The First Night, Part 2

They were still holding hands when the clock in the den rolled past midnight, and for a long while neither of them made any move to let go. The old Laura would have said something snarky—“Want to make a sleepover fort out of the couch cushions?”—but the version sitting on Andy’s couch now was older, or maybe just tired, and let the quiet wrap her up. When she finally shifted, it was to lay her head against his shoulder and close her eyes, the red notebook hugged tight to her chest.

The next thing Laura knew, she was waking up on the couch, the TV flickering static blue and the red notebook pressed to her sternum like a shield. Her hair was bunched up behind her ear, cheek warm from where she’d drooled a little on Andy’s shoulder. Andy, for his part, had not moved in what looked like hours. He just sat with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, but the gentle squeeze on her hand told her he was awake, or at least aware.

She shifted, stretched, and tried to orient herself in time. The windows above the den were black, save for a faint moonglow on the glass. It could have been three in the morning or three in the afternoon. Her sense of time was still shot.

Andy yawned, then turned to her, his eyes still puffy with sleep. “You okay?”

She nodded, then shrugged. “Is it late?” Her voice came out husky, like she’d been yelling at a concert the night before.

Andy checked his watch. “Half past midnight,” he said. “You want to crash?”

Laura considered the options: she could say yes, stumble off to the guest room if there was one, and wrap herself in too many blankets and the smell of detergent. Or she could let herself be a little brave, a little selfish, and ask for the thing she actually wanted.

She glanced at him, then away, and said, “Can I just—stay here?”

He blinked. “On the couch?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, dumbass. I mean, like—can I sleep in your bed? With you?”

Andy didn’t tease her. He just nodded, slow and solemn. “Of course.”

They made their way up the stairs, the air thick with the hush of expensive carpet and the echo of footsteps. Andy flicked on the hallway light, then immediately flicked it off when Laura squinted, so they walked the rest of the way in a pool of blue from the nightlight in the master bath. The bed was still bigger than Laura remembered any bed being—she was considering whether to dub it an emperor bed, or an overlord bed, but Andy didn’t look much like an overlord. It had a mattress so thick she had to climb onto it like a toddler onto a grown-up’s lap.

She burrowed under the covers, clutching the red notebook to her chest. Andy ducked into the bathroom and emerged in a threadbare t-shirt and gym shorts, looking more like the old Andy than he had all day. He slid into the bed beside her, giving her plenty of space, but she reached out, fisted a handful of his sleeve, and yanked him close.

They lay side by side for a while, the only sound the distant hiss of the ocean through double-paned glass.

Laura turned to him, propping her head on her hand. “Can I ask you something weird?”

Andy nodded, his face open, unguarded.

She stared at the ceiling. “I keep waiting for my memories to fill in. For all the grown-up stuff to come back.” She laughed, but it was thin. “I know how to do things, I think, but I don’t remember learning. It’s just not there. It’s like I stepped out of the river and straight into this.” She gestured at the bed, the Suite, her own body. “What if I never catch up?”

He thought about it, then said, “Do you feel like you need to?”

Laura traced a line on the comforter. “I don’t know. It’s like—I feel like a person, right? I know things, I have opinions, I remember how to read and write and even how to be mad at people. But I also remember being thirteen, and every once in a while, I get this—” She searched for the word. “I get this echo, like I’m not supposed to be here. Like maybe I’m just a copy of that girl, and the real me died in the river.”

Andy listened, not interrupting. He waited for her to finish, then reached over, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “You’re here, Laura. You’re real. I can feel you.” He tapped his chest, above his heart. “That thing we used to have, the sense of where the other one was? It came back, the second you did.”

She closed her eyes, remembering the games they used to play. Marco, Polo, but with silence. She knew he was right: she could sense his presence with more than just the feeling of his body bending the mattress surface, or his warmth, or the feeling of his breath. The vibration was thrumming, and she knew with instinctive certainty that it had been the reason why both of them had quickly recovered from the traumas of the morning. She was safe, when he was around. And he was safe, when she was.

It was all so easy to recall, suddenly: how they had spent hours as kids, hiding in the neighbor’s hedges or the willow trees by Willow Run, daring each other to stay still and silent longer than the other. They would always sense where the other was hiding, even without a sound. “Some kind of ESP,” she’d called it, but her mom had just snorted and said, “That’s just friendship, honey. You just know.” Laura’s mom had never believed in the magical stuff, even when Laura had begged for a Ouija board for her twelfth birthday. Laura had gotten a set of math flashcards instead.

