Page 78 of Devoured

He came off Ainsley's hip and hit the ground running and crossed the whole yard at a dead sprint and slammed into her legs so hard she staggered, both arms locked around her thighs, his face buried in her, and he didn't say anything else, he just held on and shook, and Lara got down on her knees in the dirt of the Royston yard and gathered him in and held him while he cried.

"Hey," she said into his hair. "Hey, buddy. I've got you. I'm here."

"You didn't come back," Levi said, muffled and furious and six. "You went away and you didn't come back."

"I came back." She pulled back to look at him, both hands on his wet face. "I came back, Levi. I'm sorry it took me a few days. I came back and I'm not going anywhere."

And then Giana.

Giana didn't run. Giana came slow, the way she came at everything, walking across the yard with her chin doing the thing it did when she was fighting it, and she stopped in front of Lara and looked at her for a long second with her mother's grave measuring eyes, and Lara held still and let herself be measured, because you did not rush this child, you never rushed this child.

"You came back," Giana said. Not a question. Testing it. Making it true by saying it.

"I came back," Lara said.

Giana's face crumpled, all at once, the whole brave grown-up front going to pieces, and she folded forward into Lara's arms and wrapped herself around her neck and cried into her shoulder, and Lara held both kids in the dirt and looked up and there was Helen on the porch with her apron pressed to her face, openly weeping and turned half away like nobody could see her doing it, and beside her, in his chair, with a blanket over his knees and his cane against the rail, John Royston looked down at the woman holding his grandchildren in his yard and gave her one slow nod.

That nod near finished her.

There was a casserole on the kitchen counter when she finally got inside.

It sat in a dish she recognized, the good Wainwright dish, the one Stephanie had brought her chowder in at the Fall BBQ, the one that was supposed to go back to Stephanie. Somebody had brought it back. Full. With a note tucked under one edge in a firm slanting hand:

Lara — Welcome home, honey. We've all been pulling for you over here too, fence or no fence. Bring the dish back whenever. No hurry. — Stephanie R.

Lara stood holding the note a long moment. The feuding family's two kitchens, passing a dish back and forth across thirty years of a wall the men wouldn't climb, and here it was, come to her, with her name on it. We've all been pulling for you over here too. Both sides. She set the note down very carefully, because if she kept looking at it, she was going to lose what little composure she had left.

Remi caught her in the hall.

She stepped right into Lara's path, arms crossed, and for one second, she had the flat unreadable look Lara had only ever caught in flickers, and then it broke into the fierce grin that was Remi's whole heart showing.

"Before you go any further." Remi pointed a finger at her. "I need you to hear me say one thing, and then I'll never bring it up again." She leaned in. Her voice dropped, and underneath the grin it was dead serious. "If my brother ever does that to you again, if he ever sends you down that road one more time, I will kill him myself. I mean it. I've got four brothers and I’ll trade three of them for you without blinking. You're mine now. You don't get un-mine just because that fool got scared once." She straightened, grin back. "Okay. That's it. That's all I had. Welcome home. There's pie, Marge dropped off a pie, fight Levi for it."

And she was gone down the hall, loud as ever, and Lara stood there laughing and wiping her eyes and thought she had never in her life been so thoroughly, deafeningly claimed by so many people at once.

It was late by the time the trucks cleared out and the dishes were done and the kids were finally down. Both of them, tonight, refusing to sleep until Lara was the one who tucked them in, Levi clutching her hand and Giana making her promise twice she'd still be there in the morning, and Lara promising, and meaning it all the way to the floor.

She came out of Giana's room and Dean was waiting in the dark hall, leaning on the wall, watching her the way he did.

"They down?" he asked.

"Giana made me promise twice."

"Yeah." His mouth tipped. "She'll do that a while. We earned that." He pushed off the wall but didn't reach for her yet, just looked at her in the low light, and something in his face had gone quiet and certain in a way she'd never seen on him, not in two months, not ever. "I want to say something, and I want to say it without a crowd around for once."

"Okay."

"I meant every word in Boston. I'm going to keep meaning it tomorrow, and the day after, and when you're sick of the sight of me." He took her hand, turned it over in his, ran his thumb across her knuckles. "I don't have a ring yet. I wanted to do it right, with you here, instead of buying something in a Boston airport like a man covering a bet. But I'm asking you for real, Lara, in our house, with our kids down the hall. Marry me. Not someday. Just… yes, and then we figure out the rest."

"Yes," she said. No hesitation. She'd done all her bravery already; this part was easy. "Yes. Obviously. Yes."

And he laughed — the rare real one, the whole face — and pulled her in and kissed her in the dark hallway, slow and deep and unhurried, a man with nowhere to be and the rest of his life to do it in.

When they broke apart he kept her close, his forehead down against hers, his hands framing her face the way hers had framed his the night everything broke, and he said it, low, just for her, in a voice with not one grain of the porch left in it:

"Welcome home, darlin'."

The word landed in the dark and it didn't sting and it didn't keep her at arm's length and it wasn't a wall. It was the warmest thing he'd ever called her. Three months ago, a lifetime ago, a man on a porch had said it to push her away, and she'd thrown it back in his teeth: I'm nobody's darlin'. And he'd looked at her and said no, I don't expect you are, and she'd driven off that ranch sure she'd been read and dismissed inside of two minutes.