“Don’t you regret it?”

  “I don’t. I thought I did. I thought we’d made a mistake. But that was only because you left. If you had stayed — if you would come back…”

  “I can’t,” she said. “It was a mistake.”

  “But why?”

  “Because…” She blushed and looked away. “I let myself get emotionally involved. I told myself that wouldn’t happen. I promised myself it wouldn’t be like that. But I messed up. I fell for you.”

  “Oh my God.” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s why you left?”

  “Don’t make me feel worse.”

  “No — you shouldn’t feel badly at all, Alex. God. I’ve been falling for you for weeks now. You really didn’t know?”

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought I could keep it to myself, but I never imagined you just thoroughly hadn’t realized,” he said. “I’ve been so head over heels for you, Alex… you’re all I think about. And since you left, it’s only been that much worse. I haven’t been able to focus on work. I dream about you at night. You think I came here for Jack — well, maybe I did. But I would have come here without him, too. I’m here just as much for myself as for anything else. I’m here because I couldn’t live without you.”

  She looked shocked at his words. He was a little shocked himself — he couldn’t believe he’d actually come out and said it. But it was the truth. From the moment she had left, he had found himself grappling with the realization of just how empty his life was without her. He had spent the past four years not knowing how lonely he was, and then Alex had come into his life and turned on all the lights, illuminating corners that had been darkened all that time. Now that she was gone, he couldn’t bear to return to that darkness. He needed her.

  She was trembling, he realized. She was fighting to control it, but she couldn’t — her hand was shaking on the table. He reached out and took it in his own, looking deep into her eyes.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured. “I know that’s a lot. You don’t have to answer all of it right now. But please — at least consider coming back to us, Alex. We’re lost without you. If you don’t feel the way I do, if your feelings for me are just a passing thing, that’s okay. We don’t have to act on it. It doesn’t have to go any further.”

  I’ll die if it doesn’t go any further. But he didn’t want to pressure her. Alex had to be free to choose him or not choose him based on the reality of what she wanted.

  She pulled her hand away from his, and Elijah felt as if his heart was going to crack in two.

  “We can’t,” she whispered. “We can’t.”

  But her voice broke, and Elijah knew how much it pained her to turn him down.

  “Why can’t we?” he asked. “What’s stopping you? Talk to me.”

  She shook her head, and he saw to his dismay that her eyes were filling with tears.

  He reached out again. This time he took both of her hands, and he was relieved when she allowed it. “Is this about Jack?” he asked.

  “Of course that’s part of it,” she said. “We have to think about what’s best for Jack. Us figuring this stuff out — that’s not something we can inflict on him. I can tell just by seeing him that he’s having a hard enough time already, processing what’s going on between you and me, dealing with the fact that I had to leave. What happens if we can’t make it work between us? What if I come back, we give it a try, and then we realize that it was a mistake and I have to leave again? I mean, we’d break his heart. We’ve already been too cavalier with him. We can’t let that happen.”

  “But he loves you,” Elijah said. “You know he does. Are you going to tell me we can’t take a chance on him having someone so important to him be a part of his life because it might not work out? I mean, what if it does work out? What if this could really be something great?”

  The tears were dripping down her cheeks now. “Don’t say this stuff to me,” she whispered.

  “Why not?” he said. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Alex. You mean enough to me that I’ve been searching through these mountain towns to try to find you. You mean so much to me that a month apart has only made me want you more. Do you really think I can just give up and go home? If there’s even a chance of this working out, I can’t do that. I want this too much.”

  “Enough that you’d risk breaking Jack’s heart?”

  “Enough that I don’t want to risk him not getting to experience something that could be wonderful. He’s the one who fought for this right from the very start. He’s the one who begged me to get involved in your life in the first place. He’s the one who noticed when you were fired from that crappy diner job — he’s the reason I hired you. He’s the one who first called you family and pushed to include you in his family tree. And after you left, he knew way before I did that something had been broken. He told me that I shouldn’t have let you go, and he was right. I shouldn’t have. I should have done whatever it took to get you to stay.”

  “You couldn’t have made me stay that day. I’d been thinking about it all night. I was always going to leave.”

  “I should have chased after you right away,” Elijah said. “I shouldn’t have waited a month. I shouldn’t have waited an hour. I should never have let you doubt the way I felt about you. Just… come home, Alex. Come back and let’s try this again. I won’t make the same mistakes twice.”

  She closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath.

  “Alex,” he insisted, “you’re the missing piece in my life. I am not whole without you. And neither is Jack.”

  “Pieces,” she breathed.

  “What?”

  “Not piece. Pieces.” She opened her eyes. “Elijah… I’m pregnant.”

  All the air rushed out of Elijah’s body. She couldn’t have shocked him more if she had told him she was joining the circus. “You — you are?”

