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Cows Come Homeplays through the Bluetooth speaker as I alternate between dancing around the kitchen and chopping my vegetables. Every so often, I take a peek out the bay window to the front yard, where Knox and Dax are playing a game of rugby with some of the kids who have come home on their break from school. While our daughter, Mila, with her unruly dark hair, sits with her grandparents on the porch swing, clapping her chubby little hands.

Liam enters the kitchen and pours himself three fingers of whisky, and I get back to preparing dinner. He stands at the window, but his eyes aren’t focused on the 2v2 game going on on the lawn—they’re distant. He takes a sip of his drink and rubs the back of his neck. “Liam?” He practically jumps out of his skin when he turns to face me.

“Hmm? Sorry. What?”

I pull my lip between my teeth, attempting to hide my smile because only now do I recognize his weird jumpy reactions for what they are.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with Liv coming home today, would it?” I eye him from under my lashes as I dice some potatoes.

“Oh, is that today?”

“It’s only the whole reason we’re having this dinner tonight.” I smile sweetly.

“Hmm.” He shrugs. “I didn’t realize.” He lifts his glass to his mouth and I slam my knife on the butcher block counter and jump with a squeal.

“Eeeep! There she is!” I squeal.

Liam chokes. Absolutely hacking. Pounding his chest, wide-eyed looking around. “Is this you not being nervous?” I tease him.

“You’re an asshole, Tatertot,” he says, pointing a firm finger at me.

“Watch your fucking mouth when you’re speaking to my wife,” Knox growls from the swinging door and I can’t help but giggle at Liam, who’s almost drowned in his own drink, and at Knox, who is just as overbearing as he was the day I met him. When he towered over me in the room just behind this one and lured me into his charm, his wit, his kindness, and his undying devotion.

“I’ll be outside, not waiting for anything in particular,” Liam says, lifting his glass to me as he exists.

Knox crosses the kitchen, looping his fingers into the band of my apron, pulling me flush against his body.

“What are you doing?” I ask, brushing my nose across his.

“I just missed you.” His lips press to my nose, to my cheek, down my jaw, and finally on my lips. “I had to come in here and steal one of these.” His mouth covers mine again.

“Where’s Mila?” I ask between kisses, looping my arms around his neck.

“Dad and Ryder took her down to the stables.” He lifts me by my hips, sitting me on the countertop. I’m positive he wasn’t paying attention and my jean-covered ass is now sitting in a pile of flour but I can’t bring myself to care as he continues to press his lips—and now hips—into me. I stare so deeply into his eyes that I think I can see his soul.

“What?” he asks through a smile.

“Sometimes I just have to pinch myself,” I say with a slight shake of my head. “Sometimes I wonder how I got this lucky. How I ended up in this perfectly messy, loud, and beautiful place we call home.”

“You did that.” He kisses my nose. “You created this life for us. It wasn’t an accident, Taylor. It was you.”

“It’s like a never-ending adventure,” I whisper.

“Isn’t that the point of it all?” His forehead brushes against mine. “To live a life so full of love that it feels like your greatest adventure?”

My lips turn up even as I press them into him because he’s right. I came to Stoney Meadow looking for an adventure, and I found myself a home.