“I want more than a job, Chase. I’ve discovered something else that I want in my life, what my parents found. Not just you,” she said quickly, “although I want you more than I have the words for, but I want you and the life I could have here with you. A life with love in it. I didn’t know how much I needed that. I can be a doctor in an ER up here, and I can still make a difference in people’s lives. I learned that this summer.”

Chase kissed her. “I always knew the summer would never be enough. I fell in love with you the first time we kissed.”

Lily sat up. “We were never meant to be for only this summer, Chase. Our love is for every summer, and all the times in between. You are who I want, and this is the life I want. Will you have me?”

Chase framed Lily’s face for another kiss. A kiss that said forever. “Always, Lily. I’m yours for all the summers of our lives.”

Epilogue

Chase rolled over, emerging from a restless sleep, and checked her watch. Almost two a.m. She lay awake in the early June morning, almost exactly a year from the day she’d first met Lily. She’d been waiting for Lily then too, but she hadn’t known it. Hadn’t known her life could be full and bright and filled with expectation, all because she’d opened herself to love and be loved. Love changed her life—changed her, and every day brought possibilities. Along with the joy came a little kernel of anxiety that took up residence in the pit of her stomach whenever she waited for the rumble of the Jeep coming up the track, bringing Lily home. Lily’s shift was over at midnight, and she should be home anytime.

Most of the time Chase was the one coming home in the middle of the night, but Lily had been trading shifts pretty regularly to accumulate time for her leave, and night shifts were the ones everyone wanted to switch. For the next two months, Lily wouldn’t be traveling back and forth forty-five minutes to the ER.

Chase sat up at the sound of the cabin door opening, and a moment later Lily came into the bedroom.

“Have you been awake long?” Lily asked, leaning down to kiss Chase. Somehow, even in the middle of the night after a twelve-hour shift, she managed to smell like a fresh morning breeze.