After, they lay together catching their breaths and waiting for the chill night air through the open window to dry their sweat. Jayne took her hand in his and held it up so the moonlight caught in her fingers. "So I still don't see you wearing no sweetheart ring."

Shy rolled on her side to face him, propped her head up in her other hand. "The locals got nothing to offer anymore that interests me for more than five minutes or so. And mostly that I can do myself, without all the moon-eyes and hard feelings after." When he looked at her sharply for her meaning, she arched an eyebrow and her grin had a fair amount of dirty in it. Part of him stirred wakeful again as he considered asking for a demonstration. "How 'bout you?" Lying back again, she rested her head on his chest.

Jayne shrugged and toyed with the ends of her hair as a blur of faces passed through his mind's eye. He'd quit asking their names a long, long time ago. "Aw, you know how I am."

"I do," Shy grinned, tweaked the hair on his chest; gorram if that wasn't going grey, too. "I surely do."

They lay quietly a while after that. Feeling drowsy, Jayne took her hand in his again. "Ain't we a pair?" He murmured.

Beside him Shy chuckled low, contented, in her throat. "Ain't we just."

Jayne supposed it was as good a time as any to say what he came here to say. "I want to come home. To stay. Here."

The words hung there like charms in the silvery night under the full autumn moon for a long moment.

Shy sat bolt upright beside him. "What?" Her eyes went wide with shock even in the bright moonlight. And then, and it broke Jayne's will a little to see it, they went flat and closed. Wary. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, watching him like he'd turned into a snake in her bed. "Did you get shot in the head on Galveston, too? What the kao is this, all of a sudden?" She was rigid like she'd turned to wood or ice right there beside him, and Jayne felt the ghost of a long-ago gun barrel tap his knee. She looked frighteningly like she had that very first morning back in Commonwealth, the very first time he'd walked away from her.

The thought crossed Jayne's mind-and not for the first time-that maybe he should have turned back around a whole lot sooner.

"Gorram—ain't nothing sudden about it. We been doing this near on seven years now. Besides-I talked myself out of it a dozen times or more, already." And he waited for her to say something.

And he waited.

Finally Shy's voice came, cool as the moonlight and sounding like she was at least that far away, "I'm a grown woman and my heart knows the difference between breaking and dying, pirate. But those kids sleeping down the hall? Theirs don't, and it ain't something they ought to learn from their father. "

Her words found their mark and stuck bitter-deep. Lots of things swirled around in his head, most of them riding the wake of a sudden hurtful anger and unkind. Instead of saying any of them Jayne took a breath so deep it hurt his chest, and studied the plaster of the ceiling a while; he'd helped set that plaster on the lath on a visit like this one right after she'd bought this place with her tailoring nest-egg what, was it really five years past? "Ta ma de, Shy; I know my mind just fine. Shit, every gorram body knows my mind this time around-I even told little Vernie."

"It's just that easy, is it?" Her eyes were hard, cold on him, and then she was looking everywhere else like she wanted to set fire to it all.

Jayne leaned back against the high headboard, shaking his head angrily. "Easy, hell! Had to get gorram shot to see it. Don't mean it ain't true, though."

Shy rested her head back against the dark wood. "Fair enough," she told the ceiling. Then she turned toward him; her green eyes burned in the light of the moon as her gaze came to rest on him unblinking. "But I want to know why, pirate. Why, really?"

He didn't even need to think of an answer, hell no; it was waiting right there behind his teeth, sure as breathing, sure as drawing a piece, fixing a bead, squeezing a trigger. Even before Galveston, he'd thought about it plenty already, looking down into the faces of all those nameless girls he bought and paid for and climbed on top of and tried to hump into being someone else. It was what he told Shy night after night alone in his bunk aboard Serenity, missing and cursing her while he spilled thick regret into his rough hand.

"'Cause I just keep coming back here no matter which way I turn my back on you, is why." Jayne sighed. "Sometimes when I think of you, I think maybe I should've just walked away and let Gustin blow that hole in your gorram head. Sure would've simpled up my life."

"But mostly when I think of you, " Jayne went on, "I just want to come home."

Shy's eyes found the window, gazed unblinking straight into the moonlight, her voice quiet, far away, "Not me. I've always been beholden to you for not walking away." Her hand sought and found Jayne's, laced her fingers through his as she took a deep breath. "You being here all the time-the kids talk about it when they think I can't hear."

Jayne waited until the sudden lump in his throat went away.

But she went on. "So if you ever hurt their trust, Jayne Cobb, so help me I'll beat you to death in your sleep with a barn shovel." And Jayne believed her completely.

"I conjure that's fair enough." And he meant it, thinking of Grace and Jak, meant it with a swift and unexpected ferocity that broke his skin with gooseflesh.

After a long moment of eyeing him through narrowed eyes, Shy nodded and turned back to look out the window into the moonlight. It was bright enough to make out the apple trees out there, bright enough to see the blush of ripe on the fruit. Bright enough to reflect on the glitter of tears in her green eyes as she gazed steadfastly out the window at the trees swaying in the nightbreeze like they was dancing to some faraway waltz.

Jayne sat there a while, marveling at how something as simple as his woman's fingers around his in bed at night made something right in his world. He told her the truth. "Serious now. Never was a woman could take the taste of you out of my mouth, Shy. Not a one of them." Sighing, he shook his head. "Lord knows I sure as hell tried, from one end of the gorram 'verse to the-"

"You should quit talking now," Shy's voice was dry as it cut him off, but he could hear the smile in it without looking, could feel it in the way she squeezed his fingers gently. "'You were doing real good there, for a minute or so."

Jayne frowned down at her. "I was?" Shy nodded solemnly and it made him smile big. "Shiny."

She leaned her head against him, and Jayne rested his cheek on her hair. They sat quiet together there caught in the bright eye of the full moon for a long while.

Closing her eyes, Shy asked him quietly, "How are you at picking apples, pirate?"

Jayne lowered his head to murmur low into her ear, "I'll pick your apples all damn night long, woman. Bet on it."

"That's real good." Shy chuckled. "On account of there's two acres of fruit that'll need picking after the first frost." But she rolled over and bit him gently-but not too gently-on his shoulder. "Oh-and your boy is failing summing. Welcome home."

Jayne sat up again, frowning. "Chui nui. How does a six-year-old kid flunk sums?"

Shy's smile was wry. "Mostly by hitting another kid in the head with his class book while he should be doing his work. S'posed to meet with the headmistress day after tomorrow." She threw her arm around his belly and snuggled close.

Jayne said nothing, thinking for a few moments. Then he shrugged. "Well hell, that's an easy one. We'll just shoot her."

Her eyebrow rose, arched. "That's a joke, right?"

"Yeah," he allowed. "Unless you think it'd work."

She stared hard at him a long moment, and then she smiled and then she laughed. Turning, he kissed the top of her head again and murmured, "So you think we ought to get hitched?"

"Kao, ask me that one later." she whispered back. "Been enough excitement around here for one night."

Jayne buried his face in her hair, pulling that good scent of her deep into his lungs just because he could this time, not because the memory had to last him for those long gorram nights alone in his bunk. "You sure about that?" She didn't resist when he took her face between his hands and kissed her, kissed her until she kissed him back.

His hands ran the length of her, lazily reading the stories of her tattooed skin, the ones he knew by heart, the ones that still caught him by surprise. It occurred to him that he was part of some of those tales now and that it was okay that he was, at last and truly, and the notion inspired him.