Epilogue
One year later
Binary: Eagle's Nest Saturday?
Mercury: Is that even a question anymore? Won’t we be riding together?
Binary: Routine should still be confirmed. Variables change.
Mercury: Some variables don't. I'll be there.
Binary: I know. I just like asking.
Lincoln Bollinger was not a nervous person.
He processed variables. He calculated outcomes. He prepared contingencies. Nervousness was simply the body’s response to uncertainty, and uncertainty could be eliminated through sufficient preparation.
He had prepared for tonight. Extensively.
The ring had been designed by a jeweler in Jackson Hole—a sapphire the exact color of Wyoming sky, flanked by small diamonds arranged in a pattern that, if you looked closely enough, formed binary code.
The message encoded in the setting was simple: OURS.
The jeweler had thought he was insane. Lincoln had tipped him thirty percent anyway.
The napkin in his pocket contained a message in binary code—ones and zeros that translated to ASCII letters. Simple. Direct. Very them. The reservation for the quiet corner table had been made three weeks ago. The speech—
He didn’t have a speech. Every version he’d drafted had sounded wrong. Too formal. Too stiff. Too much like a contract negotiation and not enough like a man asking the woman he loved to spend her life with him.
So he’d abandoned the speech and decided to trust that the right words would come.
This was the part that felt like uncertainty. This was the part making his hand drift to his pocket every forty-five seconds to confirm the ring box was still there.
“You’re up, Linc.”
Bear’s voice cut through his spiral. Lincoln blinked and found himself standing beside the pool table, cue in hand, with no memory of how he’d gotten there.
It felt like everyone from Oak Creek was in the Eagle’s Nest tonight, original and younger generation alike.
Zac and Annie Mackay were over talking to Lincoln’s parents, Quinn and Baby at the bar.
Finn and Charlie—Bear and Derek’s parents—were out on the dance floor.
Hell, even Theo’s parents were here. Ray and Dorian didn’t come into town often, so everyone was glad to see them.
But why couldn’t it have been just a quiet night?
“Linc. You going to shoot?” Bear asked. “Some of us are aging over here.”
“Yeah. Shoot. Right.”
Lincoln lined up the cue ball. Took the shot. Missed the pocket by two inches—an error margin he hadn’t produced since he was fourteen years old.
Derek made a sound that was almost a laugh. “You feeling okay, cuz?”
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Derek exchanged a look with Bear that Lincoln pretended not to notice.
Across the table, Morgan was chalking her cue with the particular focus she brought to everything.
Her hair was longer now, brushing past her shoulders, and she’d stopped hiding the faded scars on her forearms months ago.
She wore a green sweater that made her eyes look more gold than hazel, and when she glanced up and caught him watching, her mouth curved.
“Stop staring at me and start playing better. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“I’m not staring. I’m observing.”
“You’re staring. And you missed an easy bank shot.” She rounded the table, assessing angles with the same precision she’d once used to memorize federal evidence codes. “Theo, you ready to lose again?”
Theo groaned from his spot against the wall. “That’s the fourth time tonight. How is this fair? She remembers every shot she’s ever seen.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Morgan said. “Eight ball, corner pocket.”
The shot was clean. Perfect. The eight ball dropped with a satisfying thunk, and Theo pulled out his wallet while Bear laughed loud enough to turn heads at the bar.
“That’s eighty dollars you owe her this month,” Derek observed.
“I’m aware of the total, thank you.”
“Just making sure. She’s probably got it memorized to the penny.”
“To the cent,” Morgan corrected. “Eighty-three dollars and twenty-seven cents, if you count the coffee you said you’d pay for last Tuesday and then conveniently forgot.”
“I didn’t forget. I was testing you.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow. “You were broke.”
“Also that.”
Lincoln watched her laugh at Theo’s wounded expression, watched Bear clap Theo on the shoulder in mock sympathy, watched Derek try to steal a sip of Becky’s drink and get his hand slapped away.
The Eagle’s Nest hummed around them—jukebox playing, conversations layering over conversations, the comfortable chaos of a Saturday night in a small town where everyone knew everyone.