She shrugged the memory away, because if she let herself dwell on it, she might start crying again, and she was tired of leaking saltwater. She wanted to stay right here, in this bed, this moment, with Andy’s warmth radiating into her arm and the gentle pressure of his hand over hers. She wanted to forget the years between—not just the way she’d died, but the way Andy had mourned her, the way the world had moved on and left her behind, an echo in a river.

He went on: “When you left, it was like someone put me in a soundproof box. Nothing got through. I spent sixteen years hoping it would come back, and it never did, not even a whisper. Until you.”

Laura blinked, her eyes stinging, but she didn't let herself cry again. Instead, she rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. The realization hit her like a physical blow—she'd never felt that absence. For her, there had been no sixteen years of silence, just one moment in the river and then this. But Andy had lived through every second of it, walking through the world half-deaf, half-blind, missing the sense that had once been as natural as breathing.

Sixteen birthdays. Five thousand, nine hundred and eighty-three mornings. All that time stretching between them like a wasteland. Andy had lived through every second of those empty years, reaching out with that sixth sense and finding nothing but void where she should have been. How many times had he instinctively tried to feel for her, only to remember she was gone? How many mornings had he woken up, automatically searching for that connection before consciousness fully returned? She swallowed hard. She tried to imagine it—waking up every day reaching for something that wasn't there, like phantom pain from a missing limb—and couldn't bear it.

“So you’re saying I’m the real Laura.” It was half a joke, half a plea, and she was surprised at how much she wanted him to say yes.

Andy didn’t miss a beat. He nodded, not even a question in it. “The only one.”

She let out a shaky breath, then reached for his hand, threading their fingers together. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a grown-up,” she confessed. “Or to be, like, a girlfriend. Or a wife. Or whatever the hell this place expects me to be.”

Andy squeezed her hand, gentle. “You don’t have to be anything,” he said. “You just have to be you. I’ll figure the rest out. We’ll figure it out together.”

There was something in his voice—an old confidence, maybe, or just a certainty she remembered from before the world went sideways. It was enough.

“There’s a lot I don’t know,” she said, whispering now. “And a lot I do that I wish I could forget. Like drowning. Or—” She trailed off, not wanting to bring up all the ways she had failed to save herself, or him, or anyone. “But I know you. You’re the only thing that feels solid.”

He gave a half-smile, and she saw the old light in his eyes, the one that used to get him in trouble with every teacher and every parent. That little glint that said he wasn’t going to give up, ever. “I’ll be solid for both of us,” he promised.

She turned her head to look at him, and this close, she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the little scar on his eyebrow from where she’d whacked him with a tennis racket in fifth grade. He was older, sure. But he was still Andy.

“You don’t hate me for coming back?” she asked, not sure why she needed to ask it. “For being… unfinished?”

His brow furrowed. “Why would I ever hate you?”

She bit her lip, tried to find the words. “Because you were doing so good. You got out. You built all this. I just—showed up and ruined it.”

“Laura,” he said, and she could hear the weight of her name in his voice, like an anchor. “You could never ruin anything. I’d burn this whole damn hotel down if it meant you could stay.”

She barked a laugh, sudden and real. “Please don’t. I just got here.”

“Then you better stick around, so I don’t get bored and start lighting matches,” he said, and that made her laugh even harder, the kind of laugh that left her chest sore and her face wet with tears she hadn’t noticed slipping out.

“Can I sleep on your arm?” she asked, suddenly shy.

He lifted his arm, and she nestled against his shoulder, the smell of his skin familiar in a way that made her want to weep with relief.

They lay like that for a long time, Laura curled into him, the notebook pressed between them, his thumb stroking the back of her hand in slow, hypnotic circles.

Spooned by the Master! +1 VP

At some point, she felt herself drifting. Not down, not back into the river, but forward, into something brighter. She was warm, and safe, and even though she still wasn’t sure which Laura she was supposed to be, she knew that this—this moment, this night—was real, and hers, and enough.

The room was pitch black when the nightmare hit. Laura thrashed awake, her chest locked so tight she could barely suck in air. It took a second—maybe ten—for her to remember she was not underwater, that she was not **** on river silt, that she was not dying again.