  “I know I should have told you,” she said.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Not long. A few days. And I would have said something — I should have — but I was so afraid, after the way things ended between us. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face letting you find out after the way things ended between us. I thought you might have been angry, or that you wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with us.”

  “I couldn’t be angry,” Elijah protested. “How could I be?”

  He got to his feet and pulled Alex up with him. Wrapping his arms around her and holding her close felt like finally coming up for air after being underwater for far too long. He had been near to drowning, but now he could breathe again.

  “Pregnant,” he murmured, the wonder of that fact starting to take root in his heart. “We really are going to be a family.”

  She looked up at him. “We are?”

  “Never doubt it,” he told her. “I want to be a part of this, every step of the way. Say you’ll come back to Hope’s Creek.”

  And finally, the tension left her body and she melted into his embrace.

  “Of course I will,” she said. “It’s all I want too, Elijah.”

  He tipped her face up to his and kissed her deeply, overcome with his own happiness.

  EPILOGUE

  18 MONTHS LATER: ALEX

  “Jack! Carpool is here!”

  Jack came skidding into the kitchen, his backpack slung over one shoulder, and grabbed a granola bar. He was on his way out the door when Alex snagged him by the back of his shirt collar and pulled him back. “You’re not getting away without a hug,” she informed him, and gave him a quick squeeze. “Don’t forget, Dylan’s mom is bringing you home from school today too, okay?”

  “I won’t forget,” Jack said.

  “Okay. Tell her thank you for the ride.” Alex ruffled Jack’s hair and he squawked in protest. He had recently become very interested in maintaining what he called cool hair. He arranged it carefully, then turned to the high chair beside the kitchen table.

  “Bye, Lee,” he cooed at his baby sister. She laughed and threw her spoon on the floor.

  Alex groaned. “Really, Lee?” she asked. “Third spoon this morning. I’m going to have to start tying them to your wrists. Jack — you better get out there before Dylan’s mom takes off without you.”

  “Bye!” Jack ran out the door and let it bang closed behind him.

  Elijah came into the kitchen, still in his flannel sleep pants. “Did I hear Jack leave?”

  “I think the whole county heard Jack leave,” Alex laughed. “It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell that kid not to let the door slam, he just isn’t going to hear it.”

  “Want me to have a word with him?”

  “Nah. There are worse things a little boy could do than slam an occasional door.” She went to Elijah and wrapped her arms around his waist. “You slept in this morning. Have a good rest?”

  “Yeah, awesome,” Elijah said. “Thanks for getting the kids going.”

  “No trouble at all.” It was a task the two of them shared equally. Elijah had gotten serious about confining work to specific work hours and putting it away to be with his family when those hours were over, and as a consequence he’d become a much more involved parent without even needing to try. It was obvious to Alex these days that he had always had the desire to be involved — she had been wrong ever to worry than he might not want to be there for his kids.

  “What can I do to help?” he asked her.

  “Get Lee a new spoon,” Alex said. “All the baby spoons are dirty, so you’ll have to wash one of the ones in the sink. She really makes her way through them nowadays.”

  “She sure does.” He went over to the sink and found a spoon. “Maybe we should let her go back to eating with her fingers. She doesn’t throw them on the floor, at least.”

  “Oh, yeah, okay, and then are you going to be the one to clean up after she finger-paints everything she touches with applesauce?”

  Elijah laughed. “Fair enough, I see your point. Okay, we’ll stick with the spoons.” He finished washing the one in his hand, brought it over, and handed it to Lee, who promptly threw it on the floor.

  Alex groaned. “Fine,” she said. “I give up. She can eat with her fingers. We’ll just have to give her a bath when she’s finished. I didn’t have that much going on today anyway.”

  “I was hoping we might spend some time together today,” Elijah said. “But we can spend that time giving Lee a bath.”

  Alex had to laugh. “That’s one way to plan a romantic day with my boyfriend,” she said. “Bathing a baby.”

  “I don’t know,” Elijah countered. “It’s the kind of thing I never would have thought of as romantic, but now that the two of us are here, now that we have her — there is something kind of special about it, isn’t there? Taking care of our daughter together?” He hesitated. “I never had these moments with Jack’s mom when she was alive,” he said. “I didn’t realize what I was missing. I was working all the time, and it never occurred to me that I was sacrificing moments I wouldn’t get back. I was just grateful that I didn’t have to help with baby chores. If I had those years over again, I would do so many things differently.”

  Alex went to him, put her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against his chest. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I know that’s hard.”

  “I feel bad, talking to you about this.”

  “No. Never feel bad about that,” she said. “It’s such an important part of your life, and that matters to me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep your past and your present separated. That’s never something I need from you.”

