A kiss to accept the inevitable.
Accept.
It was amazing what such a simple word could do.
The power it yielded. The fears it deleted. The serenity it granted.
Accept.
Our tongues touched.
A gentle breeze wrapped around us.
I belonged to her, and she belonged to me.
I was home.
EPILOGUE
Hope
* * * * * *
“I DON’T THINK he’s going to like this, Cassie.”
Cassie glanced my way, her fingers wrapped tight around the steering wheel as she drove us through town with two new pony rescues on the back.
I’d been living at Cherry River for three months.
Jacob and I were getting married tomorrow.
My leg had healed, my concussion all gone, and we’d officially had two fights. Fights I’d caused by wanting to take on Della’s old role and help Cassie save abused and kill-pen horses.
Jacob didn’t want me anywhere near the freaked-out, unstable beasts. And I understood—of course, I did, but I also wasn’t some city girl who didn’t have equine experience.
I promised him I wouldn’t get close unless I could read the situation correctly. I wouldn’t take my eyes off them for a moment. I wouldn’t go behind them or stand directly in front of them.
I agreed to all those terms, only drawing a line when he asked me to wear a helmet and body armour at all times.
“I did warn you.” Cassie smirked. “You’re the one getting the full blame.”
“I know.” I pouted. “But he was…. I mean, how could I leave him there?” A shiver worked up my spine as a horse kicked inside the trailer. “I hate people who don’t treat animals with kindness.”
Cassie sighed, her red-brown hair glinting in the sunshine. “I know. I’m surprised I haven’t gone to jail yet for blowing up some of these so-called farmers for what they’ve done.”
“We’ve done the right thing, though, by taking him.”
“Yeah. Hopefully, Jacob sees it that way.”
I rubbed my face with my hands. “Ugh, he’s really going to kill me, isn’t he?”
“Yup.” She chuckled. “Maybe instead of a wedding tomorrow we’ll have another funeral.”
The fact she could laugh about so much tragedy showed how accepting of life she was.
Jacob had finally learned how to do the same—in smaller increments.
He’d accepted us.
There’d been no question that I would live with Jacob. I’d quit my job in England and returned to being a farmer’s girl.
Cherry River was mine as surely as its owner. Dad had flown back to his film location the next afternoon, and Jacob never let me out of his sights.
For the first few days, his openness to love was absolute. We spent most of our time in bed followed by late evenings hanging in the fields with the horses, seeing as I couldn’t ride with my cast.
For a few weeks, it was pure paradise.
But then his fears slowly tried to claim him again. He flinched when my cast was removed. He started second-guessing my mortality.
I didn’t let it worry me. He’d made me a promise, and in return, I promised I’d help him work through those dismal days.
Highs and lows.
Learning and growth.
Family.
When his mind started teasing him with dark and morbid things, I hugged him close and reminded him we were alive. We had hearts that beat and blood that flowed, and that was all he needed to focus on.
Slowly, he managed to ignore his nightmares and accept that life had shades of all colours—happy and sad, hard and easy.
A week after his grandfather had passed away from lymphoma, Jacob, his remaining family, and I gathered at the local church where his grandmother Patricia had been laid to rest.
The church spilled with well-wishers there to say goodbye to such a wonderful, wise man.
Jacob didn’t manage a eulogy, but he did take my hand once the service finished, and together, we sat by the freshly carved gravestone in the sun. We stayed for an hour in silence, saying our goodbyes in different ways.
I knew Jacob suffered from guilt for not being home in time. And I suffered from guilt for not telling him sooner. But touching that sun-warmed headstone filled me with a sense of peace that I hoped Jacob felt too.
That afternoon, we headed to the garden store and bought trays of vegetable seedlings and stayed up well past midnight planting fresh herbs and produce.
We bickered about what to cultivate.
We argued about which paddocks to turn into orchards.
It turned a stressful day into a restful night after yet another funeral.
And once we’d carefully tucked plants into dirt, Jacob had taken me to bed where we clung to the living, accepting touch and togetherness, saying no to death because we had so much to be grateful for.
The next week, I spent the afternoon feeding horses and cleaning out water troughs, while Jacob went to his first therapy session.
I didn’t have to cajole him into going.
He booked and attended all on his own.
And he came back different. A new level of wisdom in his gaze. A strange kind of consent to life and all its lessons.