“You’ve been avoiding me,” Cade said as he walked into the office adjacent to the barn and crossed his arms, stance wide as he stood in front of the desk where Ty was working.

“I’ve been busy,” Ty answered, not looking at his brother.

“No, you’re avoiding me because you don’t want to talk about Jodi.”

Ty’s throat grew thick and dry. Even hearing her name now made him want to crawl out of his skin. It was as if his nerve endings were on fire all the time, sizzling, ready to burn him up.

He leaned back in the executive chair that accompanied the massive desk. “All right, let’s get it over with. Tell me you were right, she’s unreliable, she’ll just do shit like this again, she doesn’t deserve another chance.”

Cade sat heavily, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees as he looked at Ty from under his brows.

“I’m not always right—”

“But you were this time.”

“No. I wasn’t.”

Ty stared at his brother.

“I said she’d either leave town again or try to get custody. She hasn’t done either thing. When you got mad at her for forgetting Katie, she had the perfect excuse to jet out of town in a huff, but she didn’t. She waited until you calmed down, then she went right back to being there for Katie.”

He paused, seeming to pick his words before he said them.

“You offered her joint custody, and she didn’t jump on it. She questioned whether she was ready, and since then, you haven’t filed the papers and she hasn’t said another word about it, am I right?”

Ty nodded.

Cade cleared his throat before he continued. “The only thing she’s actually done that I could criticize her for is forgetting to pick up Katie. So let me tell you a story, because I’m sure you don’t remember.”

Ty settled in, wondering where Cade was going with this.

“When I was only in first grade and you were still at home with Mom, we had these mini days where once a month, we’d get out of school early. So one Wednesday in March, I rode the bus to school. Dad was the one who walked me to the bus stop because you were sick with a fever and some stomach thing, and she’d been up all night taking care of you.”

Ty smiled, shaking his head, remembering his mom and the things she used to do when her boys were sick. The special foods she made, the silly songs she’d sing to get them to laugh even when they didn’t feel well.

“So the end of school came—at twelve thirty instead of three o’clock, because it was a mini day. The school buses didn’t run on mini days, so everyone’s parents came to pick them up. But guess whose mom was a no-show?”

Ty stared at his brother, eyes widening. “Mom forgot to get you?”

“Damn straight she did, and who could blame her? She’d been up all night with a sick preschooler, cleaning up vomit, trying to get your fever down, then the school throws in this once-a-month schedule change that also changes the normal transportation arrangements. She was tired and off-kilter, and she forgot.”

“Well, hell,” Ty muttered, leaning back in his chair.

“Luckily, Mrs. Roberts, the principal, saw me wandering the lawn and brought me in to call home and wait until someone could come get me. Ended up being Grandma, who said I was lucky, because when she was little, her mother forgot to send her older brother to walk her home, and she was so little, she tried to do it by herself and got lost. They found her in the neighbor’s cornfield at dinnertime crying she was so hungry and tired.”

Ty chuckled, amazed his brother had a story like this to tell in the middle of one of the worst weeks he could remember.

“Parents fuck up. You’ve told me that a hundred times, and you’re right. I’ve been worried Jodi wasn’t stable enough for this, or she’d try to take advantage of you. But I never said I expected her to be perfect.”

“But maybe I have,” Ty answered quietly.

“Or maybe you’re just afraid to let her in all the way. And I haven’t helped with that. I’ve been suspicious and paranoid, and you were right to get pissed at me. I was out of line. Jodi’s given me no reason to treat her the way I have.”

“I want her to be who I think she is,” Ty said.

Cade nodded. “Then maybe you need to let her.”

Hours later, after Cade had gone and work was done for the day, Ty lay on his back in the bed of his truck and stared up at the stars. The sky had very little light pollution out on the ranch, and he never stopped marveling at how truly insignificant it made him feel when he looked at all that inky black full of millions of pinpoints of energy—stars, planets, galaxies. He had no doubt there were other worlds out there, other lives unfolding, other beings who might look different but might feel very much the same. That common thing called humanity might be more than human really, because Ty had a hard time imagining any life form that didn’t experience basic things like the need to protect its young, or the desire for a life partner.

He let his mind wander back to the first days he’d known Jodi, back before the pregnancy, before things became so full of stress and responsibilities that the two of them shut each other out, struggling just to survive the whole thing and bring another human into the world relatively unscathed.

God, he’d loved being with her. It had been different than it was this time around. Lighter, freer, not as intense. But he’d loved it all the same. Loved watching her talk to customers at Lynn’s café when she worked. Loved seeing the way her hair tangled around her face first thing in the morning. Loved the way she laughed when he held her down on the sand at the beach and tickled her. Ty realized with sudden clarity that he’d been falling in love with her, and if that hadn’t been interrupted, he would have asked her to stay, would have wanted to finish it off—the falling in love, the keeping her with him always.

For five long years, Ty had shut off any ideas about Jodi because he’d had to. She was gone, she’d left him with a daughter, and time to regret the loss of her was something he didn’t have as a single father. But since she’d come back, he’d been like a homing pigeon, returning to that place as fast as he could—that place where he was falling in love with a woman who he feared might be his one and only.

