens. “Please?”

I huff out a breath and raise the window all the way up.

“Lean toward me. I’ll pull you out,” Jake says.

I reach for him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders with my weight resting on him. He eases me out the window until my legs are free, and then he stands me up.

“See?” he says. “I got you.”

I step up onto my bare tiptoes to kiss him, wrapping my arms around his naked torso. His lips touch mine. “Where are your clothes?” I ask him.

He shines the flashlight at his lounge pants. “Pop gave me these. Look,” he says. The lounge pants are black and they have tiny naked women on them. “I figured I’d never get to wear them again, so I put them on.”

He’s not wearing a shirt, so I let my fingers skim across his naked chest. He turns away from me. “Hop on. I’ll carry you.”

Since I came out the window with no thought of shoes, I hop onto his back and wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders. “Don’t drop me,” I say.

He hitches me a little higher, hooking my thighs with his hands, and looks back over his shoulder at me. “I’d never drop you, Katie,” he says softly. “You should know that by now.”

I hug him tighter.

He carries me all the way to the water, and then he sets me in the sand, and the wet sand oozes between my toes. The full moon shines on the water, and the only sounds are crickets and a breeze blowing through the trees. The water shines like glass, slick and solid, but soft and wild. Jake takes my hand as I step into the canoe. “Where are we going?” I ask.

I sit down on one end and Jake sits across from me. The gleam of his teeth appears white in the darkness of the night. “You’ll see,” he replies.

Jake paddles around the shoreline bend and then moves toward the shore. It’s the same sandy beach we visited when we were sixteen, the night before I left to go home. “Jake,” I breathe, “this is perfect.”

He gets out and spreads a blanket on the grass just beyond the shore, and then he fetches a small cooler.

“I don’t like sleeping by myself,” he says. “I missed you.”

He lies back on the blanket and opens his arms to me. I fall against his chest and nestle in that little spot that’s all mine, right where his shoulder meets his neck. I let my fingers play in the fine dusting of hair on his chest.

He squeezes me tight and kisses my forehead. “How’s Gabby doing tonight?”

I lift up a little, cross my hands on Jake’s chest, and rest my chin on them. “She’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“She knew Jeff the best,” he says. “She had him the longest. I just thought she might be getting a little nostalgic.”

“If she is, she hasn’t told me. I think she’s fine. No matter what, her father is gone. He’s not coming back. And she loves you, Jake.”

He snorts. “She didn’t love me very much last week.”

I laugh too. “That’s because you caught her behind the tree kissing that boy and made her go home early from the dance. She got over it.”

“That little bastard,” Jake grumbles. “Boys are walking hormones.”

“So are girls,” I remind him. “They’re thinking about all that just as much as boys are.”

“She didn’t speak to me for the whole next day.” He chuckles.

“That’s the thing about teenagers,” I remind him. “They get over it. Eventually.” I poke him in the side. “And they’re still kissing. She told me this afternoon.”

“I wonder…do they still make chastity belts?” he asks.

“Yeah, they’re called fathers.”

I immediately realize my mistake. Jake’s not her father. Silence falls upon us like a wet woolen blanket.

“I didn’t mean—”

But Jake squeezes me tight. “I know what you meant. I kind of…wanted to talk to you about that anyway.”

I sit up and cross my legs, and Jake sits up too. He takes my hands in his. “I won’t be angry if you don’t want this…” He winces. “But the kids… I’d like to be their dad.”

“You’ll officially be their stepdad as of tomorrow,” I remind him.

“No,” he says. He growls low under his breath. “I want them to legally be mine. I’d like to adopt them. All of them. They could take my last name, if they wanted to, but they don’t have to. What do you think?”

His eyes are shimmery and shiny in the darkness, and I know he has given this a lot of thought. “Are you sure, Jake? You don’t have to take that step—”

“I want to take that step. I love them. I want them to be ours.”

“They’re already ours.”

“I asked the kids,” he blurts out.

My breath stalls. “And?”

“And they said yes.”

My voice comes out as a squeak. “They did?”

He nods. “They did. If it’s okay with you.”

“It’s okay with me,” I whisper.

“Really?” His voice hitches.

“Yes, really. I trust you to take care of them, no matter what. If anything happens to me, they would be yours. I want you to have legal standing with regard to them. So if they agree, then my answer is yes.”

Jake leans forward and grabs me, kissing me softly and sweetly. Then he rolls me beneath him. He toys with the neckline of my white nightgown. “Is this new?”

“Yes. Aunt Carole gave it to me.”

“It’s really lovely,” he says, staring into my eyes. “Do you think we could take it off?”

“Right now?”

He kisses me. “Yes. Right now,” he murmurs against my lips.

He reaches down with his right hand and rucks up the hem of the nightgown. Then he helps me sit up and he lifts it over my head. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he breathes. He reaches behind me and unhooks the nursing bra I usually sleep in, and pulls it down my arms. He cups one breast in his hand, massaging gently.

Over the past few weeks, Jake and I have gotten to know one another’s bodies. He knows what turns me on, and I know how to get him hard. I reach down between us and find him hard and waiting. I shove his lounge pants down over his hips, using my feet to push them all the way off, and grab his ass to pull him against me.

