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Because she’d saved his life. And she already knew how that went.

When she was finally discharged after her observation period was up, it was time for her own debriefing sessions in Washington, D.C. Day after day of explaining herself and her actions, over and over again. Sometimes to people she recognized, but more often to strangers who didn’t always introduce themselves.

Though she could have made some assumptions about the kinds of things they did.

Isaac had brought her replacements for the contaminated items that had been confiscated from her back at that farmhouse, not that she’d been foolish enough to try to use a smartphone in her debriefing sessions. But once the Pentagon was finished with her, she started to call in to the command center back in Alaska to report in.

Then stopped herself. She was in Washington, D.C., which happened rarely. And when she’d thought she was dying, one of her final thoughts had been a wish that she’d been better to her family.

So instead of heading home, she called her parents and went out to their place in Virginia.

“Are you well, dear?” Birdie asked when she arrived, faintly creasing her brow over the window box of tulips she was fiddling with, out in what she called her mudroom. “You look a bit peaked.”

“I had a little cold,” Bethan told her. “No big deal.”

Birdie’s brows rose, but she didn’t argue. After all, Bethan thought, her mother had been a military spouse longer than Bethan had been alive. She knew when—and when not—to ask questions.

That night at dinner, she and her father eyed each other over their plates. Bethan suspected he knew exactly what she’d been up to lately, but he didn’t ask. And she didn’t volunteer it, because officially, none of it had ever happened.

Instead, she found herself talking about her favorite sports teams.

And maybe because she no longer felt like she had anything to prove, it was the most fun she could remember having at dinner with her parents. Possibly ever.

This is your second chance at your life, she told herself that night when she climbed into bed in what had once been her childhood bedroom, though it had long since been upgraded.You get to do it right this time.

All told, it was a solid month before she finally found herself landing in Fool’s Cove again.

Finally, she thought, as the little seaplane came in for a bouncy landing.

She climbed out of the plane, waved off the pilot, and took a moment to appreciate the way her feet felt as they hit the wooden dock. She followed the straight line of the dock toward the stairs that led up to the lodge, breathing in deep as she moved.

Because she was finally home.

It was low tide, and she could smell the rich scent of the sea all around her. Woodsmoke and pine. Though it was May now, it was still colder here than it had been back East. It looked as if it had rained earlier, but the sun was putting on a little bit of a show up there above the mountain. It filtered down through the evergreens, lighting up all the cabins hidden away there on that hill.

Everything was precisely the way she remembered it. And while Bethan’s heart might hurt a whole lot more than it had when she’d left here, because she already knew how Jonas would handle her saving him all over again, she still felt that same pull she had felt the first day she’d arrived.

She’d known from the start that this was the right place for her.

Her bones told her it still was, regardless of the state of her heart.

Bethan ran up the steep stairs. And as she got to the top, she heard a chorus of gruff male voices, welcoming her back.

They all stood there outside the big lodge doors. Her friends and colleagues, as close to emotional as any of them ever got, welcoming her back like... Well. Like family.

Bethan was terrified for a moment that she might disgrace herself by crying.

They’d all come out to greet her. To slap her on the shoulder, which was their version of a hug. To shuffle theirfeet and mutter things in their deep voices that were nothing much in and of themselves. But added up all the same to something like,About time you showed up. You almost died. That was not okay.

“Didn’t think you were coming back at all,” Templeton drawled, his voice booming loud enough to disturb a few seabirds perched on the railing some distance down the walkway. “Figured you’d cut and run.”

“Army Rangers lead the way, Templeton,” she replied, grinning wide. Because, of course, he’d been an Army Ranger, too. A real one, to her way of thinking, since he’d actually gotten to serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment.

“All the way,” he replied.

And the way he looked at her made her stand a little straighter. It let her know, in no uncertain terms, that as far as he was concerned, they were the same.

She held on to that. Especially when Jonas didn’t make an appearance.