The stagecoach groaned like an old animal giving up its last breath as it rolled to a stop on Ember Ridge’s dusty main street. Clara Whitfield sat rigid behind the clouded window, her gloved fingers pinching the strap of her carpetbag until the leather squeaked. The town beyond the glass looked sun-baked and unfinished, as if God had started building Wyoming and decided to leave the rest to stubborn people.

And then she saw him.

He stood by the hitching post like a monument somebody forgot to carve down to human proportions. A hat brim shaded most of his face, but his shoulders… his shoulders blocked the storefront behind him like a fallen barn door. He was the sort of man you didn’t look at once. You looked at him in pieces, because the whole thing didn’t fit inside a single breath.

Clara’s stomach tightened, not from the stagecoach’s jerking ride, but from the old, familiar shape of fear.

“Ma’am,” the driver said, voice thick with pity. “This is your stop.”

The other passengers, a preacher’s wife and two traveling salesmen, leaned forward to watch. Clara could feel their curiosity like pins pressed into her skin.

She swallowed. Courage, her mother’s last word, like a prayer pressed into Clara’s palm before fever stole her voice. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s moving forward despite it.

Clara lifted her bag with both hands and stepped down. Her boots touched Wyoming soil. The dust rose around her ankles, warm and gritty, and for a heartbeat she imagined it was Boston’s brick grit, Beacon Hill’s soot. Then a shadow fell over her, swallowing her whole.

“Mrs. McCall,” the giant said.

His voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It rumbled up from somewhere deep and steady, like thunder that had learned manners.

Clara tipped her chin back until the muscles in her neck ached. Up close, he was even more impossible. His hands hung at his sides like tools made for a different species. His chest rose and fell slowly, as if he was trying not to scare her with the simple act of breathing.

“Clara,” she managed.

He hesitated, then removed his hat. Dark hair, wind-tangled. A face weathered by sun and hard work… and eyes that startled her with their gentleness. Brown. Thoughtful. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

“You’re smaller than I expected,” he blurted, and then visibly winced, as if he’d stepped on a nail. “I mean—your letters didn’t mention…”

Clara’s fear bristled, sharp and defensive. If she let it, it would take the reins and drag her back onto the coach, back to Boston, back to her uncle’s house with its locked doors and whiskey breath and wandering hands.

She straightened her spine, all five feet of it.

“I’m exactly as large as I need to be, Mr. McCall.”

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth, then vanished, like he was afraid even that might be too much.

“Jonas,” he corrected softly. “And… you’re right. I apologize.”

He gestured toward her bag. “May I?”

Clara hesitated. Then, because she had already crossed a continent to get here and because she refused to be a trembling thing forever, she nodded.

Jonas lifted the carpetbag with two fingers as if it weighed nothing. The casual strength sent a shiver through her that wasn’t entirely fear. It was awareness. A new kind of math.

“The reverend’s waiting at the church,” Jonas said. “Reverend Matthews insists on blessing the union in person.”

Clara’s heart stuttered. “But we were married by proxy. The papers were legal.”

“Yes,” Jonas said, shifting as if the word weighed more than the bag. “But Reverend Matthews says it’s only proper. Given the… unusual circumstances.”

Unusual. Clara almost laughed, but the sound caught in her throat.

Jonas glanced at her, then away, as though he didn’t want to corner her with his presence. “Unless you’d rather rest first. The ceremony can wait.”

The kindness in the offer made something inside Clara crack—some hard, cynical shell she’d built in Boston to survive.

“The whole town’s gathered,” he added, and there was apology in his voice now. “I tried to keep it quiet, but Ember Ridge doesn’t get much entertainment.”

“So I’m entertainment,” Clara said before she could stop herself. “A freak show.”

Jonas’s jaw tightened. Not with anger at her. With anger at the world.

“About us,” he corrected gently. “But if you’re not ready, then no.”

Clara lifted her chin again. “Let them look.”

Something shifted in Jonas’s eyes, like a door opening a fraction.

“You’ve got spine,” he murmured. “Good. You’ll need it out here.”

---

They walked down Main Street together, an odd procession that pulled every gaze like iron to a magnet. Clara heard the whispers rise and tumble after them.

“She barely reaches his elbow.”

“How’s that supposed to work?”