Andy’s hand was already at her back, rubbing slow circles up and down her spine. “Hey,” he whispered, barely a sound. “You’re okay. I’m here.”

She couldn’t answer, not right away. She pressed the heel of her hand to her sternum, trying to will the panic away. It didn’t work. The dream was so real that she could still taste the silt on her tongue, still feel the current yanking her down, and—most of all—still hear the words in her ears.

He chose them. Not you.

The phrase looped, sour and perfect, like a worm gnawing through the memory. The old hurt. The last thing she’d ever felt before the world winked out.

Andy’s palm was warm on her back. “Laura. Look at me.”

She tried, but her vision was blurred with tears and the afterimage of drowning. “I—I’m sorry,” she managed, hating how brittle she sounded. “I had a nightmare.”

“I know,” Andy said. His voice was steady. “You’re not alone. You’re here, with me. You’re safe.”

She curled tighter against his chest, her body shaking with adrenaline. She tried to breathe deep, but the air felt thick and hot in her throat.

Andy shifted, pulling her up into a sitting position. He didn’t crowd her, just kept a hand at the center of her back and one on her knee. “You’re out of the water,” he said, and for a second, Laura wondered if he’d somehow seen the dream.

She blinked at him, the dark making his eyes look huge and gentle. “It was the river,” she admitted, voice shredded. “It was… worse than before. Because I knew it was coming. And I couldn’t stop it.”

Andy nodded, his face so open it hurt. “You don’t have to stop it. Not alone. Let me help.”

For a second, Laura wanted to pull away, to hide, to be anywhere but here. But then she remembered the feeling, the one that had haunted her on the day she died—not the water, not even the fear, but the knowing, the certainty that she was alone at the very end.

“I was mad at you,” she confessed. “In the dream, I was mad because I thought you picked someone else. That’s the last thing I thought, there. That you’d rather have them.” She didn’t say the name, because it didn’t matter. “And I hated you for it. Even though I loved you.”

Andy flinched, but he didn’t pull back. “I didn’t choose anyone over you, Laura. I never would have.” He looked down, thumb rubbing over the bones of her knuckles.

She looked at him, searching his face for any sign of a lie. There was none.

“I know,” she said, voice steadier. “And you saved me this time.”

Andy smiled, and it wasn’t a sad smile—it was the real thing, the one she remembered from the best days. “And I’ll keep doing it. Every time.”

She let herself breathe, the panic slowly draining away, replaced by a floaty, exhausted warmth.

“Can you just…” she started, then stopped. It was too raw, too much. But Andy already knew.

He pulled her into him, arms gentle but unyielding. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay awake. I’ll watch you breathe until morning, if that’s what you need.”

She shook her head, a half-laugh, half-sob. “You’re such a dork.”

He shrugged, a little sheepish. “You said it yourself.”

They stayed like that, Laura pressed against his chest, Andy holding her tight enough that nothing—no memory, no lie, no river—could drag her under again.

For a while, she just listened to his heartbeat, the slow and steady thump-thump that had, once upon a time, been the only sound in the world that could calm her.

The nightmare faded, replaced by something new: the certainty that, whatever else happened, she would never be alone at the end. She could feel the old sense of him, bright and tethered, as if it was stitched into the space between their bodies.

She closed her eyes. This time, when she slept, she dreamed only of waking up.

The first hint of morning crept in as a smear of gold across the wall. Laura woke to the soft weight of Andy’s arm around her waist, his breath slow and regular against the back of her neck. She lay still, not wanting to disturb the delicate balance, the sense that any sudden movement might snap the thread and send her tumbling back to the river’s edge.

She listened for a while to the steady thump of his heartbeat, then shifted just enough to see his face. He was awake—of course he was—but he didn’t say anything, just smiled and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“Morning,” he whispered, voice barely more than air.

Laura grunted, “Is it?” She squinted at the clock. 5:15 AM. She made a face, then turned to look at him, the covers pulled up to her chin. “You sleep at all?”

He shrugged, then nodded. “Enough.”

She stretched, groaned, and yawned so wide her jaw cracked. “I had a dream,” she said, testing the words. “Not a bad one. Just… different. I dreamt we were in the old treehouse, and you dared me to jump, and I did. But I landed fine. Not even a scratch.”

Andy grinned. “You never were afraid of falling.”

Laura shook her head. “No, I was. I just wanted you to think I wasn’t.”

