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“You opened the door before I knocked.”

“I heard your truck.”

“So, you were listening for me.”

She folds her arms. “Do you want to come inside or spend your first night home arguing semantics on the porch?”

I drop my bag beside the door and reach for her. “Inside.”

Ruby laughs when I pull her against me, but it disappears the second I kiss her.

This part never gets old. Nine days, three weeks, a month. However long I’ve been gone, there’s always a second when I get my hands on her again, and everything in me recognizes home.

Her arms slide around my neck, and she kisses me back until I forget that I’m still standing half in the doorway. I kiss her again before carrying everything inside.

The house looks slightly different from when I left.

There’s a new framed print hanging near the dining room, dark and strange enough that it could only be Ruby’s choice. Two of my tour posters have moved to make room for it, and somehow the combination works.

A stack of sketchbooks sits on one end of the dining table beside a bowl of fruit. One of my guitar cases is tucked beneath the window. Ruby has taken over the small room off the kitchen for drawing, while I claimed the back bedroom as a music room, although both of us routinely work wherever we happen to land.

Her plants have spread too.

I stop beside a new one near the window. “This wasn’t here when I left.”

Ruby glances over from the kitchen. “It was on sale.”

“You said that about the last three.”

“And?”

“At some point we’re going to lose the house to vegetation.”

“You have seven guitars.”

“Guitars don’t need sunlight.”

“No. They just need half the closets.”

I smile and follow her into the kitchen.

This place isn’t big or impressive. It’s an older house a few minutes from the water with wood floors that creak and a kitchen we keep talking about updating, but so far that conversation is about as far as we’ve gotten.

It’s also completely ours, and nothing about it feels temporary.

That might be my favorite part.

Ruby opens the refrigerator. “Have you eaten?”

“Gas station sandwich.”

“That isn’t food.”

She starts pulling things out, and I come up behind her, wrap my arms around her waist, and rest my chin on her shoulder.

“I can make something.”

“You’ve been traveling all day.”