Epilogue #2
“No, I didn’t. I’ve been saving it.” He smiled, the smile Fury wore when someone who’d wronged his family got exactly what was coming.
“Eighteen months federal. Fraud, embezzlement, wire charges. The forensic accountants traced over a hundred and twenty thousand across three separate victims. You were her biggest score, Rose. Glad you were the one who caught her.”
I knew about the other victims. Just not the numbers.
“And Taylor?”
“Probation. Three years. Had to pay restitution. His lawyer argued he was the fall guy, which, honestly, he was. Doesn’t make him innocent, just makes him stupid.” Fury shrugged. “Last I heard he’s back in Nevada working for his uncle’s landscaping company. So that’s something.”
“You’re keeping tabs.”
“Of course I’m keeping tabs. I will keep tabs on anyone who hurts my family as long as I’m alive, and even then I’ll probably find a way.” He said it so matter-of-factly that it was almost funny. But with Fury, you were never entirely sure where the joke ended and the promise began.
“Sienna told me to tell you she’s crying already and the ceremony hasn’t started,” Fury added. “She also told me to tell you that if you make her mascara run, she will end you.”
“Tell Sienna I make no promises.”
Fury stood. Kissed the top of my head.
“I love you, Rosie,” he said. The childhood name. The one only he and Blaze used. “Now go marry your Scottish idiot.”
“He’s not an idiot.”
“He walked into your private cabin that first day. He’s an idiot.” Fury grinned. “But he’s our idiot now.”
He went inside. I sat on the porch for one more minute, watching the mountains, breathing the air that smelled like pine and wildflowers and home.
Then I went to get married.
Patrick walked me down the aisle.
Not Uncle Patrick. Just Patrick. Da. The man who’d taken three orphaned children into his home and loved them like his own and never once made us feel like charity.
The man whose ginger curls were more grey than copper now, whose light blue eyes still crinkled at the corners when he smiled, whose Scottish brogue got thicker when he was emotional.
He was very emotional right now.
“Ye look bonny, lass,” he said, his arm steady under mine despite the tears tracking down his weathered face. “Your mother would—” He stopped. Cleared his throat. “Shelly would be so proud.”
Shelly. My mother I never got to know.
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. Not just today. For all of it.”
“Ach.” He waved his free hand, the way he always waved off gratitude, like love was so obvious it didn’t require acknowledgment. “You’re my girl. Always have been.”
The ceremony was in the field behind the barn.
White chairs in two sections, one side overflowing with McCraes and Carideos and Gracens, the other side with Graham’s smaller contingent: Dex, Jamie, Olivia, Isla, a few friends who’d flown in from Scotland.
Hank was in the back row, wearing a tie for what was clearly the first time in decades and looking like it might kill him.
Kaya was beside him, crying before we even started.
And behind the chairs, along the pasture fence, the horses.
Cassiopeia stood at the fence line, watching the proceedings. Brutus was beside her, occasionally stamping at flies. Starlight hung back near the water trough, observing. Ricky was pressed against Cassie’s flank, drawing courage from her the way he always did.
My family. All of them. The humans and the horses and the man waiting at the end of the aisle.
Graham.
He was standing under the arch Eoin had built that morning, simple wood, wrapped in wildflowers, framing the mountains behind him like a postcard.
He was wearing a kilt, his family tartan, dark greens and blues, and a jacket and a white shirt open at the collar.
His hair was longer than when I’d met him.
His jaw was clean-shaved. His eyes were wet.
He saw me and his face crumpled and opened simultaneously, like every wall he’d ever built fell down at once.
Dex put a hand on his shoulder. Graham nodded once. Steadied himself.
Patrick walked me the rest of the way. When we reached the arch, he took my hand and placed it in Graham’s.
“Take care of her,” Patrick said. Not a request. A command. Delivered with the full authority of a Scottish patriarch who’d raised sixteen children, buried one wife, married another and knew exactly what love cost.
“With everything I have,” Graham said. His voice was rough but steady.
Patrick nodded once. Kissed my cheek. Sat down beside Theresa, who was already crying into a handkerchief.
We’d written our own vows. Maggie, my maid of honor, had warned us this was a terrible idea. “You’re both going to be emotional wrecks and nobody will understand a word,” she’d said. She wasn’t wrong.