He laughed, then reached over and traced a thumb along her jaw. “I never believed you,” he said. “I just liked watching you pretend.”

They lay in the hush, neither needing to fill the silence. For the first time in her life—lives, plural?—Laura felt like her brain wasn’t running at a million miles an hour. The old urgency, the need to say everything before it vanished, was gone. It was enough to just exist, side by side, even if only for this one impossible morning.

She rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. “So what now?” she said, letting the question hang.

Andy thought about it. “We could make pancakes,” he offered. “Or we could just stay here and see who gives in to hunger first.”

Laura snorted. “You’d win. You’re practically a toaster strudel in human form.”

He smiled, but then his face went serious. “Or we could talk. About… anything. Everything. Or nothing, if you want.”

She thought about it, then nodded, turning to face him. “Did you ever want to kiss me?” she blurted, surprising herself.

Andy blinked, caught off-guard by the directness. “Always,” he said, not missing a beat.

Laura’s cheeks burned, but she didn’t look away. “Why didn’t you?”

He shrugged, sheepish. “I didn’t realize that’s what I wanted, until after you died.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s so like you. Never take the shot, just keep holding your breath.”

Andy grinned. “You want me to take the shot?”

She hesitated, then nodded, just once.

He leaned in, slow enough for her to bail if she wanted. She didn’t. Their lips met, tentative at first, then more sure. The kiss was nothing like the movies—it was soft, awkward, a little dry, but when Laura laughed into it, Andy laughed too, and then they kissed again, this time for real.

It was everything she’d ever imagined and nothing like it at all. He tasted like sleep and toothpaste and the faint trace of tears from the night before. She let herself lean in, to be held, and the rest of the world—every memory, every version of herself—faded into the background. Something thrummed between them, washing away the world around them. Like a key in a keyhole, there was only this: two people, awake in the new day, kissing for the first time even though it felt like the hundredth.

Kissed the Master! +1 VP

When they broke apart, Laura was grinning so hard her face hurt. “Okay,” she said. “Now I know I’m not dead.”

Andy laughed, burying his face in her hair. “You’re very much alive.”

The world outside the Suite was still blue-black, but there was a thin line of sunrise brewing behind the glass. Laura rolled to face the window, Andy’s arm draped loose around her waist, his breath soft and even against her neck. She listened to it for a while, letting the memory of the kiss replay in her head, over and over, like a favorite song on loop. Her lips were still tingling.

Andy didn’t move, didn’t try to start anything more. His fingers made slow, patient circles just above her hip, warm through the thin cotton of her pajamas. Laura didn’t want to break the spell, but eventually she turned, just a little, so she could see his face.

He was awake. Of course he was. His eyes were half-lidded, but sharp; she could feel the attention in them, the focus he always wore like armor when he was waiting for her to make the first move.

They didn’t need words, not at first. There was no script for this, no checklist of how to resurrect a life and step back into it like nothing had changed. Laura’s hand came up, traced the line of Andy’s jaw, down to his collarbone, then rested flat against his chest. She could feel the heart there, slow and steady, the way it used to be when she’d crawl into his bed after a nightmare and listen for the sound that told her she was home.

Andy covered her hand with his, not pinning it, just holding it in place. He smiled, then leaned in to kiss her again, softer this time. The urgency was gone, replaced by something calmer—deliberate, almost reverent. Laura kissed back, matching the pace. She liked the weight of his arm, the feel of him next to her, the way it made everything else fade out.

He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, so she was half-sprawled across his chest. Laura rested her chin on her hands, propped up, and just looked at him for a while. He didn’t flinch from her gaze, just watched her right back, like this was the most natural thing in the world. Then she stiffened slightly—just for a second—as if remembering something. Her hand curled tighter in his shirt, a reflexive claiming. She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back up at him, her eyes were clear, but there was something bruised underneath.

“When you hold them,” she said slowly, “do you feel like this? Like the world stops?”

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he pulled her closer, buried his face in her hair. When he spoke, his voice was rough.

"With them, I'm present. I'm there. And time can grow meaningless. But with you—" He exhaled, like the words cost him something. "With you, I stop existing outside of this moment. Everything else disappears."

Her grip on his shirt loosened slightly. He caught her hand, pressed it flat against his chest. "This part," he said quietly. "This bond is only yours. Has only ever been yours."

