We walk off the airplane with our hands intertwined. As we emerge from the jet bridge, swathed in thick, warm, Southern air, an airline attendant smiles and waves.

“You two have a happy Friday.”

“You too.” I smile back, and, to his credit, so does Landon. It’s his polite smile. The one I’ve seen him use so many times on patients when he’s having a bad day. They never know—but I do.

I squeeze his fingers. They squeeze mine back.

“Good?” I whisper.

He nods—and I assess him as we walk toward baggage claim.

He looks gorgeous in his charcoal suit, with an unbuttoned white dress shirt underneath. In the late morning light that’s streaming through the airport windows, his hair shines, more red than brown. The just-more-than-stubble beard he’s sporting ups the hotness factor even further.

“You look good,” I murmur.

He gives me a small, tight smile, and squeezes my hand. “You do.”

I look down at my blouse, leggings, and boots. “It’s kinda weird to be without the white coat.”

“Right?”

I nod. We have the weekend off: a rarity these last few months.

Right after Landon’s accident and surgery, we figured that he’d be out up to six months—or at least, that’s how Eilert and the program budgeted his recovery time. Instead, he surprised everyone by healing not just fast, but super fast.

He was determined not to fall into the class behind ours, not because of me, but because, as he put it, “I didn’t work this hard to spend the whole damn year reading the newspaper.”

When he asked to make a slow return to work just six weeks after surgery, using a walker, working fewer hours, and helping on the floor, with no OR time, Eilert said “yes” without much trouble.

“But no kissing in the donut room,” she warned.

They had to bend the rules for us. Even now, with Landon fully healed and having been at work fulltime again for going on eight weeks, we’re rarely scheduled in the OR at the same time, and Landon doesn’t report to Eilert anymore for his official evaluations. He reports to Kraft.

After we finish the program, we likely wouldn’t both be able to work as neurosurgeons at Alpine University Hospital. But that’s fine, because Landon is firmly interested in pediatrics, and planning to do the extra residency time required for peds.

“The air is so thick here.” I wipe my forehead as we step onto one of those nifty human conveyer belts.

“It’s like the Southern United States or something.”

Landon smirks, and I give him a mock glare. “Smart ass.”

Over time I’ve found that underneath his smooth surgeon’s veneer, he’s still sarcastic like he’s always been, and more so when he’s nervous.

“Did you get the rental car receipt?” he asks as we step off the belt, beside the baggage claim.

“I did.” I drop his hand.

“Sorry,” he breathes. “Wound up.”

“If you weren’t, I’d suspect an alien body-snatching.”

That makes him chuckle. “You’re so weird.”

“That’s what you love about me.”

“So it is.”

We walk to our flight’s carousel, and I start looking for our suitcases: both black, and marked with hot pink teacup luggage tags. Landon spots one and steps around a crowd of teenagers to lift it off the belt.

I shadow him. “Good?” I ask after he lifts it.

He arches his brows.

“Sorry,” I murmur.

Asking about his back is a habit I’m having kind of a tough time breaking. In our bed the other day, I got a spanking for excessive back-related commentary.

“I want to forget about it,” he said then. “Let it be over.”

And it’s true: he has healed flawlessly—owning, in part, I’m sure, to doing everything “right,” from therapeutic Pilates to aggressive PT right down to supplements for bone and muscle health. Yep—I’m married to a doctor.

Did I mention that we’re married?

After Landon got out of the hospital, eleven days post-surgery, I moved into his apartment: partially because he needed my help, but also because I couldn’t stand to be away from him.

I took a whopping three days off of work, and as we watched movies and napped and talked, and I pulled all my butt and thigh muscles bouncing on his lap, we realized more and more that nothing had changed.

Ten years apart, and our dynamic felt the very same as it always had. Domesticity was the most natural thing on earth for both of us, maybe because it’s how we started—living under the same roof.

Emmaline took off from her job as a voice actress in Los Angeles to come reacquaint herself with Landon and keep him company when I returned to work. My parents showed up on the last day of Em’s visit. They arrived while I was at the hospital, and surprised even my sister, asking to see Landon.

Em says they spent hours talking about what happened years ago—apologizing not because they did something so horrible, but because they both truly felt sad about how it worked out. In retrospect, they regretted spiriting Landon away like they did, especially knowing how it all panned out.

The night after Mom and Dad and Em left, Landon and I were in bed, drinking chamomile, with me curled up carefully against him, when he said, “I want to do this forever.”

“Cuddle?”

His voice dropped an octave when he said, “No—be with you.” I widened my eyes at him, and his mouth tightened. “Too soon?”

“No,” I whispered. I kissed his hand, and then his cheek…and then his mouth. “Never too soon. You know that was my first choice, right?” I whispered.

