But he had also lived a life that proved that it could bond people together in the throes of grief. And that you could stitch together new things out of broken pieces.

But it was hard to figure out which truth to take on board. It was hard to figure out which thing to let be largest. It was easier, damned easier, to let it be fear. Fear was so easy. He had learned that early.

Because it let you hide. It was the rest of everything that was so much harder.

But as he lay next to his new wife, exhausted from making love with her, looking at her face, relaxed in sleep in the light of the moon coming through the window she had climbed through as a teenager, into a bed that they now shared, that was now theirs, he knew that nothing that beautiful would ever come easy.

And Ryder was a man who had been built for tough.

So that was exactly what he would be.

* * *

THEY HAD BEEN married a week. It was a strange thing. Living in the ranch house. And something that she hadn’t entirely thought about when they had gotten engaged. She had woken up late that morning, as she had started to do, and he had made sure that there was a bowl of fruit sitting there on the table for her, covered with plastic wrap and all ready for her to eat.

Insult to injury, their baby did not like bacon. And given that bacon was a big foundation of their initial friendship, she felt somewhat betrayed. How on earth had their genetics combined to make a being that didn’t care for the most sacred of cured meats? She didn’t have an answer to that. She truly didn’t.

But she sat down in front of the fruit gratefully and pulled the bowl to herself. Then she heard footsteps in the kitchen. And in walked Ryder, her husband, holding a cup of coffee. He set the coffee down in front of her, and she inhaled.

“You know pregnant women can have one cup. It’s fine.”

“You’re an expert,” she said, reaching out gratefully and taking hold of the mug.

“I’m starting to be. So when do you think we ought to make a doctor appointment?”

She looked up at him just before she popped a grape into her mouth. He was so...conventional. And beautiful. She never got tired of him. Looking at him in this new way. She could still see what she had seen for all those years, but she saw new things, too. Like looking at a drawing that had been traced over another. She could still see both versions clearly. And love them both in different sorts of fashions. Her familiar friend was so dear to her, but her lover, her husband, was...infinitely fascinating.

It was amazing how a man she had known for so long could still be surprising. Except, this question did not surprise her. Not really.