Jasper's smile was the first genuine one I'd seen from him all evening. "She's twenty-eight, and she's a photographer. A very successful one. According to Caroline, she's been asking about the ranch ever since she found out about it. Thinks it would make beautiful subjects for her work."
"She can meet Bullet," Cade said decisively. "And Val. And all the rescue horses. I bet she'd love the foals."
"I'm sure she would," Jasper said, his voice thick with emotion.
"This is wonderful," Billie said, squeezing my hand. "Our family's getting bigger."
As the conversation swirled around wedding plans and visit logistics, I felt that familiar amazement at how much my life had changed. A year ago, I'd been alone and broken, convinced I didn't deserve any of this. Now I was sitting at the head of my own dinner table, engaged to the woman I'd loved since I was seventeen, surrounded by family who'd never given up on me.
"You okay?" Billie asked softly, noticing my quiet observation.
"Perfect," I said, bringing her hand to my lips to kiss her engagement ring. "Absolutely perfect."
Outside, snow was starting to fall again, blanketing Willowbrook in the kind of peaceful quiet that made everything feel possible. Inside, my family was loud and messy and completely perfect, planning futures and sharing news and filling our house with the kind of love I'd spent eleven years running from.
But I wasn't running anymore. This was home. Not just the house I'd restored with my own hands, but the people filling it with laughter and love and the promise of more good things to come.
Tomorrow I'd try calling Dex again, even though he'd probably brush me off like he had the last few times. Next month we'd welcome Caroline and Leigh into our family with open arms. This summer we'd celebrate Trace and Delaney's wedding.
And someday soon, when the timing felt right, Billie and I would have our own wedding at the swimming hole where our love story began and where it had almost ended eleven years ago, surrounded by all the people who'd helped us find our way back to each other.
But tonight, I was content to sit at our dinner table in the house we'd built with our own hands, surrounded by the family who'd helped us heal and the woman who'd never stopped believing in us. This was what happiness looked like—messy, loud, and absolutely perfect.
This was home. This was forever. This was everything I'd never dared to hope for, and somehow, impossibly, it was mine.