Jake groans and buries his face in my shoulder. “You’ll never believe what I did,” he says.

I grab his hair and lift his face up to look into mine. “What did you do?”

“I forgot condoms,” he says sheepishly and pokes out his bottom lip.

I laugh and wrap my legs around him. “Do you ever think you might want a kid of your own, Jake?”

“I have kids of my own,” he says. “Don’t I?” He rocks against my heat.

“I wouldn’t mind one more,” I say, and he slips inside me.

“Are you sure?” he asks, waiting just barely inside.

“Yes.”

He pushes hard inside me, going as deep as he can.

“God, you feel good,” he says, pulling back and then pushing into me again. He makes short, shallow strokes, and I can already feel the warmth building inside me. Suddenly, he pulls out and slides down, spreading my thighs wide with his palms as he licks up my slit.

“Jake,” I say. “Come back up here.”

He murmurs against my lower lips. “You feel too good. It’s different without a condom. I can’t last.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I assure him.

“It matters,” he mumbles, and then he spreads me open wide with his thumbs and latches on to my clit. He sucks me tenderly, but with strength, licking until my legs tremble around his ears. I rock my hips, and then I shatter into a million pieces. Jake suckles and licks as I come apart, my body shaking and shuddering, and just when I think I can’t take any more, he slows down, letting me come back to earth, putting the pieces of me back together.

Then he flips me over. His body covers mine, his palms covering the backs of my hands, his fingers lacing between mine. He kisses the side of my neck, and sinks inside me with one frantic push, letting out a groan right next to my ear. “God, I love you, Katie,” he says, and he pushes and retreats.

“More, Jake,” I plead. Jake moves my legs apart and settles between them, and I tilt my bottom up just right so he can go deeper. “Just like that,” I whisper.

“Come for me again,” he says. “Please.”

“I’m close. So close.”

Jake raises my right leg higher and spreads my ass cheeks, pushing so deep it almost hurts, and I shudder around him. He grunts and shoves himself deep inside, holding tightly to me as he releases inside me with no barriers for the very first time.

He collapses on top of me and brushes my hair back from my face. “Can you breathe?”

“Who needs to breathe?” I mumble, not able to catch my breath.

Jake rolls off of me and falls onto his back. He breathes heavily, and I love the sound of a satisfied, proud man. “You came like crazy,” he says with a laugh.

“Don’t gloat,” I say. I swat his arm like I’m swatting a mosquito. “It’s not attractive.” But I’m smiling. I scoot over to lie on his chest. Jake pulls the edge of the blanket so that it covers us both.

“There’s a tiny little part of me that still expects your parents and Pop to show up in a boat to come and take us back,” Jake says on a chuckle. His chest rumbles under my cheek.

“Then we’d have to clean the bathhouse on our wedding day.” I giggle.

“You know, he knew about that night we spent out here when we were sixteen. He never punished me for that.”

“Us having to separate was punishment enough.” I snuggle into his chest.

Jake tips his wrist so he can look at his watch in the moonlight. “We still have time,” he says.

“Time for what?”

He lifts me over him, draping my legs on each side of him. He brushes my hair back from my face. “Time to do it one more time.” He lifts his hips and he’s suddenly inside me.

“Jake, I just came like crazy, remember? I can’t do it again so soon.”

“Well, then I’ll just stay right here.” He doesn’t move. He just rests there inside me.

“Aren’t you too old to do it over and over?” I grumble.

He laughs. “Apparently not.” He presses my shoulder. “Sit up just a little,” he whispers.

When I do, he sinks farther inside me. “Fine,” I mutter, pretending to be annoyed, but I honestly love the way that he wants me. I balance my palms on his chest. Then I start to ride him.

I’m slippery wet, and Jake moves, his strokes slow and long, and I tip my hips so that I can rub my clit on him. And within moments, I can feel the pressure building inside me.

“Like that?” Jake says.

“Yes,” I whisper back. It’s soft and slow and while I don’t experience the same earth-shattering orgasm like I had a few minutes ago, a warm wash of pleasure sweeps over me, and Jake grunts beneath me as he finishes deep inside. I settle back down on his chest, and he slips out of me. “Will it always be like this?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No.”

I lift my cheek from his chest to look at him. “No?”

He pushes my hair back from my face with gentle fingers. “It’ll be better,” he says. He rolls so that I drop onto the blanket beside him, and we face one another. “It’ll be me and you and the kids. And we’ll live happily ever after.”

“You promise?”

He kisses the tip of my nose. “Yes. I promise.”

Later, when the moon is low in the sky and the stars have lost some of their twinkle, Jake helps me put my nightgown back on, and I fold up the blanket while he gets dressed and loads the cooler back into the canoe.

He rows us back to our beach, and we get out of the canoe. He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear and then kisses me slowly and softly. Jake turns around and I hop on his back. He carries me back to my open window, and he helps me climb through it.

With my heart full of hope, I turn around and whisper, “Thank you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispers back. He stares into my eyes for a moment. Then he disappears into the darkness.

I fall back against the bed and climb under the covers. Gabby and Laura will let me know if Hank wakes up. I rub my face against the pillow, and scissor my legs together to warm the sheets. And I fall asleep amongst a sweet cascade of old memories and new dreams.