EPILOGUE
SADIE
SIX MONTHS LATER
T he ‘For Sale’ sign out the front of my old house tilted sideways, one corner half-buried in the dry, cracked dirt like it was desperately trying to break free from the poison leaching through the soil.
I’d done that six years beforehand—made my own escape. Yet there I was, back in Barrenridge, my heart filled with love for the family I’d fought to reclaim. But guilt settled in too, heavy and unshakable. Because Logan wasn’t part of it. Not really. Not anymore.
The sign had become the most honest thing about the old house. A white flag. A fuck-you to everything that had unfolded within those walls. The good. The bad. And the ugly.
Rowan sighed beside me, arms crossed over his chest. He wore the only black T-shirt in his closet that hadn’t surrendered to holes, the fabric clinging to his shoulders and biceps like it planned to stay. He clenched his jaw so tight I could almost hear his teeth grinding through the silence .
“You sure you want to do this, Firefly?” he said, nodding at the sign. “Makes it kind of official, don’t you think?” I caught the hint of humour lacing his tone, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he wore that trademark smirk of his.
But the tightness around his eyes betrayed something else—he was waiting for me to break.
“That’s the whole point, Ro.” I jabbed him hard in the ribs with my elbow. His shoulder jerked at the impact, and he let out a soft grunt. “There’s nothing left for me in there.”
Rowan didn’t argue. He just stared at the house like it was already a gravestone.
A low rumble split the quiet. A car crept up the road, gravel popping beneath its tyres. The white cruiser with blue stripes—the same one my father once drove, now sporting brand new plates—pulled up behind us.
Shane Elliot sat staring out at the house, one arm draped out the window. Barrenridge’s new chief of police, and, according to every gossiping arsehole in town, an actual upgrade from the previous one.
But no-one had known my father like I had.
We shared a love hate relationship, right to the end.
They didn’t know what he’d done for me, how he’d tried to keep me safe in his own distorted way.
And I was okay with that. I owed no-one an explanation, especially not a defence of my father’s legacy—whatever that may have been.
Rowan shifted beside me, all six-foot-two of him turning to stone. “You need something, Elliot?”
Shane ignored him, or at least pretended to, his gaze remaining on me. “Just wanted to wish you luck, Sadie. Not everyone gets a chance to move on in this place.”
His words hovered between us, a firm reminder that no matter how calm we thought the waters were, there was always a storm brewing just beyond the horizon. It was only a matter of time before the dust turned bloody.
“Thanks . . . Shane,” I murmured, forcing a tight smile as I swallowed over the lump in my throat.
I couldn’t bring myself to call him Chief—not yet. In time, perhaps. But the raw edge of my father’s death hadn’t quite scabbed over.
Shane lingered in his cruiser a moment longer, his gaze finally sliding to Rowan.
A flicker of something cold and appraising shifted in his eyes.
“Knight,” he said, with that same half-mocking nod my father always used to give the boys he didn’t want to like but couldn’t help respecting. “I’ll be seeing you.”
Rowan grunted, but it was more a scoff—or a warning. “Elliot.”
Shane drove off without another word. Tyres spun up red dust, carrying the sour tang of petrol fumes in the air behind the car.
“What an arsehole,” Rowan muttered, dropping an arm around my shoulders, anchoring me against him. “I swear he’s got it out for me.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t hide my smile. “Jeez, I wonder why. Maybe because last time you saw him, you spat blood on his shoes? He might be good for this town,” I said, only half lying. “Might keep you Riders in line for once.”
Rowan huffed, but the smirk was back, curling at the edge of his mouth. “Doubt it. Pretty sure one boss breathing down my neck is enough for me. You know I only answer to you, Firefly.” His hand slipped down, fingers digging into my side.
I backhanded him in the chest. “Don’t get cute, Ro.” My voice came out more desperate than I meant, a reflex from years of always defending boundaries. “Nicky is still out there somewhere, doing god knows what. ”
Rowan glanced away, jaw tightening. “Yeah, well, we’ll handle him if he ever comes back.” He kissed the side of my head, lips leaving a brief, almost apologetic warmth. “But until then, can we please have one afternoon without club bullshit? Just us.”
I narrowed my eyes but softened almost immediately. “Fine. But how about you start with not pissing off the new chief during his first week. He’s better than that fill-in we had to deal with since Dad died.” I nudged him with my shoulder. “And try not to get yourself killed.”
“The second I can do,” Rowan said, planting another kiss on my temple, the stubble covering his jaw rough against my skin. “The first? I make no promises, baby.” He smirked, and I almost melted against him.
He looked good without that constant frown on his face—too good.
He stepped back, stretching until his shirt rode up, revealing a scar on his hip I’d traced a thousand times in the dark. “You good with the last boxes? I need to fire up the barbecue before the boys and Jazz get here. You know what Scout’s like when he has to wait for food.”