“Poor little thing…”

Jonas didn’t respond. He only adjusted his long stride to match her quick steps. Clara noticed he angled his body slightly, placing himself between her and the gawkers as if his size could be a wall. It was the first time she understood that his largeness could be used as shelter.

The church was small, its white paint peeling under Wyoming sun. Inside, the pews were packed. When Clara stepped through the door beside Jonas, the noise died as if someone had smothered it with a pillow.

Reverend Matthews—a thin man with spectacles and a mouth that looked perpetually startled—gestured them forward.

“Ah,” he said too brightly. “The happy couple.”

Clara kept her face steady. Her hands trembled, so she curled them into fists inside her gloves.

They stood at the altar, the height difference almost obscene in the cramped little building. Jonas had to stoop beneath the low ceiling. Clara barely reached the bottom of his ribs.

“Dearly beloved,” Reverend Matthews began, clearing his throat in a way that suggested even his vocal cords were nervous. “We are gathered here to bless the union of Jonas McCall and Clara Whitfield—though they have been joined in law, we gather to join them in the eyes of God and this community.”

A whisper hissed from the back: “God help her.”

Clara’s cheeks burned.

Jonas’s voice cut through the church like a blade, deep and controlled. “Anyone who has something to say about my wife can say it to me now.”

Silence slammed down. The reverend hurried through the blessing as if the words were hot coals.

When he reached the part about the kiss, he faltered. “You may… that is… a kiss of peace would be…”

Jonas looked down at Clara. A question in his eyes. Permission, not possession.

Clara’s heart hammered. She nodded once.

Jonas bent. And bent. And bent again until he could press the gentlest possible kiss to her forehead. It was soft, careful, almost reverent.

“Welcome to Ember Ridge, Mrs. McCall,” he murmured, for her alone.

Clara swallowed hard, surprised by the sting behind her eyes.

---

Outside, sunlight struck them like a judgment. Jonas released a long breath, as if he’d been holding it since the coach arrived.

“That was unpleasant,” he said.

“I apologize,” he added quickly, as if the town’s staring was something he’d personally spilled on her dress.

Clara exhaled. “They’re not bad people,” she said. “Just human.”

Jonas studied her, brow furrowing. “You speak from experience.”

“Boston society stares too,” Clara admitted, surprised by her own honesty. “It just does it behind lace fans and polite smiles.”

A rusty laugh escaped Jonas, like a hinge that hadn’t been used in years. “We make quite the pair.”

“The giant and the fairy,” he added dryly.

Clara lifted a brow. “I prefer ‘a study in contrasts.’”

Jonas’s mouth curved again, more real this time. “I like that.”

He led her to a wagon, and Clara noticed a small step stool fixed to the side. Not an afterthought. Built-in. Intentional.

The detail landed in her chest like a warm stone.

---

The ride out of town carried them into a landscape so wide it made Clara dizzy. The sky stretched like a blank page begging to be written on. Mountains crouched in the distance, blue and sleeping. The air smelled of sun-warmed grass and honest dirt.

They rode in silence until Jonas spoke, as if the words had been waiting for a safe moment.

“You can ask,” he said.

Clara glanced up. “Ask what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking so hard about.” His eyes flicked to her face. “Your thoughts are written all over you.”

Clara weighed denial, then discarded it. She’d lied enough in her life to fill a library.

“Why a mail-order bride?” she asked. “A man like you… surely there were local women.”

Jonas’s laugh held no humor. “A man like me,” he repeated. “You mean a giant.”

“I didn’t say—”

“You didn’t have to.” His hands tightened on the reins. “When you’re built like this, people assume things about your nature.”

“What kinds of things?”

“That I’m violent. Brutish.” He swallowed. “That I’ve got appetites to match my size.”

Clara’s pulse tripped, and not because she believed it. Because she heard the bitterness underneath.

“Have you ever hurt anyone?” she asked quietly.

Jonas was silent long enough for the question to feel like a stone thrown into a canyon.

“Once,” he said at last. “I was seventeen. Some boys cornered my little sister behind the schoolhouse. I pulled them off her.” His jaw worked. “Broke one boy’s arm. Another’s ribs. Didn’t mean to. I just… grabbed.”

“You were protecting her.”

“That’s not how the town saw it.” His voice was flat. “They saw a monster.”

Clara studied his profile: broken nose, strong jaw, eyes fixed on the horizon as if looking anywhere but at his own shame.

