Epilogue Damion
EPILOGUE
Spring
“Look for the cardinal and you’ll find me, kid.”
—Remington
Damion
“Don’t say The Notebook,” I said, shaking my head.
“But it’s just the way it is, every time we take out the boat,” she said with a laugh, leaning back on her arms as the sun licked over her pretty face. “I swear to God you turn into Ryan Gosling whenever I sit here, watching you row.”
It was a stunningly gorgeous afternoon, one of those spring days where everything was finally turning green and the sun was warm in the sky, so of course we were out on the water. I’d flown in two days ago to spend spring break in Nebraska, with her, and I was out-of-my-mind happy.
“Shouldn’t that be changing, though?” I asked, obsessed with the big black sunglasses that were covering half her face.
Julia Nebraska had her own aesthetic, and I was so there for it.
“You should just see me, the love of your life, rowing your wiseass around the lake now that this is going to be the norm, right?”
The norm.
It was still impossible to believe.
The day after my birthday, Bernard had delivered one additional piece of legal documentation: a belated final gift from Remi that had rocked my world.
The cabin.
Remi had left me his fishing cabin.
So even though I was still living in Gardenwood and going away to Cornell in the fall, I had a place in Nebraska I could get away to whenever I wanted.
And I wanted to get away to Nebraska as often as possible. Hell, I’d basically been visiting on a monthly basis.
And since Jules had been flying back to New York every couple of weeks to spend time with her family as they figured out the best way for her to finish her remote school year, it felt like we were together more than we weren’t.
It was goddamn perfection.
“Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “ ‘Love of my life’? That’s a little aggressive, don’t you think?”
“I’ll show you aggressive,” I said, letting go of the oars to gesture with both hands for her to come closer. “Get over here, Nebraska.”
My stomach dipped as she smiled at me, because even when she wasn’t trying, her teasing nature always hit me like a drug.
Her phone buzzed, which made her hold up a one sec finger as she pulled it out of her pocket.
Which made me give her a dramatic sigh. “Your phone is more important than my… aggression?”
She looked at me over the top of those shades, long lashes fluttering. “Absolutely not, Rutledge. But you know I’m waiting on my…”
She looked back down at the display and her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, they’re in!”
I didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. She’d been watching and waiting every day to see her test scores. Even though she was no longer worried about screwing up the inheritance with bad marks, mastering the math section had become important to her.
Which meant it was important to me.
“Oh my God,” I said. “So…?”
She bit down on her bottom lip as she looked at her phone, and I was surprisingly nervous as I waited. She’d worked her ass off, my Jules, and I wanted so badly for her to see that reward.
It was so on-brand for her to care.
She’d already been accepted to NYU (she wanted to study literature and writing while deciding if running Lowell’s Market was her “destiny”), yet these inconsequential scores meant the world to her because she needed to know she’d done it.
Her eyes moved over her phone as she scrolled, and then she let out a squeak.
“Jules?” I asked, dying to know. “Tell me.”
Her gaze met mine, her mouth slid into a huge grin, and then she was jumping at me in the middle of the boat. “Six points higher than the practice test!”
I caught her as she threw herself into my arms, as she hugged me and squealed, and I was pretty sure I’d never been happier in my entire fucking life.
“You’re going to tip the boat!” I yelled, laughing as I squeezed her harder, trying to keep her still so we didn’t end up in the cold water as the boat rocked back and forth. “Calm your ass down, Nebraska.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a giggle, her hands sliding to settle on my chest. Those perfect eyes were wild when she looked up at me in the rocking boat and said, “But I’m too excited. We did it, Damion!”
“You did it,” I corrected, so damn proud of her that it kind of made my chest hurt a little. Julia was so full of everything good that looking down at her face was like freebased happiness, I swear to God.
“But I couldn’t have done it without the best tutor in Gardenwood,” she teased. “Mon beau professeur.”
She’d been studying French in her spare time and it was sending me, dear Jesus. Even when she didn’t get it exactly right, she got it exactly right for me.
“Mon élève bien-aimée,” I said, lowering my head to kiss the side of her sun-warmed neck.
“I can’t believe you’re the same guy who stole my wallet,” she said, a smile in her voice.
“I can’t believe you’re the same girl who broke my nose,” I said, dragging my teeth over her pretty skin.
“Was that our meet-cute?” Julia asked with a laugh, her fingers sliding into my hair.
“More like a meet-ick,” I corrected, drunk on her scent, surrounded by the soft blanket of her hair. “Because we hated each other on sight.”
“But then we didn’t,” she said on a sigh.
I heard the two-part whistle of a cardinal, and when I raised my head, I saw a crimson-red male fly over and land on the dock, his crest fluffy like tousled hair.
Holy, holy shit. Remi?
That shrewd little face and pointy beak almost appeared to be watching me.
“Right?” she said quietly, a tease in her voice.
Quit interrupting me, old man, I thought with a smile.
“That’s right, then we didn’t,” I agreed, and as the cardinal sang and I fell back into the pure magic of my Julia Nebraska, a quote from Remi’s favorite book came at me like the warm reflection of the sun on the pond, like the whistle of that little bird on the chilly spring breeze.
“There’s so much spring in the air—there’s so much lazy sweetness in your heart.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald