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Misty grinned, but she didn’t confirm or deny anything. She wasn’t sure about that, because while she and Link said “I love you” pretty freely these days, they hadn’t talked about marriage or children at all. Misty’s chest tightened mightily at the thought of being a mother, but at least it didn’t send her running the way it had previously.

“I won’t get married before our project finishes,” she promised.

“It won’t matter even if you do,” Janie said. She sniffled and wiped her eyes. “Because even if you did, you’d move up to Shiloh Ridge. It’s not like Link would come live here and cramp my single lifestyle.”

Misty half-laughed as tears streamed down her face. “I’m just so—ugh. Who thought any of this would happen to me?” She covered her face with her hands and wiped at her eyes. “You’re the one who’s dated all these years. I haven’t had a second date in a decade.”

Every hole in her face had decided to leak then, and she didn’t know how to get it to stop. “Maybe we can just prolong the project forever,” she whispered. “Then I won’t ever have to tell you good-bye.”

“It’ll take a lot more than you marrying some rich cowboy for us to stop being friends.” Janie let herself cry too. “And I get to be your Maid of Honor. None of his siblings or cousins or any of his millions of aunts.”

Misty tipped her head back and laughed. “He does have a lot of aunts, doesn’t he?”

The moment sobered, and they went back to eating their ice cream at their little table-for-two in the house on a quiet street in quaint, perfect, small-town Three Rivers.

“I’m so nervous.” Misty smoothed both hands over her stomach, unconcerned about her dress and how it lay but super concerned she might actually throw up.

Link had just come down the hallway from his bedroom, and he currently brushed his teeth. “Ain’t no thing,” he said around the brush and toothpaste.

“How can you say that?” Misty wasn’t going to be able to enjoy a bite of food tonight. Which made no sense, because she’d spent plenty of time with Link’s family.

Tonight felt different, though.

Because tonight was different.

The last Sunday of October had come, and that meant it was the annual Glover family dinner, meeting, party, and Angel Tree decorating event.

Link turned and went back down the hall to his bathroom, leaving Misty alone in her panic. She took a breath and moved over to the window. “Lord,” she prayed. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

The feeling in her stomach to run, to hide, faded to nothing as she looked at the trees beyond Link’s porch. She went outside, clear to the corner of the porch and gazed into the landscape. It smelled like earth and pine and sky, and Misty drew in another long breath of it.

“I am strong,” she whispered to herself. “I am invincible.” Her thought patterns started to change with those few simple words. “I am unstoppable. My future is wide open. I’m a nice person, and Link’s family loves me. He loves me.”

It still baffled her that someone as amazing as him could love her, but Misty didn’t doubt it. Not for a second.

“I am not going to stand in my own way.” She shook her head. “Not tonight.”

The door opened, and Link joined her outside. He didn’t say anything as he crossed over to her. When he arrived, he simply put his arm around her and took a deep breath of her hair. “I like this dress,” he murmured.

She wore a red, green, black, and white plaid dress that hugged her straight up and down. It fell to her knee with little ripples or fabric. She’d paired it with a pair of black ballet flats, and she wore a white cardigan over her shoulders. She felt like the heroine in a romcom movie, the kind that goes to London to marry a man they’ve never met. She had the cutest clothes and the funniest things would happen, and in the end, she’d have the man of her dreams.

Or in her case, the cowboy of her dreams.

“Remember the first time you came to my family’s Angel Tree celebration?” Link asked softly. “And Uncle Bishop had made those banana cream tarts, and we snuck a couple out the door and took a walk. Remember that?”

“Mm,” she said, picturing the scene as he started to paint it with his luxurious voice.

“And the sky was so amazing that night, because it had those wispy clouds, and they hold so much color from the sunset.”

“Really beautiful.” She relaxed back into his chest.

“And I asked you about having kids, and you said….” He paused there, but every muscle in Misty’s body had just jumped to attention. He had to feel that, and Misty moved away from him and leaned into the railing while her heartbeat flailed in her chest.

I am strong, she thought, and as she did, she remembered that strength did not come from forgetting the past, but from the courage to remember it—and still move forward.

“I don’t know how good I’ll be with kids,” she admitted. Her voice felt stuffed way down in her pancreas. “I’m a little scared of being a mom.”

“I think you’d be a great mom,” Link whispered.