“So you placed an advertisement,” Clara said softly, “because you thought a desperate woman might overlook what others feared.”

Jonas’s shoulders lifted and fell. “Yes.”

Clara looked out at the open land, at the strange new life she’d purchased with courage and desperation.

“Maybe,” she said, “we’re both here because we needed a place where our past couldn’t reach us.”

Jonas’s gaze slid to her. Gentle, wary. “What did you run from, Clara?”

Clara’s throat tightened. She kept her eyes forward.

“Boston,” she said, and that was true. It was just not the whole truth.

---

The ranch came into view like a promise made solid. A two-story house, modest but well-kept. A barn big enough to swallow the sky. Cattle dotted the fields like scattered coins.

But what made Clara’s breath catch were the modifications: a smaller set of steps beside the porch stairs. Hooks at different heights. A window in the kitchen set lower than usual.

Jonas followed her gaze, his ears turning pink beneath windburn.

“I’ve been preparing,” he admitted. “Since your first letter.”

Clara stared. “You built all this… for me?”

“For us,” he corrected. “A home should fit everyone who lives in it.”

Something fragile inside Clara shifted, like ice beginning to melt.

“It’s wonderful,” she said, meaning it.

Jonas’s whole face transformed when he truly smiled. Years fell away. For a heartbeat, she saw the boy he might have been before the world taught him to duck and apologize for existing.

---

Inside, the house was a quiet miracle. A kitchen counter built at two heights. Steps that slid out from cabinets. A table with two chairs: one enormous, one normal-sized. Her bedroom held a bed that didn’t swallow her, a wardrobe carved with wildflowers, delicate and careful.

“You made all this,” Clara whispered, tracing the carved petals.

“I’m good with my hands,” Jonas said, then flushed. “Woodworking,” he added quickly. “I meant woodworking.”

Clara’s smile startled her. It felt unfamiliar on her face, like trying on a dress you’d forgotten you owned.

“You have your own room,” Jonas said. “I know the marriage is legal, but… I don’t expect anything from you. We can take time.”

Relief washed over Clara. And under it, something else she refused to name.

That night, Jonas knocked softly and offered quilts.

“My mother made these,” he said. “Before she passed. She was small too. Not as small as you, but… small.”

“How did your parents make it work?” Clara asked.

Jonas leaned carefully against the doorframe, as if he’d learned the limits of structures.

“Love,” he said. “Patience. And a lot of laughter. She used to say if you couldn’t laugh at the absurdity of life, you’d cry at the cruelty of it.”

Clara felt that line settle into her bones.

“She sounds wise,” Clara murmured.

“She was.” Jonas’s eyes softened. “She taught me being different isn’t the same as being wrong.”

After he left, Clara wrapped herself in the quilts and stared at the ceiling, listening to the house breathe around Jonas’s heavy, careful footsteps.

For the first time in months, she did not feel hunted.

---

The weeks that followed stitched them together in small, sturdy ways. Clara learned the ranch’s rhythms: dawn chores, midday heat, evenings like honey and smoke. Jonas handled cattle with a gentleness that made no sense against his size. Clara fed chickens, gathered eggs, tended the garden. Her hands blistered. Her muscles protested. But the work left her exhausted in a clean way, not the sickly exhaustion of fear.

In town, the stares continued. Jonas tried to make himself smaller, shoulders hunched, voice lowered, as if he could fold himself into acceptability.

“You shouldn’t have to do that,” Clara told him after a woman yanked her children behind her skirts when Jonas passed.

“It makes them more comfortable,” Jonas said.

“And what about your comfort?”

Jonas stared at the road. “I gave up on that a long time ago.”

Clara’s jaw tightened. She’d spent too many years shrinking to fit someone else’s cruelty. She would not watch Jonas do it too.

When Mrs. Henderson joked loudly at the general store, “Beauty and the Beast, isn’t it?” Clara turned with a smile sharp enough to cut rope.

“How interesting,” Clara said, “that you’d reference a story where the beast turns out to have the truest heart. Though I suppose understanding the moral requires reading, not just repeating gossip.”

Mrs. Henderson flushed scarlet. Jonas coughed into his fist, eyes crinkling with suppressed laughter.

Word spread quickly: the tiny Boston bride had a tongue like winter.

