Page 415 of Desert Wind

Downstairs, someone shouted. Nate, probably.

Then Lily yelled something back.

Then Cal’s voice thundered through the house, “If that cat scratches my sofa, somebody’s sleeping in the barn.”

Dylan and I went still.

A second later, we both started laughing.

Quietly at first.

Then harder.

The kind of laughter that shook the bed and made him wince and made me scold him and made him kiss me just to shut me up.

When the laughter faded, I lay there listening to his heartbeat.

Alive.

Steady.

Here.

The girl from the fire had survived.

The woman she became had said yes beneath snow and stars.

And the story ahead of us was no longer written in smoke.

It was written in candlelight, blue quilts, family chaos downstairs, a ring made of turquoise and pearl, and the steady, stubborn miracle of later.