“What was?”

“Getting married.”

He stopped breathing. “What do you mean?”

“They sent me to Massachusetts with Aunt Raina to think about my choice…which was to have the baby. Have my parents get you back, and us to be both at their house—together.”

“Married?” he choked.

“No, not right then. But together. Headed there. That’s what I had always wanted.”

His eyes got red. His jaw tightened. He didn’t say much, but a few weeks later, when he’d started feeling better, we were walking slowly around Smith Lake at Wash Park when I ran my fingers over his lower back, and trailed them down his ass—where I felt a small circle inside his back pocket.

Landon felt me notice it, and tried to step away, but it was too late.

“Is that what I think it might be?” I gaped.

He tugged me up against him, wrapped both arms around me, and, when he pulled away, he got down slowly—very slowly—on one knee, and, with me holding his shoulders, he looked up at me in the sunlight, and asked me to marry him.

In keeping with our nontraditional engagement, we got in the car, I stopped and bought a blue, beaded bracelet, double-checked my bra—an older one, with frayed lace—and realized I was wearing a borrowed shirt: my favorite of his gray T-shirts. With my attire on point, we drove right to the courthouse and got hitched before the sun went down.

As we drove back to his apartment, Landon chuckled. “You just got yourself three newspaper subscriptions.”

“Just the thing to make a new wife happy.” I squeezed his fingers. “You just got your own personal avocado peeler, spot-in-the-middle-of-your-back scratcher, and expert tea steeper.”

“I can steep my own tea,” he teased.

I reached over into his lap, rubbing in between his legs. “That may be true. But can you steep this?”

I laugh now at that memory as Landon pulls our second suitcase from the carousel.

“What was that,” he murmurs as we start toward the rental car counter.

“I was just remembering when we got married.”

He chuckles. “Way back when, eh?”

I nod, smiling. “When you were still a young’un.”

After we’re settled in our car and headed toward our destination in the suburbs, Landon slides his gaze to mine. “Do you wish that had happened?” he asks quietly.

“What had happened?”

“Earlier, you said something about us getting married when I was a young’un.” He smirks slightly at my wording, but his mouth gets stuck in a frown. “Do you ever think about what might have happened if I hadn’t left the group home?”

I swallow. “Yes,” I whisper honestly. “And when I do, it scares me.”

I watch his mouth move, supple with emotion. His hand covers mine. “Thank you.”

“For being happy that you saved yourself?”

He shakes his head. “For being mine.”

That’s what I am when we stop the car in front of the split-level, wood-and-brick house. I’m his, so one glance at the place snatches my stomach into a knot of nerves.

We walk down the driveway and up to the porch, still holding hands, and Landon knocks.

“Remember,” I say, as we hear footsteps, “you might want her, but you don’t need her. You have a family now.”

His shoulders rise and fall. His fingers squeeze mine. “I’m okay,” he says. And then the door opens.

It’s her. I know it must be her, because her hair is red and gray, and she has Landon’s eyes. When her gray eyes take in his face, they pop open wider than I’ve ever seen a person’s eyes, and then she starts to sob.

She knows him on first sight, and what’s more—she grabs his shoulders.

The woman—Laura—sobs so loudly, I soon hear more footsteps, see more gray eyes. And then a pair of brown ones behind glasses: her husband. I look at their shocked faces, then at Landon, with his chin atop his mother’s head, his arms around her back, and I start crying, too.

Her husband ushers us inside and hugs me. Then he wraps his arms around his wife—and Landon. I watch her hands rub up and down Landon’s back, and see his back and shoulders start shaking. The three kids—older teens—are waved away by the man I guess is Landon’s stepfather. I stand there in the foyer, my eyes glued to my husband…and his mother.

His eyes are red and wet when he steps slightly back. He looks at her with his brows knitted, and her face crumples.

“I’m sorry!” She sobs louder. “I’m so very, very sorry that I left you there…”

I can see his thoughts on his face, see the moment that he puts it behind him. He hugs her.

“I had no more money,” she cries against his chest. “We had been crossing…a street…and I had gotten hit. I didn’t even know where we were…but we got a ride to that hospital. When we got there,” she says, tilting her head up to look at him, “there was this doctor…who saw you crying—you were hungry,” she says, in a voice that cracks, “and she brought you a popsicle.”

She shakes her head and starts to weep again, her cheek on Landon’s chest, and his palm rubs her back as he nods.

“It was cool that day. You didn’t have a coat…or anything. I was in withdrawal, and we’d just…gotten evicted—from the place I rented.” Her back shakes as she looks up at Landon—but he’s nodding, and I think that reassures her.