Then came the quilting bee at Mary Sullivan’s house. Clara walked into a parlor full of women whose needles moved like quick little birds. Their questions were polite. Their curiosity was not.

Eventually Mrs. Henderson, of course, circled back.

“Must be difficult,” she said, eyes glinting. “A man that size. Everything so… mismatched.”

Clara set her needle down with deliberate care.

“Mrs. Henderson,” Clara said sweetly, “are you asking about my marriage bed?”

The room froze, needles suspended mid-stitch like trapped insects.

“Because if you are,” Clara continued, voice honey laced with arsenic, “I’m afraid I must disappoint you. My mother raised me to believe what happens between husband and wife is sacred and private.”

Clara let the silence simmer, then softened her tone, not for Henderson, but for herself.

“But I will say this: my husband treats me with more gentleness and respect than I’ve seen from men a fraction of his size.”

Mary Sullivan’s eyes warmed. “Well said,” she murmured.

Clara realized she’d passed a test she hadn’t known she was taking.

---

One night, rain softened into a drizzle and the clouds cracked open to reveal a rare lunar rainbow, pale and shimmering like a secret.

Jonas led Clara onto the porch and pointed. “My mother used to say those are bridges between earth and heaven.”

Clara stared, breath caught. “It’s beautiful.”

“They’re rare,” Jonas said. His gaze dropped to her. “You need just the right conditions. Moon, rain, clear sky.” He hesitated. “Kind of like us.”

Clara felt her heart stumble.

Jonas’s hands flexed at his sides as if he had to fight them into stillness. “Clara,” he said, and his voice held a tremor she’d never heard before. “These past weeks… I wake up looking forward to breakfast because you’ll be there. I find myself collecting stories just to make you laugh at dinner.”

Clara’s throat tightened.

“When you defended me in town,” Jonas continued, “I realized something. I’m falling in love with you.”

Clara’s chest felt too small for her heart.

“You barely know me,” she whispered.

Jonas’s smile was faint, fierce with sincerity. “I know you take your coffee too sweet. I know you hum when you’re happy and go silent when you’re thinking hard. I know you were brave enough to leave everything behind for a chance at something better.” He swallowed. “And I know you see me.”

Clara turned fully to him. “I do,” she said, voice steady. “I see the man who carved flowers into wood because beauty matters. The man who stayed awake in a chair all night because I was frightened. The man who shields me from stares with his own body.”

Jonas’s breath caught, almost pained. “May I kiss you,” he asked, “really kiss you?”

Clara nodded.

He knelt, bringing himself closer to her height, though he still towered. His massive hand cupped her face with impossible gentleness.

“You’re so small,” he murmured, wonder and worry tangled together. “I’m terrified of breaking you.”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Clara whispered. “And you’re gentler than you know.”

His kiss was careful, reverent, as if she were something sacred. When they parted, both of them were breathing like they’d run a mile.

That night, Jonas lay beside her on top of the covers, the bed creaking ominously but holding.

Clara curled into the curve of his arm like she belonged there.

“Perfect,” he rumbled, pressing a kiss to her hair.

For the first time in her life, Clara believed the word could be true.

---

The first hint of pregnancy came like a secret tapping on the inside of her ribs: morning sickness, a late cycle, an exhaustion that felt different from work-weariness. Clara waited until the town doctor confirmed it, because she knew Jonas would panic and she wanted certainty to anchor them both.

When Doc Hawthorne cleared his throat in the kitchen and said, “Mrs. McCall, you are with child,” silence crashed down like a falling beam.

Jonas’s hand swallowed hers. Not tight enough to hurt. Tight enough to hold on.

“A baby,” Jonas said, voice eerily calm. Then the calm shattered into fear. “What do you recommend?”

Doc Hawthorne adjusted his spectacles. “Denver. Immediately. There’s a specialist…”

“We’ll go,” Jonas said, too fast. “Tomorrow.”

Clara shook her head. “I’m not spending months in a strange city like an invalid.”

Jonas’s eyes went wild with terror. “Clara, this isn’t like other pregnancies. Not with your size. Not with my—”

“Life is risk,” Clara cut in. “I risked everything coming here.”

Doc Hawthorne offered a compromise: the specialist could travel. It would be expensive. Clara would need restrictions.

“Done,” Jonas said, before Clara could argue. “Whatever it costs.”