I grinned. “I’ve carried heavier things, Ro. I’ll be fine.”
Rowan pressed a quick kiss on my lips, then ducked through the side door of his house, the one Logan had broken the lock on in high school so we could come and go without waking his old man.
The screen door slammed shut behind him, leaving me alone with the hum of the bush behind our houses swarming around me like the town itself was a living thing, breathing in time with my heartbeat.
The final stack of boxes sat by the steps of the front porch, the last of my stuff Rowan and I had packed at three a.m. when sleep wasn’t an option. Clothes, old notebooks, a couple of photo albums I forgot even existed.
One box was heavier than the rest, so I carried that one inside last, and up the staircase, past the wall that still had the dent from when I’d thrown a hairbrush at Logan for reading my diary out loud—while Rowan had been in the next room.
I set the box down in the hallway outside the bedroom I shared with Rowan, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the door next to it. The one with the faded ‘Keep Out’ sign, letters scrawled in Sharpie and half-scraped off.
Logan’s room.
I’d passed it a thousand times since moving in, sometimes pausing, sometimes all but running past it with my head down. I’d never crossed the threshold. Not because Rowan had asked me not to, but because there were lines even grief couldn’t force me to cross.
Until now.
My hand hovered over the doorknob as I pressed my forehead to the old timber and let the smell of dust and closed-in years fill my lungs. A floorboard creaked beneath my heel, loud in the silence. It felt like the house was warning me back.
But I turned the knob, anyway.
The air in Logan’s room was colder than the rest of the house. Yet still familiar. The curtains were drawn, but sun leaked through a crack in the fabric, striping the bed yellow.
Everything was exactly as it had been the last day Logan had been alive. Posters still lined the walls. The bed remained unmade. An empty glass, now full of dust, sat beside a dead phone on the nightstand.
In the corner sat the battered acoustic guitar he never learned to play, the pick wedged between the strings like he’d meant to come back and finish the song.
The scent was unfamiliar—less Logan, more memories— but the feeling was the same. I circled the room, fingertips brushing surfaces as if the act could conjure him back.
A black hoodie lay on the bed, sleeves stretched from him always pulling at the cuffs. His favourite sneakers, the ones he’d drawn skulls on with whiteout, sat lined up under the window, the soles worn flat from running everywhere instead of driving.
The closet door was half open, T-shirts stacked in uneven towers, the bottom drawer crammed with old comics and empty bottles. And the baseball bat we’d stolen from the PCYC one summer, when we were bored and invincible. Just so we could whack mailbox after mailbox.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the springs creaking under my weight, and ran a hand over the faded sheets. “Hey, Lo,” I whispered, my voice cracking on the last syllable. “Miss you, idiot.”
The silence that answered pressed in around me, but it wasn’t heavy this time. It was full. Packed with every argument we’d had, every late-night confession, every time he’d told me I was too stubborn or too smart or too broken for this town.
I reached for the hoodie and pressed it to my face, my fingertips going numb. It still smelled like Logan, or maybe it was just the shape of grief, and I needed something to hold on to.
“I’m okay now,” I murmured, honest for once. “You don’t have to worry anymore. I found my way back to Rowan—just like you knew I would.”
I didn’t mention the parts I was still missing, or the nights I’d woken up thinking I’d heard his laugh in the hallway. Or the way Rowan flinched every time he saw Logan’s face on my phone screen.
Some things were better left unsaid, even between the dead and the living.
The same with the truth spilling out of my mother’s diary.
I still hadn’t managed to read through it.
Could barely even look at it. Maybe one day I’d be strong enough to know the depth of her betrayal.
Until then, this was all the strength I had.
I cried, silent and ugly, until my eyes burned and my ribs ached.
When it was done, I placed the hoodie back on the bed, careful to smooth the sleeves flat, and stood. I wiped my face with the edge of my T-shirt.
The room didn’t feel like a tomb, or a shrine, or a punishment. It felt like a promise—that even if I left, even if we all did, Logan’s memory would keep the house upright. At that moment, that was enough.
I closed the door behind me, gently, and padded down the stairs to the kitchen, where the scent of charcoal and beer reached me before I hit the bottom step.
Rowan was already opening bottles and setting out paper plates, humming a song I recognised as the one he and Logan used to butcher when it’d come on the radio late at night while we threw darts in the backyard.
He glanced up when I entered, eyes doing the quick scan that always made me think I was in trouble, even when I wasn’t.
“You good, baby?” he said, voice low.
“Yeah.” My voice sounded foreign, but it was true. “I’m good.”
We weren’t meant to survive it—the grief, the ghosts, the guilt. But sometimes the wreckage is where the light gets in.
Even the ruins can be beautiful.