After he said it—This bond is only yours. Has only ever been yours—Laura didn't move. She lay against his chest, her hand still pressed flat over his heart, feeling the truth of it under her palm. The steady thump-thump that belonged to her.

She wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, suspended in the quiet. Long enough for her racing thoughts to slow. Long enough for the weight of what she'd asked—and what he'd answered—to settle into something she could carry.

Finally, she exhaled. A real exhale, the kind that let her shoulders drop, her spine uncurl from its defensive coil.

"Okay," she whispered into his chest.

Andy's hand came up, stroking her hair. "Okay?"

She lifted her head just enough to look at him, her eyes red-rimmed but clear. "Okay that it's complicated. Okay that you chose them. Okay that I'm here anyway." Her voice caught. "It still sucks. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't."

"I know," he said softly.

"I'm going to be jealous," she whispered. "I'll try not to be, but I will. I'll say things I don't mean. I'll be petty. I'll want to hurt them, or you, sometimes." Her fingers curled against his chest. "You're asking a lot, Andy. I promised I'd try, and I want to try, but—" She swallowed. "You need to be patient with me."

Andy's hand stilled in her hair. "Laura—"

"I mean it." Her voice was steady now, almost clinical. "You need to know what you're getting into."

He tipped her chin up, made her look at him. "I know exactly what I'm getting into.” His eyes softened. "Laura, I've waited sixteen years. I can wait as long as you need."

She nodded against him, tucking her face into the crook of his neck. "Okay. So today I meet them."

Andy squeezed her closer, and they lay like that for a long time—not the tentative holding of before, but something steadier. Something that had survived the worst question and was still standing.

When Laura finally shifted, rolling onto her back and pulling Andy with her, there was a different quality to her movements. Less fragile. More deliberate. She looked at him in the growing dawn light, and something shifted in her expression. The rawness was still there, but underneath it was something else: a kind of fierce certainty.

"I could get used to this," she said, and this time it wasn't uncertain. It was a claim.

Andy grinned back, but his voice was serious. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for, Laura. I mean it. We have all the time in the world.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is this where you tell me I should wait for a better offer?”

He laughed. “Never. I’d be an idiot.”

She considered, then slid up so her head was tucked into the crook of his shoulder, her legs tangled with his. She let herself settle, really settle, into the space he made for her.

For a few minutes, neither spoke. The room brightened by degrees, the sky outside shifting from black to slate to the faintest echo of pink. Laura could have stayed like that forever, but there was a question burning at the back of her mind, and it wouldn’t leave her alone.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, after a while.

Andy ran a hand through her hair, slow. “Anything.”

She hesitated. “Are you—” She shook her head. “No, let me start over. Is it okay that I’m here?” She hated how small the question sounded, but she needed the answer.

Andy blinked, then nodded. “Of course it’s okay. It’s better than okay.”

She frowned, picking at the seam on his shirt. “But you have… you know. Other people now. I get that. I don’t want to mess it up. Or make you feel like you’re cheating, or—” She trailed off, the word hanging in the air.

Andy didn’t get defensive. He just looked at her, soft and steady, and said, “You’re not an intrusion, Laura. You’re not a problem to solve. I want you here. I want all of this. It’s weird, and complicated, but it’s real. You’re back when I thought I had lost you forever. I’m not letting go again. Not unless you tell me to.”

Laura let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She buried her face in his chest, and for a second, she was thirteen again, hiding from a world that didn’t want her. But she wasn’t thirteen, and Andy wasn’t a boy anymore, and she wasn’t hiding, not really. She just needed to be held.

After a while, she said, “I want to. You know. I want to try again.” Her voice was muffled, but Andy heard her just fine.

He squeezed her, gentle. “Me too.”

She twisted so she could see his face. “But not just the kissing. Or the sleeping together, or any of that. I want to try living. I want to see what it’s like to be a person again. With you. I need to figure out who I am, now. But also… with everyone. I want to meet them. The other girls. I want to see if I can do it, or if I’ll mess it up.”

Andy nodded, like he’d been expecting this all along. “You won’t mess it up, Laura.”

She shrugged, not ready to believe him. “I might. I’m good at messing up.”

He tipped her chin up. “So what? Then we figure it out. Together.”

She made a face at him. “You always say that.”

He smiled, but the sadness was back, just a little. “It’s always been true.”