After the doctor left, Jonas sank into his reinforced chair, head in his hands.

“You suspected,” he said softly, not accusation, but hurt. “And didn’t tell me.”

“I wanted to be sure,” Clara answered.

Jonas looked up, eyes shining. “I’m terrified.”

Clara climbed into his lap, pressing her forehead to his chest. “So am I,” she confessed. “But I’m also happy. Can you be happy too? Just a little?”

Jonas’s hands settled on her still-flat belly with a touch so gentle it barely existed.

“Our baby,” he whispered.

Their baby.

The words were both blessing and threat.

---

Pregnancy changed the ranch into a fortress of carefulness. Jonas hovered. Clara bristled. They fought, the first real fight, when Jonas caught her carrying laundry.

“I’m pregnant,” Clara snapped, eyes wet with frustration. “Not made of glass.”

“You’re pregnant with what might be a giant baby,” Jonas shot back, voice controlled but shaking. “That makes you more fragile than glass.”

The fight ended with Clara crying, furious at her own tears, furious at being trapped in a body that suddenly belonged to fear. Jonas knelt before her, hands cupping hers like he was holding something precious and breakable.

“Please,” he whispered. “Don’t take chances with your life. I’m begging you.”

The naked fear in his eyes cracked her anger open.

“I’ll be careful,” she promised.

And she was. Mostly.

As her belly grew too fast, the town’s whispers sharpened.

“She’ll split like overripe fruit.”

“The giant’s baby will be the death of her.”

Clara met the cruelty with her chin lifted, but at night, alone with Jonas’s breathing and the baby’s relentless kicking, fear crept in like cold.

Jonas read to her. He told her stories. He spoke to her belly in a deep rumble that made the baby pause, as if listening.

“Easy, little one,” he’d murmur. “Your mama’s working hard.”

Clara watched Jonas in those weeks and understood something: his gentleness wasn’t weakness. It was discipline. It was control forged from living inside a body that could easily become a weapon.

He was afraid of himself, and he fought that fear every day by choosing care.

---

Labor began before Clara felt ready. Pain woke her in the night, a tightening that stole breath and made her grip the sheets until her knuckles whitened.

Jonas was at her side instantly, face pale, hands hovering as if afraid to touch her wrong.

Dr. Morrison, the specialist Jonas had paid a fortune to bring from Denver, arrived hours later. His calm steadiness filled the room like clean air. Doc Hawthorne came too, grim and prepared for the worst.

Clara endured the hours with her teeth clenched and her mind anchored on one thought: Stay. Fight. Stay.

Then Dr. Morrison’s face tightened.

“The baby’s too big,” he said quietly, after examining her. “She’s fully dilated, but… there’s no way this child will fit through her pelvis.”

Clara’s blood ran cold.

“Surgery,” Doc Hawthorne whispered.

Dr. Morrison shook his head, voice low. “In these conditions, she’d bleed out before we could close her.”

Clara grabbed Dr. Morrison’s sleeve with surprising strength. “You get this baby out alive,” she said through pain. “Whatever happens to me, you save this child.”

Jonas’s voice broke. “Clara—”

“Promise me,” Clara demanded, eyes locked on the doctor.

Dr. Morrison swallowed. “I will do everything I can.”

A contraction slammed into her like a wave. Clara screamed, the sound tearing free without permission.

And then something shifted inside her. A strange alignment. A flicker of possibility.

“Wait,” Dr. Morrison said sharply. He examined again, disbelief in his voice. “The baby turned. It’s… barely possible.”

Clara sobbed once, half laughter, half terror.

“Push,” Dr. Morrison ordered. “One more.”

Clara pushed with a strength she didn’t know she owned. Pain split her, real and brutal, but she rode it like a storm.

Jonas crashed through the door, unable to stay away, his face a mask of helpless agony.

“Clara,” he choked. “Stay with me.”

Her world narrowed to breath and fire and the sound of Jonas’s voice.

Then a cry split the room, sharp and alive.

“It’s a boy,” Doc Hawthorne breathed, amazement thick in his throat. “A big, healthy boy.”

Relief hit Clara so hard she nearly blacked out. Darkness still crept at the edges, hungry.

“She’s hemorrhaging,” someone said urgently.

Jonas’s hands framed Clara’s face, wet with tears. “You promised,” he begged. “You promised to fight.”

