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"Everybody likes Gus." His thumb strokes my jaw. "Iron Creek council met Wednesday. Lyle's sheriff now. He's terrified. He'll be fine. And Griffin's got an undersheriff position I said yes to this morning."

My heart stops.

"You're moving here?"

"I'm moving here. Whatever you decide." His eyes are wet. This steady, quiet man who never raises his voice has tears standing in his eyes, and he doesn't look away from me. "If you take Albuquerque, I'll drive seven hours every weekend till you get sick of me. But I'm done telling myself I don't get to want things."

"I already stayed."

He goes still.

"I turned down Solara on Wednesday. I took the job with the county." My voice cracks. "I did it before you came back. I needed to know I'd choose this place for me. And I did."

"Mona."

"But I want you here too," I say. "I'm in love with you, Josiah. I've been in love with you since you fixed a generator and wouldn't let me say thank you."

He makes a sound low in his chest and pulls me into his arms, and I go up on my toes and kiss him.

It's nothing like the first time at the bonfire. This one is slow and salty with tears and so sure it makes my knees weak. His hands slide into my hair. Mine grip his wrong buttoned flannel. Sergeant barks once, sharp and happy, and runs a lap around us in the frost.

"I love you," Josiah says against my mouth. "God, I love you. I think I loved you the second you told me not to call you ma'am."

"You kept doing it."

"I'll keep doing it for fifty years."

I laugh and kiss him again. When I finally pull back, I fold the permit into a careful square and tuck it inside his jacket, right over my heart.

"Next time I tell you to go patrol something," I say.

"I'm not going anywhere." He picks up my flashlight from the grass and takes my hand. "Come on. One more lap."

We walk the empty field together, his dog trotting ahead of us, my hand warm in his. There's nothing left out here to check.

I don't care. I'm not working anymore. I'm just walking home.

Epilogue

JOSIAH

SIX MONTHS LATER

The spring festival has mud in every direction and not one person here seems to mind.

Mona named it the Mud Season Market. The county committee hated the name until four hundred people showed up in rubber boots and bought every jar of honey, every loaf of bread, every wooden toy the Redwood brothers could carve. Kids jump puddles between the booths. Wade Sutton pours hot cider for anybody who holds out a cup. Somebody's grandma is teaching a line of teenagers to square dance on a plywood floor laid over the wettest corner of the field, and it's the stupidest, happiest thing I've ever seen.

My woman built all of it.

I stand at the edge of the bonfire with my hands in my jacket pockets, watching her work the crowd. She's in a green sweater and my old flannel over it, curls piled on her head, a pencil stuck through them. Her radio squawks on her hip. She answers it without breaking stride, points a vendor toward the east gate, hands a crying toddler back to his mother, and waves at Deborah Kline across the fire, all in the time it takes me to drink half my coffee.

Six months. Six months of her toothbrush next to mine in the little cabin we bought off the county in January. Six months of her singing badly in the shower and leaving Sharpies in every coat pocket I own. Six months of waking up to a dog on her feet and her cold toes on my shins.

I didn't know life could be this big and still fit in a town this small.

Griffin appears at my shoulder with his own coffee. He watches her too.

"She's good at this," he says.