Page 46 of Scorched Hearts

I roll my eyes.“He’s insufferable.”

“You picked him,” she reminds me, then sets the casserole down and looks around the living room like she’s checking for ghosts she can fight on my behalf.“It feels good in here.Peaceful.Like it knows what it’s for.”

My throat tightens after all.“Yeah,” I say softly.“It does.”

The kids dart back in, one of them latching onto Darren’s leg.“Uncle D!Show us the fire pit again!”

He grins at me in question.“Go,” I say, waving them out.“Before they combust inside the house and you have to fill out your own report.”

He kisses me quickly, still unable not to, and then lets me slide to my feet.He jogs out with them into the yard, where the brand-new stones circle a place meant for warmth, not destruction.

I stand in the doorway and watch him.Twenty-five now.Older in the ways that matter.

Laugh lines starting to show up because life has finally given him enough reasons to smile.Stronger, steadier, but still the man who carried me out of fire and into myself, just ...more.

Aunt Dee slips her arm around my waist.“Remember when you thought you were done?”she murmurs.

“Yeah,” I say.“I remember.”

“You were wrong,” she says smugly.

We both laugh.She presses a kiss to my cheek and then bustles off to invade my kitchen and rearrange my cupboards “properly,” which means I will never again find the spices but will have the deepest sense of being loved.

I wander through the house alone for a minute.

Bedroom, sunlight spilling across the bedspread we argued about and then bought anyway.Study, already full of books because some things don’t change.Hallway, walls waiting for photos of us with smoky faces and stolen moments and ordinary miracles.

I stop at the big window overlooking the yard.Darren is out there holding matches like contraband, lecturing the kids on fire safety with absurd seriousness while they nod like tiny solemn disciples.He meets my gaze through the glass, and his face softens in that way that still undoes me completely.

Two years ago, I was smoke and shaking hands and court dates and edges made of fear.Today ...I am here.Alive, loved, and in love.

He jogs back inside, wind-blown hair and bright eyes, and wraps his arms around me from behind, chin on my shoulder.

“Happy?”he asks.

“Ridiculously,” I answer.“You?”

“Stupidly,” he says.“Forever-level stupid.”

I snort.“Good.You’re stuck with me.”

He kisses my neck, voice warm.“Exactly where I want to be.”

Outside, Aunt Dee is yelling at the kids not to poke the marshmallows like they’re sword-fighting, and someone nearby turns on music that’s slightly too loud.The house smells like new paint and casserole and the faint promise of woodsmoke from a fire we’ll light later just because we can.

Not to survive but to celebrate.We step out to join them, fingers lacing easily, like they’ve been practicing for a lifetime.

This is it.No fanfare.No flames.

Just a front door that sticks, a family that loves too loudly, a man who never stopped choosing me, and a life we’re going to fill to the brim on purpose.

Happily ever after isn’t perfect.

It’s ordinary, sacred, everyday magic.

The End