Epilogue
The kitchen had matching mugs now.
White ceramic, clean lines, handles all facing the same direction in a cabinet that closed properly because Hartley inspired me to rehang it.
The countertops were granite instead of the scarred butcher block I’d lived with for years.
The table—the same yard-sale table she’d unearthed on her second morning in my life—had been sanded, restained, and sealed.
It was the one thing from the old kitchen she’d insisted on keeping.
“It’s where we started,” she’d said when I’d offered to replace it. “It stays.”
The whole cabin had gotten the Hartley treatment.
She’d project-managed the renovation herself the year after our son was born—spreadsheets, timelines, vendor binders, the works.
The loft was a real bedroom now, with an actual door and a closet that had a system I pretended not to understand.
The garage apartment was a guest suite. The exterior stairs had a railing and zero power tools on them.
She’d left my workshop alone, though. That was the deal. She got the house. I got the garage.
Some messes were sacred.
I was out back splitting wood—red oak, same as always, the kind of work that emptied my head and filled up the woodshed. Late afternoon, sun warm enough that I’d stripped down to a T-shirt, the axe finding its rhythm the way it always did.
We didn’t need the wood yet—it was early fall, weeks before the first real cold—but I liked staying ahead of it. Hartley had taught me that. Not directly. Just by being someone who planned for things before they became problems.
She’d changed my life in ways I still couldn’t fully catalog.
She’d taken the business—Wildwood Ridge Outfitters, the duct-tape-and-instinct operation Evan and I had been running on caffeine and stubbornness—and turned it into something real.
Scheduling, logistics, marketing, client coordination, a website that actually worked.
She ran the office side while my partners and I did what we did best on the mountain.
The team shouldn’t have worked on paper, but was damn near unstoppable in practice.
Our son, Sawyer, was two. He had Hartley’s brown eyes and my inability to sit still, and right now he was across town at Evan and Paisley’s place, having what Paisley called a “playdate” and what was actually two toddlers chasing each other in circles until they collapsed.
Evan and Paisley’s daughter, Magnolia, was the same age, and the two of them were already inseparable—sharing snacks, pulling each other’s hair, and babbling in a language only they understood.
That meant Hartley and I had the cabin to ourselves for the evening. A rare thing, with a toddler and another baby on the way.
I swung the axe and split a round clean down the center, the two halves falling away with that satisfying crack. Stacked them. Grabbed another round. Settled it on the stump.
Movement in the kitchen window caught my eye.
Hartley was standing at the sink, watching me.
She was wearing an apron over a tank top—she’d been baking something, probably the banana bread she made every weekend now that she’d discovered our oven actually worked—and her hair was pulled up in a messy knot.
She was five months pregnant, just starting to show in a way that made my chest do something primal every time I looked at her.
She didn’t look away when I caught her watching. She held my gaze through the glass with an expression I knew very, very well.
I buried the axe in the stump and headed inside.
The kitchen smelled like banana bread and coffee and the lavender hand soap she’d put by every sink in the house. Hartley was still at the counter, but she’d turned to face me, leaning back against the granite with her arms crossed.
“Sawyer’s not back until seven,” she said.
“I know.”
“And the banana bread needs another twenty minutes.”
“Okay.”
She reached behind her back and untied the apron. Pulled it over her head. Set it on the counter in a neat fold, because she was Hartley and even this had a system.
Underneath was a pair of shorts and a tank top that was thin, white, and doing nothing to hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were fuller now, sensitive from the pregnancy, and I could see her nipples through the fabric. The soft swell of her belly below.
She looked like everything I’d ever wanted.
“The table,” she said. Not a question.
“The table,” I agreed.
She moved to the table, then used her hands to boost herself onto it in one smooth motion. The wood creaked under her weight.
I crossed the rest of the distance and stepped between her knees, gripped the waistband of her cotton shorts, and tugged them down, along with the pale-blue underwear beneath, in one slow drag.
She lifted her hips to help, and the fabric caught briefly on the gentle curve of her pregnant belly before sliding free.
I dropped them to the floor without looking.
Her thighs parted for me immediately, knees falling wide.
The sight of her—pink, slick, already swollen—made my mouth water.
I sank to my knees on the hardwood, hooked her legs over my shoulders, and pulled her right to the edge so her hips were barely on the table.
Then I buried my face between her thighs.
The first long, flat lick made her gasp—her back arching, fingers digging into my hair.
She tasted like salt and heat and the faint sweetness that was just her, stronger now with pregnancy hormones.
I dragged my tongue up through her folds, circled her clit slow and deliberate, then sucked it gently between my lips.
Her hips jerked. I pressed two fingers inside her—slow at first, letting her feel every inch—then curled them forward, stroking that rough patch that always made her thighs tremble. She was so wet that my fingers glided in easily, and she immediately started rocking against my mouth, chasing more.
