Epilogue Rhett
TWO MONTHS LATER, DECEMBER
The snow crunches beneath our boots as Noah and I step out of the truck, our breath rising in puffs against the sharp Idaho air. Late December around these parts doesn’t play around. The sky’s low and gray, wind slipping through layers of clothes like it’s got something to prove.
Noah tucks her gloved hand into mine as we make our way up Grandma Jo’s long drive, and even beneath the fabric, I can feel the cut of the familiar diamond engagement ring I placed back on her finger. Mine, the way she was always supposed to be.
Up ahead, Grandma’s porch lights glow amber through the frost. The whole crew’s gathered inside—Jo, the twins, Kade, and Sage—probably fighting over table settings or who gets to say grace. Although we all know, nobody does it better than Mrs. Josephine Rivers herself.
We barely make it past the split-rail fence when I notice the mailbox.
Living so far up the mountain means any correspondence for Noah and I are left down at Grandma Jo’s, for any of us to grab.
Tipping my chin toward the box, I drag Noah with me.
“Do you think Harold sent us a Christmas card?” I joke as Noah slaps a gloved hand against my chest.
I unlatch the box and thumb through the stack.
A feed store catalog. A glossy fundraiser.
Then, I see it. A thick manila envelope, my name handwritten in a cursive font.
My brows furrow, wondering what it could be.
Then my gaze flicks to the return label in the corner.
Mountainview Resort. My heart gives a single, hard knock against my ribs, stalling the breath in my lungs.
Noah must sense the shift in me, because she leans in, peering at the envelope. “Is that …?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. It’s from Laurel Everett.
” She’s the only person who can answer my questions about the parts of my life I’ve been left to piece together with little to no information.
I’ve tried to reach her for weeks. I left messages at Mountainview begging for five minutes of Laurel’s attention.
Every time, I was told the same thing—no visitors.
No calls. No exceptions. And now, without warning, this.
“You okay?” Noah’s features worry her face, her voice gentle, her hand still warm in mine.
I don’t answer right away because I’m not sure I am. There’s something about holding this envelope that makes all the questions I have ripple under my skin. Why did my parents lie to me? This woman knew me before I even knew myself, and she holds all the answers I’ve been chasing.
“I think,” I breathe out slowly, “I want to open it inside. With everyone.”
Noah nods, her expression unreadable but solid. “Okay.”
We head toward the house, boots crunching, the scent of woodsmoke curling through the air from the chimney top.
The moment we step through the front door, warmth rushes up to meet us.
Familiarity eases the ache in my chest—roasting meat, cinnamon, a whisper of pine.
Much like any other night, the house is alive with motion.
The twins are bickering over something stupid.
Kade crouches beside the fireplace, stoking the flame, while Sage trails behind him, placing candles on the mantel one at a time.
Grandma Jo’s clanging around in the kitchen, humming something off-key as she bastes the roast and swats at anyone who dares lift a lid.
It smells like Christmas and feels like home, but I stand in the doorway and don’t move. Noah slips off her coat, brushes snow from her shoulders, then glances back at me. “I’m right here,” she offers her support.
I place a kiss on her forehead. “I love you.”
“Love you too, cowboy.”
Hearing our exchange, Kade straightens, and when he runs his gaze over my face, his brows furrow. “Everything okay?”
That draws the others’ attention. The noise quiets, laughter tapering off. Grandma Jo turns, towel slung over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing slightly when she catches the emotion brewing in the bone-deep seriousness I could never quite mask.
Lifting the envelope, I hold it up for everyone to see. “I got a letter.” My eyes find Sage’s, knowing she’s the one who’s going to be affected the most by my announcement. “It’s from Mountainview.”
Her hand flies to her chest as a gasp leaves her mouth. Thankfully, Kade is next to her. So it comes as no surprise when he wraps her in his arms and whispers something to her that only they can hear.
There’s a beat of stillness, then Jace’s voice, low. “Laurel?”
Pressing my lips together, I bob my head.
Grandma sets down the dish towel on the dining table, her movements suddenly careful. “You gonna open it?”
I glance around the room—these people, this family. Every single one of them carried me through hell and out the other side. They’ve earned the truth as much as I have.
“I wanted you all here when I do.”
There’s a scraping of chairs. Plates and centerpieces are shifted aside to make room.
Within seconds, the room reshapes around me.
The twins take the right side, while Sage takes the seat next to me and Noah.
Her arms rest against her growing belly as Kade stands behind her, hands on her shoulders.
Finally, Grandma Jo sits at the head of the table, watching us like she always does, as if she already knows something none of us do.
Noah’s hand finds my thigh, and she squeezes. “You ready?”
The envelope sits heavy in my palm, thicker than I expected, like it’s been waiting years to be opened. I glance around the table one more time. No one speaks. No one breathes. “Yeah. Let’s get this over with.” And then, I tear it open.
Dear Rhett, or should I say Everett,
If you’ve come looking for me, then I assume you already know what Ridge never managed to say out loud—that he was your father. Or at least, the man who should have been.
I’d like to start by saying I received the messages you left with the staff, and they confirmed that you were standing at the edge of something that could change how you see yourself forever.