Clara’s lips trembled. “I’m—” she whispered, and then words failed.

She fought anyway.

She fought through blood loss, through fever, through infection that clawed at her body like a jealous ghost. She fought because Jonas’s voice tethered her. She fought because her baby’s cry was a promise that life had begun.

When she finally woke fully, three days later, sunlight sat soft on the walls. Jonas was slumped in a chair beside her bed, exhaustion carved into his face. In his arms lay their son, swaddled, dark-haired, absurdly large and yet somehow perfect.

Jonas’s eyes flew open the moment Clara stirred.

“There you are,” he whispered, tears spilling as if he’d been holding them in for days. “My brave, stubborn, impossible wife.”

“The baby,” Clara rasped.

Jonas shifted carefully so she could see. “Ten pounds,” he said, half wonder, half disbelief. “Built like me. But… look.”

He brushed a finger over the baby’s tiny hand. The baby’s grip tightened around it, strong even in infancy, but not cruel.

Clara reached out, weak. Jonas guided the baby onto her chest, supporting him when her arms trembled.

“What do we call him?” Jonas asked.

Clara stared at their son’s face, the delicate curve of his mouth against the boldness of his size.

“Thomas,” she whispered. “After my father.”

Jonas swallowed hard. “Thomas McCall,” he repeated, as if tasting the name and finding it holy.

Clara closed her eyes and let relief wash over her like rain after drought.

---

Recovery was slow. Clara’s body would never forget what it had survived. But the ranch held her like a nest: Katya Kowalski’s strengthening teas, Mary Sullivan’s organized meal deliveries, Doc Hawthorne’s gruff insistence on rest. Jonas’s care was constant, quiet, absolute.

And Ember Ridge changed.

Not all at once. Not magically. But in the way stone changes under water: slowly, inevitably, smoothed by repeated acts of proof.

Men who once stared now tipped their hats. Women who once whispered brought quilts and offered genuine help. They had watched Clara live through what they’d expected would kill her. They had watched Jonas’s gentleness hold, unbroken, even under fear.

One evening, months later, Clara sat on the porch with Jonas, their son sleeping between them in a cradle Jonas had carved with wildflowers.

“We did it,” Clara whispered.

Jonas stared down at Thomas, his massive hand hovering above the baby like a protective sky. “We did,” he said, voice thick.

Clara leaned into him, the solid warmth of his body an anchor. “Do you regret it?” she asked suddenly, testing the old fear. “Answering my letters. Bringing me here.”

Jonas looked at her as if she’d asked whether he regretted breathing.

“Never,” he said. “Not for one second. Before you, I existed. I worked. I ate. I slept. But I didn’t live.”

Clara’s throat tightened. She’d been the one running from monsters, but Jonas had been running too, in a different way, from the world’s expectation that his size meant cruelty.

“You saved me from loneliness,” Jonas continued. “From believing I’d never be more than what people feared.”

“And you saved me,” Clara said softly, “from believing I was only small.”

Jonas’s smile was slow, weathered, real. “We saved each other.”

Clara watched the sun lower behind the mountains, painting the sky in gold and crimson. She listened to the coyotes begin their distant chorus, wild and familiar now.

In the cradle, Thomas stirred, fist curling with surprising strength, then relaxing again.

Clara realized something with a quiet certainty that felt like peace:

They hadn’t fit because the world allowed it.

They fit because they built their own shape, plank by plank, promise by promise, careful act by careful act.

Jonas’s hand covered hers, still gentle after all this time.

“Thank you,” Clara murmured, not sure if she was speaking to him, to fate, or to the ghost of her mother’s last word.

Jonas bent, kissing her forehead the same way he had in church, the same way he always would when he wanted to remind her of something true.

“For what?” he asked.

“For seeing me,” Clara said. “Not the tiny woman everyone stared at. Me.”

Jonas’s thumb brushed her cheek. “And thank you,” he answered quietly, “for seeing me. Not the giant. The man.”

Their son sighed in his sleep, safe between them.

Beyond the porch, the ranch stretched wide under the gathering night, and Ember Ridge’s lights flickered in the distance like small, stubborn stars.

Clara rested her head against Jonas’s side and let herself believe, fully and without apology, that impossible love could become an ordinary life, and that ordinary life could become something extraordinary.

THE END