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“It is when cookies are involved.”

Noah smiled. “Some things never change.”

Claire leaned against him and looked across the yard. A ball lay abandoned in the grass. Two pairs of muddy shoes were already waiting by the front door. Through the open window came the sound of Jonah and Lily debating cookie ownership while Biscuit barked his support for both sides.

They had really done it.

The house.

The yard.

The porch.

The kitchen that was large enough for everyone at Thanksgiving.

Biscuit and Gravy.

Jonah and Lily.

Coffee every morning and cookies far more often than necessary.

The life they had once imagined while walking through Central Park had become ordinary.

Wonderfully ordinary.

The smell of cookies filled the house as Noah took her hand and led her inside.

Claire had spent years believing her dream was a place. It never had been.

Home wasn’t a city.

It wasn’t a house.

It was the life they had built inside it.

And this was home.

Acknowledgements

Wow.

I really did it. I wrote my first book.

First and foremost, thank You, Lord. Thank You for giving me this love for writing and the ability to do it.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read and loved to write.

I was always above my reading level as a child. I remember it causing issues because the books that would be considered my “reading level” weren’t always age appropriate.

As a teen, I was always writing stories either in my notes app or on Pages or Docs. Yes, I even had a cheesy Wattpad fan-fiction era. Multiple times. All accounts have been deleted.

I can barely fathom I have actually written and published an entire book.

To my parents, thank you for listening to me talk endlessly about fictional people and ideas. Thank you for believing I could actually do this and taking me seriously. Your support means the world to me.

To Mom and Aunt Kelli, thank you for being my biggest support system and cheerleaders. Thank you for every encouraging and kind word throughout this process. Thank you for being my sounding board for all of my ideas, not only for the story but for my Instagram account and the cover direction as well.

To my beta readers, thank you for taking the time to step into Claire and Noah’s world before anyone else. Every comment, reaction, typo or missing comma caught (shoutout Aunt Kelli), and message telling me you were still loving it meant more than you know.