I want you to understand this before anything else … I don’t want visitors. I don’t want to sit across from you behind reinforced glass and watch understanding bloom in your eyes in real time. I don’t trust myself not to break even further. Not when you lived a life my son never had the chance to.
I fear that what I’m about to tell you won’t bring the comfort you’re searching for. Some truths don’t heal. They only explain the wound they caused. But that’s worth something, right?
I imagine you have questions. I imagine you have anger. I imagine you want names, timelines, and reasons. And I’ll give you what I can. The rest, well, that’s for you to decide.
You may share this letter with your family as you see fit.
And you may choose how much of it you share with Sage, your half sister.
I don’t know how close the two of you are now or what she knows of the past. I only know that Ridge once told me he’d offered you the veterinary apprentice credits you needed for college, and I took that as proof that some part of him tried to do right by you, even when he failed in every other way.
A little too late, if you ask me …
I don’t know where to begin, except that beginnings matter more than people like to admit, so here it goes.
When we were young, there were five things that mattered most: Alice, Daniel, Ridge, me, and our friendship. The town watched us like we were a story already being written, and I suppose we were.
Daniel was the quarterback. Ridge was his tight end. They were inseparable—best friends in a way only boys who bleed together on a field can be. Alice and I were cheerleaders. And Alice … Alice was everything. Beautiful. Charismatic. The kind of girl who didn’t have to try to be adored.
Ridge loved her first. He never said it out loud, but everyone knew.
Unfortunately for him, Daniel loved her harder.
At the time, she only had eyes for Daniel, or at least that’s what she’d led everyone to believe.
Alice wanted the high school cliche—the star quarterback falls madly in love with the head cheerleader.
She wanted to ride off into the sunset toward their happily ever after.
Everything changed when Alice chose Daniel, and Ridge pretended it didn’t matter. But it did. Pushing his feelings aside, he married me instead. A shiny consolation prize.
I think he believed it would cure him of his heartbreak. And I think I believed it would finally give me something Alice didn’t have.
We were both wrong.
What I didn’t understand then—but came to understand too late—was that Alice never truly chose between them.
Not in the way that mattered. She loved Daniel.
But she loved being wanted more. Ridge and Alice had an affair.
Quiet. Careful. Hidden beneath years of shared glances and unresolved longing.
I found out after the fact. After you were born.
After the damage was already done. You were the consequence of something that never should have been allowed to survive in secrecy.
The feud between our families wasn’t just about land or pride. It was about shame. And blame. And knowing that every gathering, every smile, every handshake was built on a lie.
Then came the day that broke everything. Arriving home early from work, I found my son—my Jonah—in bed with Lucy Rivers.
They didn’t apologize or deny their relationship. They stood there, shaking and defiant, and told me they loved each other. That nothing I said would change that.
For the first time in my life, I lost control.
Alice and her family couldn’t take my son from me; I wouldn’t have it.
I screamed that he could never be with a Rivers.
And in my rage—God help me—I told him why.
I told him about the affair. I told him the truth I had buried.
And then I said words that still wake me up screaming: She’s your sister.
It wasn’t the truth, I knew that. But I was desperate to break them apart. They left the house together. I chased them with my voice, with my phone, with every plea I could make. When Jonah finally answered, they were at the waterfall.
Lucy was hysterical. She couldn’t reconcile what I’d told them, so I finally gave them the truth—that it was you. That I’d lied. You were the problem, not her. By that stage, Lucy was inconsolable. Jonah tried to calm her down, but she was pacing, and then she slipped right off the edge.
The water was high that day, and when Jonah couldn’t see her, he jumped in. They never came back up. I blamed everyone but myself.
Ridge. Alice. And you—the bastard child.
That’s what I called you in my head for years. That’s how I survived my grief—by giving it somewhere else to live.
And then came your birthday.
August 15.
I wanted revenge. I wanted the world to feel the same way I did—broken and unforgiving.
So, I orchestrated the perfect crime, I cut the brakes on Alice’s car.
It was supposed to be you and your mother inside it.
I believed that if I erased you both, I could finally breathe again.
Instead, you were with your girlfriend. Daniel and Alice drove into town to pick you up after your date.
The brakes failed, and they died.
There is nothing I can write that would change that.
By the time you read this, I will have been transferred from Mountainview to a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. I have confessed. I will not be free again. This is not absolution. It is a consequence.
I don’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.
All I ask is that you do not let the past become your illness, the way it became mine. Some histories are meant to be acknowledged—not inherited.
Take care of Sage. She’s a good girl. Better than the world that shaped her.
And Rhett—Everett—you were never the sin. You were only the truth no one, especially me, wanted to face.
I killed for love. Before you judge me, ask yourself one thing. Would you have done the same?
—Laurel
Dropping the letter to the table, I sigh in relief, thankful that nobody interrupted. I peer at all the faces that showcase everything from shock to disbelief and everything in between.
No words can describe the emotions coursing through my body.
But at least now, there’s a sense of closure where there was none before.
It may take me—all of us—a long time to unpack everything that Laurel disclosed in her letter, but at least we finally have the truth, no matter how fucked-up it is.
Laurel’s closing statement, and the question that followed rattle around my head. I killed for love. Before you judge me, ask yourself one thing. Would you have done the same? My eyes gravitate toward the girl next to me as I silently reply.
In a heartbeat.