A year ago, Morgan had sat in this same bar, rigid with anxiety, convinced that any moment someone would notice she didn’t belong. Now she moved through the space like she owned it. Trading barbs with Theo. Letting Joy press snacks on her. Accepting Bear’s one-armed hugs without flinching.
She belonged here.
The thought still caught him off guard sometimes—that the woman who’d sent him coordinates in broken poetry, who’d survived things that would have shattered most people, had chosen to stay. With him. In this life.
He stepped back from the pool table, letting Derek take his spot. Everyone was too busy teasing each other to care about his departure. His game was off tonight anyway, and standing still only made the ring box in his pocket feel heavier.
His parents had been in Oak Creek for their usual summer visit, but when Lincoln asked if they could stay a few extra days, his mother's eyes had sharpened in that way that meant she'd already figured out why.
They'd claimed the corner booth an hour ago, nursing drinks and watching the Saturday night chaos unfold around them, talking to old friends.
Lincoln slid into the seat across from them, and his mother looked up with knowing eyes.
“You keep checking your pocket,” Quinn said. Her silver-streaked hair was pulled back, and she carried that particular warmth she reserved for moments when she thought her son wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m aware.”
“The ring is still there. I promise.” She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “She’s going to say yes.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that woman looks at you like you hung the moon.” Baby leaned back in his seat with the easy posture of a man who’d figured out everything that mattered decades ago. “Same way your mother looks at me.”
“That’s not how expressions work.”
“No, but it’s how love works.” His dad shrugged. “You’ll figure it out.”
Lincoln opened his mouth to argue—to point out that love was not a quantifiable metric, that expressions were subjective, that his father’s romanticism was charming but imprecise—and then stopped.
His parents had been married for over thirty-five years. His father had hidden his dyslexia throughout his childhood and into his adult years, convinced he was broken in ways that couldn’t be fixed. His mother had seen through all of it and loved him anyway.
Maybe they knew what they were talking about.
“I don’t have a speech prepared,” Lincoln admitted. “I tried to write one. Multiple times. Nothing sounded right.”
“Good.” Quinn’s smile widened. “The best things you’ve ever said to anyone came out when you stopped trying to script them.”
He thought about that. About all the careful frameworks he’d built over the years—the social protocols, the rehearsed responses, the endless translation of himself into something the world could digest. And then he thought about Morgan. About how he’d never needed any of that with her.
“She makes my brain go quiet. Still, even a year later,” he said. “That’s never happened before. With anyone.”
His mother’s eyes went bright. His father just nodded, like this was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Then go tell her that.”
Lincoln looked across the bar. Morgan had finished taking Theo’s money and had taken a seat beside Joy.
Joy and Bear’s seven-month-old, Henry, had somehow ended up in Morgan’s lap.
The baby was grabbing at her hair while she laughed, and Joy was taking a picture with her phone, and Bear was hovering nearby with the particular protective posture of a new father who still couldn’t quite believe his luck.
Morgan looked up. Found Lincoln watching her across the room.
Her eyebrow rose. A silent question.
He stood. Crossed to her table. Held out his hand.
“Come outside with me?”
“Now?” She glanced at Henry, who had gotten a firm grip on her sweater. “I’m being held hostage.”
Joy reached over and extracted her son with practiced ease. “Go. I’ve got him.”
The look Joy gave Lincoln was knowing. Too knowing.
He’d told Bear the plan—Bear couldn’t keep a secret from Joy to save his life—which meant Joy had probably told Becky, and Becky had definitely told Derek, and at this point, the only person in the entire bar who didn’t know what was about to happen was Morgan.
He led her through the back door onto the small patio behind the Eagle’s Nest. The night air was cold, sharp with the smell of pine and distant snow. A single string of lights provided dim illumination, enough to see her face when she turned to look at him.
“What’s going on with you tonight?” She tilted her head, studying him with those eyes that missed nothing.
“You’ve been distracted all evening. You missed shots you could make in your sleep.
