I walk out onto the front porch and look out at the fields. The world is coated with nightfall, everything painted shades of blue and black and trimmed in silver. As always, it holds all the promise of tomorrow.

Endless possibility.

Hope.

I take a deep breath. It smells like home. I never thought I’d like that smell again, but I do now. Now everything has changed.

I step out onto the driveway, glancing back only briefly to make sure I don’t see any lights burning inside the house. We’re staying at Momma’s for a while longer, just until everyone can recuperate. It’s easier for me to keep an eye on them both if we stay there, although Dane has made it very clear he’d like our permanent residence to be with him.

Both Celina and I are in agreement with that.

It will all just take time. Precious time.

Celina’s been out of the hospital for a month, but we stayed near Duke until we got the go-ahead to bring her back to Shepherd’s Mill, which happened last week.

The process took longer than anyone expected because of those initial complications. They never did definitively discover what caused the seizure, but they know the knock to the head is what caused the bleed. Luckily, it wasn’t a big one. That could’ve resulted in disaster. Increased risk of bleeding was one of the most serious possible side effects of the transplant. Thankfully, Celina didn’t hit her head very hard and the bleed stopped fairly quickly on its own. No one else has said it, but I know it was a miracle. No one else had to say it.

So now, after everything, here we are. Back home. We are finally back home and finally back to some semblance of normal.

When I left the house, Momma was asleep in her room. Celina was asleep on the couch with the television on, so I left her there. She still needs lots and lots of rest, so when she wants to sleep, I let her sleep. Whenever and wherever.

Things are crazy, all day every day, but in a good way. They’re hectic, but everyone is alive and well, so that makes it all bearable. More than bearable. Just thinking back on those hours when Celina was unconscious, fighting for her life, makes me feel like I’m hyperventilating. I try to just be thankful, every day, that she made it through. That we all did.

Time alone with Dane has been a rare commodity. A few minutes here and there are all we’ve been able to manage—in the hallway at the hospital or at the cafeteria while Celina slept or when he walked me to his truck. That was never enough, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Celina was priority number one. She still is, but tonight things are calm. Tonight is ripe with opportunity for us.

Just us.

We didn’t make plans. Nothing was said. It was just kind of an unspoken thing that floated between us tonight—the agreement that everything is finally quiet enough that we can meet. So for just a few minutes, in the dead of night, I’ll get him all to myself.

I know he’ll be waiting at our rock. Just like I have a feel for my daughter, I have a feel for Dane, too, and I know he’ll be there. Some tingle in my heart told me right as he was leaving, when his eyes met mine and he winked, and I knew.

Because sometimes a woman just knows.

I make my way slowly through the wheat. I trail my hands through it. It feels the same as it always has, but also completely different. Everything is different. Everything is better, or at least well on its way to getting there.

I smile and turn my face up to the moon, her fat, full belly shining down on me. I think of all the moons I’ve seen over the years, all the tears I’ve cried with her watching over me from above, and realize that I’ve never been as happy as I am right now. I never thought I’d be this happy. Not really. Some part of me always knew that I’d have to choose between Dane and my mom. I knew she’d never approve, and I knew I’d never stop loving him. So to think that I’d ever be here, right here, right now—going to meet my lover in the dead of night and not caring who in the world knows it—is mind-boggling.

And thrilling.

So, so thrilling.

My laugh trails behind me as I pick up speed. Off in the distance, I see a shape, tall and trim, erupting from the solid base of our rock. As I approach, he bends to throw his hand over the side. The moment I’m close enough, I slip mine into it and he hauls me up.

Dane pulls me straight into his arms, crushing my mouth with his. He’s as starved as I am. Ravenous, like we’ve waited a lifetime for this moment. And in some ways we have.

He devours me, his need lighting me up on the inside. The clock turns back and, suddenly, I’m seventeen again, so in love, so on fire. I don’t even take a breath. I only feel.

I taste Dane’s tongue, savoring the flavor of his mouth, the flavor of him. I’m losing my grip, losing my mind. I’m overwhelmed with a need I haven’t felt in half a lifetime.

Heat and want ratchet up. My fingers reach, my tongue licks, my breasts ache. I breathe him in and exhale his name.

And then we are burning. Together. We are tugging and ripping and tearing at each other’s clothes. There is an urgency between us, but not one born of dwindling time. No, this one is born of the passage of it. It’s been so long. I feel like I’ve waited a lifetime for him, and in many ways I have.

When I’m clothed only in moonlight and the cooling night air, Dane presses his hot skin to mine and, chest to chest, bends to pick me up. With a will and a want of their own, my legs wrap around his waist, putting the part of me that aches most for him inches from the one thing that will ease that ache.

I realize he’s bare, which gives me a moment of pause. “We’re adults now. We should be smarter than this, right?”

I let my head fall back as his lips burn a trail down my throat. “Probably. I’m okay with whatever happens, though. You?”

A little thrill, like the zing of an electrical current, buzzes through my core. “Yes. Oh, God, yes!”

He’s breathless as he speaks. So am I. “This seems vaguely familiar.”

“So familiar.”

“You still feel like you were made just for me. My lips belong here.” He kisses the little hollow under my ear. “My hands belong here.” He flexes his fingers on my butt where they’re holding me up. “And this,” he growls as he teases between my legs, “belongs here.”

With that, Dane lets me fall onto him and we both cry out at the same time.

Our chests are heaving and our skin sticks together as we pant. My muscles squeeze and contract around him, a silent plea for more.

“Oh shit.” Dane’s whisper makes me smile, and I laugh when he lifts me off him and turns to kneel on the heap of our discarded clothes. “I don’t trust my legs to hold us up for this. You don’t mind, do you?”

I don’t even get my answer out before he pulls me down onto him again and turns me upside down from the inside out. We are a flurry of hot kisses, teasing fingers, and desperate moans. We claw and grasp, bite and lick. Every inch is on fire, every nerve alive, and it all boils down to Dane James.

I don’t know when he scoots me underneath him and begins to mark me with thrust after thrust of his possession. I only know that at some point, I forget that the world exists outside this man, outside the love that we’ve nurtured for over half our lives, and time stands still. For us, for this moment, the earth stops spinning and there is nothing else, no one else, but Dane and me.

I’m in the arms of my soulmate, and when we explode together, I’m gripped in the throes of a passion unlike anything I’ve ever known.

Several long, beautiful, breathtaking minutes later, I hear his voice. A breath. A groan. A promise. And it seals my fate as well as his. “I love you, Brinkley Sommers.”

“I love you, Dane James. Don’t ever let me go.”

“Never.”