  He nodded and kissed her forehead. “I don’t know how I got so lucky as to have you in my life.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot — you don’t believe in luck.”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “I’ve spent too long running from bad luck. I’ve spent too many years telling myself that I was born under a bad sign. I don’t think luck has anything to do with the good things that have happened in my life. It’s just that, when something good did come along, I was smart enough to grab it. We both were.”

  Elijah smiled at her. “I like that,” he said. “And I wonder if you’d let me do that again?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He dropped to one knee in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  She stared at him. “Elijah… what are you doing?”

  “I want you to marry me,” he said. “I’m asking you to marry me, Alex.”

  “Just— just like that? Just in the middle of the kitchen on a Tuesday morning? Because I told you I believed in making your own luck?”

  He laughed. “That’s not the only reason. And no, I’m not asking you this on a whim. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, square box. Alex recognized what it was before he opened it, and her heart beat double-time.

  She’d never believed this would happen to her. After losing her parents and her siblings, she had resigned herself to the belief that she wasn’t going to have a family. She hadn’t felt that she would ever be able to settle down and give her heart to anyone again.

  That had changed when she’d met Elijah. She had found a home and a family here after all, in spite of everything. But even as she had begun to settle into this new life, she hadn’t been able to let herself believe in the fullness of it. Having Lee meant that her place here was permanent, and yet there was still a part of her that had felt like she was playing house — like there was a chance that it would all eventually be taken away from her.

  She looked down at the beautiful pear-cut diamond in the box that Elijah held.

  It wasn’t as if the ring would make things any more real. Things had been real between the two of them for a long time, and nothing could make that more true than Lee already had. But seeing it was a sign, a tangible sign, that Elijah wanted this every bit as badly as she did.

  And for the first time, she thought to herself — nothing is going to take this away from me.

  For the first time, her happiness felt permanent and untouchable.

  “Will you marry me, Alex?” he asked.

  She beamed. “Of course I will.”

  He slid the ring onto her finger, and she felt the weight of it like an anchor, holding her here — holding them together. Nothing was going to tear them apart.

  Of course, she knew she still couldn’t be sure of that. What had happened to her family had been a random tragedy. What had happened to his ex-wife had been the same. And terrible things could happen to anyone at any time. There was no reason to believe they were immune. The fact that bad things had already happened to them wasn’t going to keep them safe.

  But they would make it through whatever life threw at them together. That was what a marriage meant — a partnership. Having someone always by your side to walk with you through the most difficult events in your life. It was something she hadn’t had as an adult. The fact that she was going to have it after all was beyond dreams, and the fact that the person she was entering this part of her life with was Elijah — well, there weren’t words for how wonderful and reassuring that was to her.

  Then something occurred to her, and she looked up quickly. “Wait a minute,” she said.

  Elijah, rising to his feet, looked concerned. “You’re not changing your mind already, are you?” he asked. “I just got the ring on your finger.”

  “No, no, I’m not, but… what about Jack?”

  “What about him?”

  “This is his family,” Alex said. “How is he going to feel about this? I mean, I know he and I get along great, and I love that, but I don’t want him to be upset. It was just the two of you for a really long time. What if he’s upset by this?”

  “He’s not going to be upset,” Elijah said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he already knows about it.”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “He knows?”

  “He went ring shopping with me,” Elijah said. “He even knows that today’s the day. He knows that’s why he has to get a ride home with Dylan. I figured you and I might want to drink some champagne and spend the rest of the day together — with Lee, of course — not doing school pickup.”

  “I can’t believe he knows! He never said anything!”

  “Well, he knew it was a secret,” Elijah laughed. “He didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  “He’s amazing at keeping secrets. I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it.”

  “He knew how important it was,” Elijah said. “I made sure he understood that before I told him anything.”

  “I can’t wait to talk to him,” Alex marveled. “How long has he known?”

  “About three weeks.”

  “Three weeks, and he never said a word!”

  Elijah grinned. “It doesn’t have to stay secret anymore, at least,” he said. “Now everything is out in the open — and you and I have a wedding to plan!”

  “Oh my gosh.” Alex’s head was spinning. “I can’t even think about that yet.”

  Elijah laughed and put his arms around her. “Take as much time as you need,” he said. “All I needed was to hear you say yes and to see that ring on your finger. Now that that’s done, I’m in no hurry. We can do this whenever and however you want to.”

  “God, you’re amazing.” Alex rose up on her toes to kiss him.

  He returned the kiss with passion and fervor. As always, when she got lost in one of Elijah’s kisses, Alex forgot all about everything else. The world around her seemed to fall away, and she was aware of nothing but him — his lips, the taste of his mouth, the smell of his skin, the way his hands felt mapping their way across her body…

  Lee let out a laugh. Alex laughed too and pulled back from Elijah. They would celebrate properly later, once both kids were in bed. For now, though, the adventure of joint parenting beckoned — Lee was covered in applesauce, as Alex had predicted she would be.