“Fuck—yes—right there,” she panted, her voice breaking.
I hummed against her clit so she’d feel the vibration, pumping my fingers faster and deeper while my tongue flicked tight circles. Her breathing turned ragged, her thighs clamping around my head.
When I sucked hard and crooked my fingers again, her back bowed off the table, a sharp, broken cry tearing out of her throat as she came hard around my fingers. I didn’t stop until the aftershocks faded and her grip in my hair turned gentle and trembling.
Then I stood and stopped a moment to stare at her. She was flushed, eyes glassy, lips parted. I reached for the hem of her tank top, and she lifted her arms so I could peel it off.
Her breasts spilled free—heavier now, darker nipples tight and begging.
I palmed them gently, thumbs brushing the sensitive peaks while she fumbled with my jeans.
The zipper rasped down. She shoved denim and boxers to my thighs in one impatient push.
My cock sprang free, thick and aching, the head already slick.
Her hand wrapped around me—warm and firm—and I groaned low in my throat. She stroked once, twice, then leaned forward and took me into her mouth.
Hot. Wet. Perfect.
Her tongue swirled around the head, then slid down the underside as she hollowed her cheeks and sucked. I threaded my fingers through her hair, not guiding, just holding on while she worked me with slow, filthy pulls that made my balls draw up tight.
“Stop,” I rasped after a minute, my voice wrecked. “Baby—stop, or I’m gonna come down your throat, and I want to be inside you when I do.”
She pulled off with a wet pop, lips shiny, eyes dark with want.
I nudged her thighs wider. She braced her hands behind her on the table and leaned back, her belly rounded and beautiful between us. I lined myself up, rubbed the head through her soaked folds once, twice—teasing—then pushed in slow and deep.
She moaned long and low as I filled her, inch by inch, until my hips met hers and I was buried to the root. So tight. So hot. So fucking wet.
I leaned down and caught her mouth in a messy, open kiss, tasting herself on my tongue while I rocked gently inside her. My hands slid up to cup her breasts, thumbs circling her nipples. She whimpered into my mouth every time I pinched lightly.
I straightened and looked down at where we were joined—her pink lips stretched wide around my cock, glistening. Then I saw her hand drift between us. Two fingers found her clit and started rubbing slow, tight circles while I was still buried deep.
The sight snapped something in me.
“Jesus, Hartley,” I growled. “Look at you—touching yourself while I’m fucking you. So damn beautiful.”
I pulled almost all the way out, then slammed back in—hard. She cried out, her head tipping back.
I set a punishing rhythm, my hips snapping, my cock driving deep every time. The table rocked beneath us. Her fingers moved faster on her clit. I could feel her tightening around me, fluttering.
“You feel so fucking good,” I told her, my voice rough. “So wet for me. So tight. You gonna come again, baby? Gonna come all over my cock while I fill you up?”
“Yes—God—yes—”
I leaned down again, sucked one nipple into my mouth, and grazed it with my teeth. She arched, her fingers flying over her clit. I straightened, gripped her hips, and fucked her harder—deep, relentless strokes that made her breasts bounce and her belly quiver. Her moans turned desperate and broken.
“Come with me,” I ordered. “Let me feel you—fuck—come on, Hartley—”
Her whole body seized. Her inner walls clamped down like a vise, milking me as she came with another cry, her nails digging into my forearms.
The sight, the feel, the sound of her—it ripped my own orgasm out of me. I buried myself as deep as I could and came hard, pulsing inside her, groaning her name while pleasure roared through every nerve. We rode it out together, shuddering, gasping, until the last aftershock left us both trembling.
Afterward, we stayed at the table—her sitting on the edge, me standing between her legs, our foreheads together, breathing each other’s air.
The banana bread timer went off, and neither of us moved.
“We should get that,” she murmured.
“We should.”
Still, neither of us moved.
Through the kitchen window, the mountains were catching the last of the afternoon light, the ridgeline glowing amber and gold. Somewhere across town, our son was pulling Magnolia’s hair and laughing about it.
In a few months, there’d be another baby in the house—another round of midnight feedings and color-coded schedules and Hartley running our lives with the same quiet efficiency she’d brought to everything since the morning she’d walked into my life with a rolling suitcase and reorganized my kitchen before I’d finished my first cup of coffee.
I kissed her forehead. She hummed against my chest.
“I messed up your drawer again,” I said.
She leaned back and gave me the look—the one I’d been provoking on purpose for five years because it was my favorite thing her face did.
“You do that on purpose.”
“Prove it.”
She laughed, and the sound filled the kitchen the way it always did—warm, real, the best thing in a room full of things she’d made better.
I’d never been a planner. I still wasn’t. But standing in the kitchen of our home, in the life Hartley had organized around us, waiting for banana bread to come out of the oven while our son played across town and our daughter grew in the space between us—I didn’t need a plan.
I just needed her.
And neither of us was going anywhere.