“Dammit,” he whispered into the dark as he rubbed a hand over his eyes. He couldn’t deny it, especially not to himself. It was separate from Katie, and yet wholly entangled with her. It was a Gordian knot of want and joy, disappointment and fear. Jodi made everything in his world so much more complicated, and Ty was a pretty simple guy at heart. He did what was right. He never faltered. He loved, he protected, he supported. He wasn’t cut out for all these shades of gray, these peaks and valleys, this fucking chaos that had taken over his insides. But he couldn’t ignore it all either. It was here. She was here. And the fact was, he’d fallen a very long time ago. It had just taken him five long years to admit it.

* * *

Another week passed, and Ty allowed the schedule he and Jodi had envisioned to play out. She picked up Katie on Tuesdays and Thursdays, took her to dance and then out to dinner. He made sure never to be in the house when she dropped Katie off, but he also stopped sending Lynn as the watchdog at school. He knew he couldn’t hover forever. Either he was going to give Jodi the chance to be a mother or he wasn’t, and that ship had sailed weeks ago.

But try as he might to be satisfied with an arrangement that seemed to be working smoothly, he couldn’t. It felt wrong every time he watched out his office window as Jodi and Katie climbed out of the little CRV and laughed with Lynn on the front porch. He ached when Katie regaled him with stories of the things she and her mommy had done on their afternoons together. Truth be told, he was miserable, and it wasn’t getting any better.

The misery made him unable to focus on his work, which was why he was walking along the boardwalk at two p.m. on a Wednesday instead of sitting at his desk at the ranch reviewing feed orders like he should.

He breathed deep of the sea air and watched the smattering of people out in the middle of the day at the beach. As a couple walking a few dozen feet in front of him shifted course, his gaze was caught by a head of platinum-blonde hair. His heart raced, and he stopped, watching Jodi as she walked very slowly with an elderly couple. The man had a walker he was using, his gait somewhat labored but steady. His wife had a bit of a dowager’s hump but seemed relatively spry, and she walked with her hand resting on Jodi’s arm, whether for balance or simple companionship he couldn’t tell.

He could have easily turned around, gone the other direction, Jodi would have never seen him, but instead, he kept walking toward them, his long strides overtaking them easily. As he approached, Jodi seemed to sense his presence, glancing over her shoulder just as he was reaching them.

“Oh, Ty!” she said, her eyes widening a touch as she slowed.

Her companions stopped, looking at him expectantly, warm smiles on their wrinkled faces.

“Hi,” he answered, smiling at the three of them.

“Are you taking a break from work?” she asked

“Something like that,” he answered.

“Let me introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Moore,” she said. “They were some of my first clients in Big Sur. Violet, Sebastian, this is Katie’s father, Ty Jenkins.”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Moore said, smiling. “I knew your mother, and Cade used to do yard work for us when he was in high school.”

Ty smiled, remembering Cade bitching about the odd jobs his dad made him take off the ranch so he would have some experience with a boss other than their father.

“I remember that,” Ty said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Jodi, dear,” Mrs. Moore said. “Since Ty is here to chat with us, will you be a dear and go get me a bottle of water from the concession stand?”

Jodi glanced between her client and Ty, who nodded in agreement.

“Um, sure. I’ll be right back.” Her brow furrowed a touch, but she gamely made her way to the nearby concession stand to do Mrs. Moore’s bidding.

“We met your daughter the other day,” Mr. Moore said. “She’s a real pistol, that one.”

Ty laughed. “Yes, she is. I hope she was polite, though. We try to get a balance in there somewhere.”

“She was a perfect angel,” Mrs. Moore said. “She has spunk but is polite and simply lovely.” She paused. “We were so sorry to have kept Jodi from her after school that day.”

Ty tensed. “When was this?”

“The day poor Jodi forgot to pick Katie up,” Mrs. Moore continued. “Sebastian had fallen on his new hip, and we asked her to come to meet us at the hospital. All those doctors ever want to do is give him drugs and put him in a nursing home.”

“I’m not going back to that place,” Mr. Moore stated emphatically. Then he looked at his wife with a tender gaze. “I can’t leave my sweetheart. I miss her too much.”

Mrs. Moore patted him on the cheek. “Jodi is the only person who listens to what we want. She’s given Sebastian so many ways to help his pain and rebuild his strength. And she came to the hospital that day and stayed for hours. She had to fight the entire nursing staff, the hospital administration, and the head orthopedic surgeon to keep them from checking Sebastian into a nursing home. She won, but we felt so bad we had distracted her to the point she forgot Katie at school.”

Ty blinked at them, blood rushing through his ears, his heart beating far too fast.

“Well,” he said weakly, “all’s well that ends well. Katie got picked up just fine, and you’re out here in the sunshine and fresh air instead of a nursing home.”

Mrs. Moore nodded, her gaze a little too shrewd for Ty’s taste. “Yes,” she agreed. “It did all end well. Jodi is truly an amazing young woman. Katie’s so lucky to have her for a mother.”

Just then, Jodi walked back up with the bottle of water that Ty now suspected had been a ploy on Mrs. Moore’s part. He said polite good-byes and turned back the way he’d come, striding along the boardwalk at a clip that matched his pulse. Fast.