Epilogue
Isaac
Showing up at The Owl’s Nest to let Dickens know I’d moved to Mission City was easier than I expected.
He knew of Ben and seemed genuinely pleased for both of us. Glowing with new love, he promised to introduce me to his new beau.
I was happy for him.
My job as harbormaster differed greatly from lightkeeper. All these people. Less so, given winter was well and truly entrenched. But come summer, the place’d be hopping.
I was locking up for the night on my fifth day on the job when a familiar car turned into the parking lot. The walk home was twenty-minutes uphill, but I didn’t mind. Gave me time to settle the day and clear my mind. Yet, Ben had shown up three of the past five days.
“Hop in, it’s cold.”
Barely at the freezing mark and no wind today. Tofino had high winds and was below freezing.
I might’ve been keeping track. Just wishing the new guy luck. Here I tracked river levels, debris, and snow packs. The more snow that fell, the higher the river would crest in the spring. Something to monitor.
I slid into Ben’s ten-year-old Honda. Somewhere on the list of things to buy was a newer car for him. Then he planned to gift me this one. I didn’t need a car, but he pointed out it’d be handy on the days of torrential downpours that were common in the Fraser Valley.
He wasn’t wrong.
I leaned over to give him a kiss on his cheek, but at the last moment, he turned, and our lips met. We might’ve lingered a bit with that one.
He grunted. “Now I want to take you home.”
“So take me home.”
“But I wanted to take you out to Stavros’s tonight.”
“We can go another night.”
Truthfully, I looked forward to a night of quiet and could wait to try the local Greek restaurant everyone raved about.
“I made reservations.”
A slight tinge of exasperation.
Whether at me or himself, I couldn’t tell. “Then by all means, let’s go.”
It took little time, and soon we parked in the lot behind the restaurant.
I was about to get out of the car when Ben put a restraining hand on my arm. I cocked my head.
“I just…”
His blue eyes shone with worry in the streetlight.
Night came early in January.
“We don’t have to go.”
Discomfort settled in my chest. “I mean, if it’s important to you, then of course we’ll go. I’m sure they’d be okay if we begged off.”
“No.”
He cleared his throat. “We’re going.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car.
I followed suit. What was going on?
We walked up the staircase and stepped inside the warm and welcoming space.
A gigantic man greeted us with a massive smile. “You must be Ben and Isaac. Everyone is here.”
Everyone?
Hell, I hardly knew anyone.
Ben snagged my hand and led me to the back of the restaurant.
His parents were there. His sister Carson sat next to them, looking utterly bored. Dickens and his man Spike were also here.
Before I had a chance to react, Ben dropped to one knee.
Carson snickered, their mom gasped, their dad chuckled, and Dickens and Spike gaped.
So did I.
Ben held out a ring. “I know what you’re going to say.”
That was rather presumptuous of him, seeing as I had no idea what to say.
“Or I think I know,”
he corrected. “That we’ve only known each other for six weeks. That it’s too soon. That, uh, we’ve only been living together for two weeks. And that, you know, we need time to get to know each other.”
All that was absolutely true, yet one other thing was also true.
I loved him.
With my whole heart and my whole soul. He was the person I’d searched for all these years, but didn’t believe I’d ever find.
I got down on one knee as well and met his gaze. “I love you, Ben. And I’m not just saying that because you’re offering me a ring—although that’d be a great reason. No, from the first night we met, I knew. As we sat in the restaurant in Tofino, with Buddy at our feet, I had a sense of coming home. You offered me sanctuary during a storm—now I offer you my heart.”
I grasped his cheeks and pulled him in for a kiss. A kiss I poured all my love into. A kiss I wanted to last forever.
“Can we eat now? I’m hungry.”
Good God, Carson whined like a two-year-old, not a woman of twenty.
Yet Ben grinned, undaunted by his sister’s rudeness. He slipped the ring onto my finger.
A little loose, but we could get that taken care of. We rose, a little unsteadily, and took our seats at the table.
Within moments, the large man—who I assumed was Stavros—appeared with a bottle of champagne. He popped the cork and filled everyone’s glasses.
As he did, I leaned over to whisper into Ben’s ear. “What if I said no?”
He met my gaze. “Then I would’ve spent the next twenty years convincing you.”
He pressed a hand to my cheek. “We can wait as long as you want. I just…needed you to know how I felt.”
I glanced around the table. “Well, no worries on that score.”
I pressed a kiss to his lips. This one, given our company, was chaste. “You realize I’m a forever kind of guy.”
“We’re going to have a forever love affair.”
And we did.
Enjoyed Ben and Isaac's story? There's more Mission City! Flip the page for a low-angst second chance romance…