Graham went first.
“Rose.” He held both my hands, his thumbs moving across my knuckles in small circles, the same way he’d held them in the barn the night I told him about my parents.
“I came to your ranch with a camera crew and a lie I thought was protection. You saw through all of it. You’re possibly the worst person I’ve ever tried to lie to. ”
Laughter from the chairs. I heard Fury say, “Told you.”
“I spent ten years building a version of myself that was brave enough to be public. Fraser Kincaid, the adventurer, the performer, the guy who jumps off things.” His voice shifted.
“And then I met a woman behind locked doors, who talked to her horses like they were humans, and built a life out of nothing but stubbornness and love. And she made me want to stop performing. She made me want to be real.”
His hands tightened on mine.
“You taught me that being genuine is worth the risk. That honesty matters more than safety. That the hardest thing you can do isn’t jump off a cliff, it’s stand still and let someone see you.” His eyes held mine. “I see you, Rose. I see you, and I’m not looking away. Not ever.”
My turn. My hands were shaking. His were too.
“Graham.” I took a breath. Let it out. “I spent my whole life building walls. Against attention, against vulnerability, against anyone who might get close enough to leave. I was so good at it that I convinced myself the walls were the same thing as being safe.”
I looked at him, this man, standing in front of me in a kilt with hay still on his shoes because like me, he’d checked on the horses that morning.
“You walked through every wall I had. Not by breaking them down, by standing on the other side and waiting. Patiently. Stubbornly. Even when I told you to leave.” My voice cracked. “Especially when I told you to leave.”
I heard Maggie crying. I heard Theresa crying. I heard what might have been Fury clearing his throat very aggressively.
“You’re the first person who saw me and didn’t flinch,” I said. “The first person who looked at all the locks and the anxiety and the fear and said, ‘That’s who she is, and I love her anyway.’ Not despite. Not in spite of. Just, anyway.”
I squeezed his hands.
“So I’m going to make you a promise. The same promise my mother made my father when their world was dangerous, and the truth was all they had.
” I held his gaze. “I’m going to choose you.
Every day. Even when I’m scared. Even when it’s hard.
Because you taught me that love isn’t about hiding.
It’s about standing in the open and trusting someone to stand with you. ”
Graham kissed me before the officiant said he could.
Nobody corrected him.
After the ceremony, after the cheering and the hugging and Brutus whinnying so loudly during the pronouncement that everyone laughed, Theresa found me.
She was waiting by the barn, slightly apart from the crowd, holding a wooden box. Small, worn, the kind of box that had been opened and closed many times over many years. Her dark reddish-brown hair was streaked with silver, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Theresa.” I touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m wonderful.” She smiled, but her chin trembled. “I have something for you. I’ve been keeping it for a very long time.”
She held out the box.
I took it carefully.
“Don’t open it now,” Theresa said. “When you’re alone. Or with Graham, if you’d like. It’s from your parents.”
My hands went still.
“They wrote letters,” Theresa said quietly. “Before the trial. Before—” She paused. Collected herself. “Your father was preparing to testify against Ochoa, and they both knew there was danger. They wrote the letters to be opened on your wedding day in case they couldn’t be here.”
I pressed the box against my chest, unable to form words.
“I’ve been carrying them for twenty-nine years,” Theresa said.
Her voice was steady now, the spine of steel showing through the emotion.
“Waiting for this day. Hoping for this day.” She cupped my face in both hands, her palms warm, her grip gentle but certain.
“They loved you so much, Rose. Every decision they made, the testimony, the courage, all of it, they made because they wanted you to grow up in a world where the truth mattered. And you did. You grew up exactly the way they hoped.”
I still couldn’t speak. I pulled her into a hug and held on and she held me back, and we stood there beside the barn while the party swirled around us, music starting up, glasses clinking.
I read the letters in the tack room.
Graham was with me. I’d asked him to be, because some truths are too heavy to hold alone, and I was done carrying things by myself.
My father’s letter was two pages, written by a journalist who understood that words were permanent.
My dearest Rose,
If you’re reading this, two things are true: you’re getting married, and I wasn’t there to see it. I’m sorry for the second. I hope the first makes up for it, at least a little.