They kissed again, but this time it didn’t feel like a threshold. It felt like a promise. Laura let herself get lost in it, the gentle give and take, the way Andy always let her set the pace. When it got too intense, she pulled back, and he didn’t chase. He just ran his fingers through her hair, patient as ever, and waited for her to come back.

The sun inched higher. Shadows retreated from the corners of the room. Laura yawned, then curled up tighter against Andy’s side, her nose pressed into his t-shirt.

She wanted to ask him what came next, but she already knew: it didn’t matter. Whatever happened, they’d face it. And for the first time since coming back, she believed it.

They drifted, half-awake, holding on to each other while the world turned. Neither said a word for a long time. It didn’t need saying.

When sleep finally came, it was easy, and soft, and for once, it brought no river, no darkness, no end. Just the warmth of two people finding their way back to life, and the simple comfort of being exactly where they belonged.

The next time Laura woke, the room was golden and Andy was still there. He was on his back, one arm flung out like a lifeline, the other folded up behind his head. The blanket was tangled around his waist, and the morning light caught on his collarbone, making him look more like a statue than a person.

She lay there for a while, watching the patterns the sun made on the ceiling. She liked the weight of the comforter, the heaviness of the air, the fact that she didn’t have anywhere she needed to be. She liked that she could just exist, for once, without having to prove she deserved to be here.

Eventually, she propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at Andy. He was awake—she could tell by the little twitch of his eyelid, the way his lips quirked at the corner. He was pretending to sleep, giving her space to figure out her next move.

She grinned, then poked him in the ribs. “You’re terrible at faking,” she said.

He didn’t open his eyes, but his smile got wider. “You’re one to talk. You drool in your sleep.”

She snorted, then flopped down next to him, their heads close enough that she could count every hair of his stubble. For a while, they just lay there, the silence comfortable.

Finally, Laura rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “You know,” she said, “I feel like I’ve lived two lives. One that ended at the river, and one that started here.”

Andy turned to look at her. “Which one do you like better?”

She considered. “I don’t know. The first one was all chaos and running and trying not to get caught. The second one is… quieter, I guess. Less about surviving, more about figuring out what’s left.”

He nodded, waiting.

“I get to choose this one. I get to choose you.”

Andy squeezed back. “You always did.”

She turned her head, meeting his eyes. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” There was no desperation in it, no fear. Just a statement of fact. “Even if you’re stuck with a million girlfriends and a reality show from hell, you’re mine.”

He smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She let go of his hand and stretched, then slid closer so she could tuck her face into his neck. He smelled like sleep and shampoo and the faintest edge of campfire. She breathed it in, anchoring herself in the moment.

“This is my room now,” she declared, voice muffled. “You can have the couch.”

Andy laughed, low and surprised. “I don’t even get joint custody?”

She shook her head, grinning. “Nope. I died for this bed. You’re just lucky I decided to haunt you.”

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight. “Best haunting ever.”

They stayed like that, the morning stretching out lazy and bright, the world outside the window slowly waking up. Laura let her mind wander, piecing together the two halves of herself, the old and the new, until they fit. For the first time, she wasn’t afraid of forgetting. She knew who she was, and where she belonged.

She ran a finger along Andy’s jaw, then kissed him, not because she needed to, but because she wanted to. Because it was her choice, this time. He kissed her back, easy and sure.

"Do you think the others will like me?" she asked, when she finally pulled away. There was something **** in the question—not afraid, but uncertain. "I mean, really like me. Not just tolerate me because I came back."

Andy was quiet for a second, then nodded. "They know you already. I told them so much about you. You're going to love them, too. They're just..." He paused. "They're people trying to hold something together. Like we are."

She was quiet for a moment, then nodded. "I hope you didn’t set too high a bar. Okay," she said softly. "Then I'm ready."

He watched her, something soft in his eyes. “You sure?”

Laura thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah. I am.”

And she was. For the first time in either of her lives, she was absolutely, unmistakably sure.

She stretched out on the bed, arms over her head, then rolled onto Andy, pinning him with her weight. “You’re not allowed to regret bringing me back,” she said, mock-severe.

He kissed her forehead. “Not possible.”

She grinned, then let herself relax, her body loose and warm. She felt drowsy again, and could feel Andy relaxing beneath her, and she didn’t care. She was here. She was alive. And Andy was here, so she was home.

And nothing—not even the river, or the years lost—could take that away from her.