And you keep touching your pocket like you’re checking for your wallet, except I know your wallet is in your other pocket because that’s where you always keep it. ”
“You noticed that.”
“I notice everything. You know this about me.”
He reached into his pocket. Pulled out the napkin he’d been carrying all night.
Morgan took it. Unfolded it. Stared at the ones and zeros written in his careful handwriting.
Her lips moved slightly as she translated—binary to ASCII, the way they'd encoded messages to each other for two years. He watched her expression shift as the letters resolved into words.
MARRY ME.
Her breath caught.
Lincoln fumbled the ring box out of his pocket. His hands were shaking—actually shaking, which hadn’t happened since the night he’d pulled her out of that warehouse. He opened the box. The sapphire caught the string lights and threw tiny fragments of blue across her face.
“I had a speech,” he said. “I wrote seventeen versions. They were all terrible.”
“Lincoln—”
“So instead, I’m just going to say that you make my brain go quiet.
That I didn’t know silence could feel like peace until I met you.
That I want to spend the rest of my life reorganizing bookshelves with you and arguing about database architecture and waking up next to someone who makes me feel like the strange parts of me aren’t defects. ”
Morgan was crying. He could see the tears tracking down her cheeks, catching the light.
“I love you,” he said. “I know I don’t always say it in ways that make sense to other people. But I love you in ways that make sense to us, and I think that matters more.”
“Lincoln.” Her voice cracked on his name.
“Will you—”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t finish the question.”
“I don’t care. No matter what the question is, if it’s with you, the answer is yes. Yes.” She laughed, wet and bright, and then she was kissing him—hands in his hair, mouth warm against his, the ring box pressed between them as he wrapped his arms around her.
The back door banged open.
“Sorry!” Bear’s voice was not remotely sorry. “We were just, uh—”
“Getting air,” Derek supplied.
“Checking on you,” Joy added.
“Being incredibly obvious,” Theo finished.
They spilled onto the patio—Bear and Joy with Henry, Derek and Becky, Theo and Eva, his parents and all the older generation bringing up the rear. Everyone he loved, crowded into this small space, grinning at him like they hadn’t been watching through the window for the past five minutes.
“She said yes,” Lincoln announced, because apparently that needed to be stated explicitly.
The noise that erupted was almost painful. Hugging and congratulations and Bear lifting him off the ground despite his protests and Joy crying and his mother crying and his father clapping him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Through all of it, Morgan stayed close. Her hand found his in the chaos, her fingers interlacing with his, the ring now on her finger where it belonged.
Later—after the champagne Bear had somehow produced from behind the bar, after the toasts, after his mother had hugged Morgan long enough to make them both cry—Lincoln and Morgan found a quiet moment in the corner.
The bar buzzed around them. Their family—because that’s what they were now, officially—filled the space with noise and laughter and love.
Morgan leaned into his side, her head finding the spot on his shoulder that seemed designed for exactly this purpose. The sapphire on her finger caught the light every time she moved, throwing tiny fragments of Wyoming sky across the scarred wood of the table.
“You know,” she said, “I spent my whole life memorizing things. Every book, every face, every conversation. I thought that was what mattered—holding on to everything so it couldn’t leave me.”
Lincoln waited. He’d learned that Morgan’s thoughts sometimes needed room to unspool, just like she’d learned about him.
“But this—” She gestured at the chaos around them. Bear making Henry giggle. His parents slow-dancing to the jukebox. Derek and Theo arguing about something that was probably ridiculous. “This isn’t something I need to memorize. It’s something I get to live.”
He turned that over in his mind. Found it accurate.
“I love you, Lincoln. ”
“And I love you.” The words still felt slightly awkward even after a year of saying it. He still wasn’t sure he fully understood the concept of love.
But he definitely knew he didn’t want to live without this woman. That every day with her was a gift.
Morgan tilted her face up to look at him. “I know. The data in everything you do supports it.”
Sometimes beauty really was the function.
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Thank you for reading the HEROES OF OAK CREEK series! Turn the page to catch a special glimpse of the new ZODIAC TACTICAL book, CODE NAME: LEO…