“I loved you. I loved being your mother. You were my gray-eyed baby. I just…wasn’t giving you the best…” She starts to cry again, and I cry with her—because I understand those words. I understand this stranger so much better than I ever thought I could.

Landon, without fully separating from her, reaches for me, brings me up against his side.

“I wasn’t going to leave you…but I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she weeps. “Once I left and I came back…you weren’t there. There was this woman at the desk, and she told me they’d taken you.” Laura rubs her tear-drenched face, squeezing her eyes shut as she wipes her tears and sniffs. “That was the day I started trying to get clean.”

She takes a few deep breaths as Landon peers down at her with the softest eyes I’ve ever seen on him.

“I’m sorry…” She shakes her head, laughing awkwardly. “What a greeting. I just—I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

Fresh tears fill her eyes, and her husband reappears to stand beside her.

“I’m Bobby.” He smiles politely. “You must know this is Laura, my other half.” She waves us more fully into their modest foyer, and I catch her staring awe-struck at Landon. He notices it, too; I see his face go neutral with his nervousness. His mother laughs. “I’m sorry. I just…know your face. You look just like my father.” Her mouth quivers as she nods.

“I looked for you, for a while…but I was in and out of rehab. I loved you, but I hated myself. I made…a lot of awful choices.”

Her husband murmurs something near her ear. She shakes her head—and then she pulls away from him.

She wipes her face and shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually a crier.” She chuckles, even as she wipes her swollen eyes again. “Anyway, I’m Laura. And…your name now?” she asks Landon. She looks like she’s braced for something.

“Landon.”

Fresh tears flood her eyes. “You’re still named Landon?”

For a moment, he looks confused.

“You jotted it down,” I murmur automatically.

“Did I?” She looks at me, then Landon.

Something loosens on my husband’s face—a kind of understanding.

“You don’t remember?” he asks quietly.

She shakes her head. “That’s the worst part,” she says hoarsely. “I remember nothing. Well—not much, beyond arriving there with you.”

Landon’s Adam’s apple bobs, and in a low voice, he says, “That’s the worst part for me, too.”

Then she’s hugging him again, and I’m observing. She’s almost as tall as him. She’s wearing a flowing, green dress. On a hall end table, there are stacked editions of the New York Times Magazine, I note with amusement.

After a few more minutes mostly occupied with Laura staring at Landon, and him at her, we step into a little library with a well-loved leather couch, and Landon sits between the two of us: his mom and me. She holds his hand between hers, and I listen as she tells him things she does remember. She seems eager—over-eager—to connect with him. So shaken that it seems as if she only left him there last year.

I think how strange it is that she loves him the way she seems to. Yet, she doesn’t know my Landon. How strange that flesh and blood can fall so far apart. How strange and sad.

We stay at her house for nearly four hours, her husband, Bobby, making dinner while she talks, and Landon and his half-siblings talk politics. Somehow everyone is laughing about nothing, and everything.

We gather ’round the table, no one touching the chicken Bobby made as they listen to Landon talk about med school and residency. They’re wide-eyed as he tells them where he met me, but they seem accepting. He doesn’t mention private things, like how much he struggled on the path his mother chose for him. He doesn’t mention Ashtyn, or even his wreck, and after her initial burst of emotion, Laura seems a little more reserved.

Still, the day is perfect.

Landon’s three half-siblings—Ainsley, Kam, and Beara—are all articulate and kind. Bobby is interesting and funny, and Laura seems quick-witted and warm. When we leave, she hugs Landon’s neck and begs us to come back tomorrow.

Landon nods. “We’re here for one more day.”

He wraps his arm around me as we walk back to the car.

He almost always gets my door for me, but this time I get his. He smiles tiredly. I drive to our rented condo, where we order pizza and then climb into bed.

Our lovemaking is slow and sweet. After we finish, Landon starts again immediately. In the dark room, when we’re both sated, he pulls my body up against his, rests his cheek against my throat, and falls asleep.

A few minutes later, I get the pizza, eat two slices, and follow.

I hear something in the night and wake to find him in the adjoining family room, eating pizza, drinking ice water, and looking at a powered-off TV.

“Wild times in here.” I sit on the couch beside him, then decide that isn’t close enough, and curl up in his lap.

“I’ll show you wild times.”

And he does. Afterward, we curl up in a hammock on the balcony, and Landon pulls a blanket over us. We watch the sun rise over Charlotte, and after that, we spend the day with Laura and the rest of Landon’s family.

As we fly back to Denver, he seems different. I feel different. When we land, he asks to go see Ashtyn.

“Do you think she’d want to meet me?”

“I think she would love that.” I smile. “Actually, I happen to know. Her parents texted a while back. When do you want to go?” I ask him.

“Would you want to…now?”

I smile. “Why the hell not?”