He saved me long before the night I almost died; that much I’m sure of. Maybe one day I’ll remember exactly how.

I take Ginny’s weathered hand in between mine. The heart monitor catches a blip—three beats that are much faster than the rest—before it slows.

And then stops.

One long, everlasting beep cuts through the room and a giant ball forms in my throat.

“It’s time to go see your big white oak in full bloom again, Ginny.”

I watch Jesse park beside Ginny’s big, yellow truck from my perch on the concrete steps outside of the hospital. I guess it’s my big, yellow truck now. Everything of Ginny’s is technically mine, a concept I haven’t given any thought to.

All that’s been cycling through my head since I called Jesse is how much I need him here.

Here, right now.

Here, in my life.

Just as he always seems to be.

Here. For me.

He runs up the steps two at a time to take the seat beside me, his body wedged next to mine. The Hart Brothers work shirt he wears smells of fire—a comforting mix of burnt bark and leaves. I close my eyes and inhale deeply.

It reminds me of all those nights together by the woodstove, wrapped up in a wool blanket. The ones I can remember as Water and the ones I can’t as Alex. But I know that smell.

It’s Jesse, and it feels like warmth, like contentment. Like love.

We sit in silence as the sun drops down behind the mountains.

And then I slip my hand into his. “Let’s go home.”

To exactly where I’m meant to be.

EPILOGUE

“It’s nice to have the stream back.” The long snake of water runs through the corral, sun glittering off it. Amber was right; it was nothing but an indent in the dirt by August of last year, the summer heat emptying it completely.

And yet it has found its way back again this year.

Jesse answers with a kiss against the corner of my mouth, draping his arms over the newly mended fence on either side of me as a line of horses gallops past, enjoying the first warm day of spring. All eight of them—the Felixes, Lulu, and their five new friends. We have another two boarders coming next week, and most weekends are busy with owners and little girls like Zoe coming to ride their horses.

The ranch has come back to life.

A clatter of metal rings through the quiet, followed by Gabe’s curses and Jesse’s low chuckle. “I should probably go help him before he f**ks that engine up.”

“No bickering.” I watch Jesse’s back as he heads for our garage, to where the rusted and inoperable pea-green ’67 Mustang sits, its round headlights peeking out. It’s Gabe’s pet project, now that he has retired. Meredith insisted that he find one because she was afraid she’d strangle him otherwise.

Gabe’s sudden retirement last fall caused quite the stir in town. The only reason he gave was that he was ready to do some fishing with his son. The Welleses and I know the truth. Though Gabe himself has stood by the idea that what he was accomplice to was for the best—for my safety, Jesse’s safety, even Boone’s safety—and that Viktor did get what he deserved, I don’t think he’d been comfortable wearing that badge ever since.

So, now he occupies his time puttering around his property and mine, fixing fences, fishing, and “helping” Jesse rebuild engines. The Mustang will be the fourth classic that Jesse has rebuilt and then sold, though Gabe is keeping this one. The others Jesse has finished for his friend Boone to sell. Boone has already sworn up and down that it’s all legit. Gabe would probably come out of retirement just to arrest Jesse if it were anything else.

Jesse glances over his shoulder at me, flashing a sly smile my way. He knew I’d be watching. I’ve never been good at not watching Jesse.

Not even as Alexandria Petrova.

I remember.

It’s still only bits here and there, but almost each day unlocks a new puzzle piece of my past. Some good memories, some not. Long days of school and cleaning houses with my mom. My mom, with her worn hands and tired smile. The roses that would be waiting for me on the kitchen counter of Viktor’s Seattle condo, with a card; the swirl of curiosity and excitement that hit me when I saw them, thinking how lucky I was that I had attracted the attention of such a handsome, successful man.

I remember his face, his light blue eyes. I didn’t see the cold calculation behind them. The first day that I remembered Viktor, I remembered him in a good light. A kind light.

It’s unfathomable how deep the real truth can become buried in the human mind.

It was around August that I woke up in the middle of the night—Jesse’s arm slung over my stomach, my own hands pressed against my womb—that I remembered the day I sat on my bed in Portland, waves of nausea and fear and excitement coursing through my body as I stared at the two blue lines in the display window of the pregnancy test.

Because I knew then that it was Jesse’s baby. The condom had broken. I remembered noticing the sizeable tear when I cleaned up the hotel room, before leaving the next morning.

In October, on the day that Jesse and I moved into Ginny’s old house, the landline phone rang for the first time, a loud trill echoing through the newly remodeled house.

And I remembered how Viktor found out about the pregnancy.

It was a fluke, really. I’d never even thought about removing our home phone number from the doctor’s office files; I’d always used my cell phone to contact them. I never thought that the obstetrician might call the house line and leave a message on the answering machine about my coming appointment. I never thought that, while I was upstairs, fitting myself into that sleazy blue sequined dress for the last time, worried that Viktor would notice my swollen br**sts, he was downstairs, listening to the message.

I remember my heels clicking against the spiral staircase as I descended, to find Viktor waiting for me at the bottom, a simmering rage like nothing I’d ever experienced before radiating off him. But the demons from that actual night still remain safely locked in their steel trap, which I am grateful for.

Pulling Jesse’s flannel jacket around me—I guess I should just call it my flannel jacket now because I wear it so much—I head toward the barn, smiling at the nice new red roof on it. It matches the ones that we put on the garage and the house.

The day that Ginny revised her will to leave everything to me, she also went to the township office. For years, Meredith and Gabe had urged her to sell off some of her land; she didn’t need a thousand acres. She had refused though, just like her father before her.

So, when the land assessor appeared in the driveway one day a few weeks after Ginny died, to discuss the parcels she wanted to sell, we were all quite surprised. And relieved. I really don’t need a thousand acres of land, but I would never have sold so much as a square foot of it had Ginny not approved.

The land was snapped up by Chuck Fanshaw’s family almost overnight, leaving me with enough income to pay for some much-needed work around here, and then some. The messenger bag of money that Jesse pulled out one day—that I had squirrelled away for my escape—made finances even easier.

With a sigh of contentment, I grab the paintbrush and begin climbing the ladder. I knew this would be an ambitious undertaking when I explained it to Jesse, given the size of the barn and the fact that I’m not overly excited about heights. Or being on ladders.

None of that swayed me, though, as I took to the western-facing wall with a brush and a can of black paint a week ago. It took three days, from dawn until dusk, to finish the body, its bare limbs spanning as far as twenty feet on either side of the trunk. It turned out better than I had anticipated.

But it’s the splotches of red and orange and yellow and green blending together that hold my attention, especially at sunset, as the last streams of daylight hit the barn before disappearing behind the mountain range, casting a spotlight on the tree’s beautiful leaves.

The mind, it can be a deceitful thing.

But it is no match for the heart.