Page 183 of Dustwalker

But Lara had made it into a home.

Ronin climbed the steps onto the porch, where chimes crafted from scrap metal Lara had collected over the years tinkled quietly in the breeze. It was the same sound that had drawn him to her half a century ago.

The lure of fate.

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “Lara?”

The living room walls didn’t have a single bare patch. His wife had remained a collector, as she dubbed herself, throughout her life. Decades’ worth of trinkets adorned the walls and shelves, displayed proudly for any guests to see.

“In here!” she called.

Ronin followed her voice toward the kitchen, passing the seashells she’d gathered when they visited the ocean. There was a jar of sand from the same trip on one of the end tables, with a heart-shaped rock pressed against the inside of the glass. Ronin hadn’t understood the need to bring more sand back to a town already full of dust and dirt, but he’d carried it nonetheless.

Lara stood at the counter, smearing jam onto a slice of bread. Hereyes were fixed on the task, her movements slow and deliberate, but she looked up at him the moment he stepped into the room. She smiled, and wrinkles bunched at the corners of her eyes.

Her hair was gray now. She’d panicked when she found her first gray hair, locking herself in the bathroom for more than an hour, crying, before Ronin had finally forced the door open to ensure she was okay. She’d taken it as a sign of her mortality, and had been convinced he would leave her at any moment.

But she was as beautiful to him now as when he first saw her. Even more so, after the life they’d shared.

“Tabby found some flowers for you,” he said, holding up the bundle.

“She could’ve brought them herself.” The trembling of her hand was hard to miss as she set the knife down. “She only lives three houses away, and I would’ve loved to see her.”

“She and Dan are assisting with repairs on the wall, which means she was already running late. Tomorrow is her free day. She said she’ll come by.”

Her smile widened. “I’m so proud of her. Of all of them.”

“They had the best mother this side of the Dust,” Ronin replied, smiling as well.

Tabitha had been Lara’s only biological child, as complications during labor had made another pregnancy too risky. But they’d adopted and raised three other children who they loved just as much as Tabby—Samuel, Melissa, and Amanda. Their ages had varied, with Melissa having been the oldest at fifteen, but they’d all needed a home. A family.

Lara chuckled and lifted her arms toward him. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to come say hello?”

Ronin crossed the room and embraced her, gently but warmly, running a hand down her long, silver braid.

“Hello.” He dipped his head to kiss her.

“Hello,” she said against his lips. When she drew her head back, she met his gaze. “Would you put the flowers in water for me?”

“Of course.” He placed the flowers on the counter, picked up her bread, and took her arm. She leaned on him as she walked to the table, where he pulled a chair out with his boot and helped her ease into it.

“You’re always so good to me.”

“It’s no less than you deserve, Lara Brooks.”

“Still calling me Lara Brooks after all this time.” She shook her head, but there was mirth in her eyes as she picked up the bread and took a bite.

Ronin found a vase in the cabinet and filled it with water from the sink. “I’ve told you already, just because I married you without having a surname of my own doesn’t mean you get to drop yours.”

Turning to the counter, his gaze caught on the granite. There were several cracks that had been repaired, spiderwebbing out from the spot where his fist had struck it. He played that memory in his mind. It had been the turning point for the both of them, the moment Lara had seen him as more than a machine.

The moment she had seen him as a man.

Ronin ran a finger over one of the seams that had been filled in.

After adding the flowers to the vase, he returned to the table and placed them at its center.

She’d only taken two bites when she set the bread down and raised a hand to her forehead, pressing her fingers to her temple. “It’s too early to be so tired.”