Epilogue Gracie
One Year Later
I really don’t understand why I have to—ow!”
“Sorry!”
“—Wear face paint. I’m already in costume.”
“You’re literally in the same suit you wore to court today,” I point out to Jude, who is looking supremely grumpy about this turn of events.
When I first told him I wanted to host a Halloween costume party at my studio for the KILN community, he seemed enthusiastic.
(“And exactly how little is your costume going to be?”) Then when I informed him that we would be going as Emily and Victor from Corpse Bride—our favorite comfort movie—he seemed agreeable enough.
(“Convenient. I’ll just go as myself.”) But tonight, when I sat him down in my studio and broke out my makeup kit, he was less than thrilled.
(“Isn’t my pallor already ghostly enough?
”) It took some strategic lash-batting and a perfectly timed “Please,” but he never really stood a chance.
“I added a vest and changed my tie,” he argues, like his perfectly tailored three-piece suit actually counts as a Halloween costume. “You know I never wear a full Windsor knot.”
“How daring of you,” I say with a laugh, softly blending dark shadow around his eyes. It gives him a haunted look that somehow looks absurdly attractive on him.
“My skin feels like it’s vacuum-sealing my skull,” he says as I touch up the dark hollows I’ve blended beneath his cheekbones. “Is that normal?”
I roll my eyes with a smile and put down my makeup brush. “There. Done, you big baby.”
I get up to find a mirror, and the ethereal white dress I made for the occasion swirls around my legs in a rustle of feather-light chiffon and tattered lace.
Jude’s darkened eyes follow me across the room like he can’t tear them off me, and my stomach gives a little skip beneath the corseted bodice.
I’d be lying if I said that wearing a wedding dress in front of him—even just a ghoulish costume version of one—doesn’t make my heart race a little.
And maybe it’s fast to be thinking along those lines.
But the truth is, starting our lives together has been easier than breathing.
What started as “temporarily crashing” at his place turned into “why move out if we spend every free moment together anyway?” It made things simple, and lately, simple has been hard to come by.
Especially after one of my bridal wear designs unexpectedly went viral six months ago, and life became too busy to even think about moving—and too full of reasons to stay.
There are still hard days. He’s gotten two new tattoos since I moved in, and sometimes I’m terrified that my fledgling business will fail all over again.
But neither of us ever feels alone now. His mother and I have grown close, and my mom and I go on monthly runs, exchanging smoothie recipes like our own protein-rich version of a love language.
Sofia and Henry are also thriving in their relationship (perhaps a little too well, if I’m going by our extremely competitive couples’ pickleball record), along with Mrs. Morales and her new boyfriend.
As someone who has spent nearly her entire life craving a supportive family, it’s the kind of abundance I’ve always dreamed of.
But at the heart of all my joy is Jude. Through every up and down, his care for me is as constant and unwavering as mine is for him.
Which is why—even though I may no longer be in the business of planning weddings—there’s one more I’m secretly aching to organize.
“Here,” I say, returning to where he’s leaning against one of my pumpkin-strewn worktables, looking like the X-rated fanfic version of Victor in his quote-unquote “costume.”
He takes the hand mirror and holds it up to inspect his handsome face, contoured in gray scale. “I look—”
“Ready to be the rake of the underworld?”
He puts the mirror down and lets his gaze travel over my own carefully painted features. After watching a few tutorials online and doing a couple of practice runs that involved yelling at some false lashes, I feel beautiful in my dramatic makeup and light blue complexion.
His eyes lift from my bubblegum pink lipstick to meet my gaze, hungry in a way I haven’t seen before. “I look ready to propose to my beautiful corpse bride.”
My heart goes still at what could simply be a reference to the central plot point of the movie, or something else entirely.
“Technically, Victor only proposes accidentally,” I say, my voice suddenly breathless in a way that suggests I’ve gone on a quick sprint around the earth.
“But we all know it was the best move he ever made,” Jude says, stepping closer to me.
“I think he might disagree, considering he marries someone else in the end,” I point out.
“Well, it’s a good thing that, unlike Victor, I’m not a completely useless imbecile.”
I laugh, but it lodges in my throat like a baseball when Jude slowly drops to one knee. I watch, dumbstruck, as he pulls out a black velvet box from his jacket pocket.
“How does the vow from the movie go again?” he muses.
But I can’t answer. I’m frozen in place, even as my heart begins to gallop in every one of my pulse points.
Mouth dry, I watch as he lifts the box. “ ‘With this hand, I will lift your sorrows. Your cup will never be empty, for I will be your wine.’ ”
My heart is a wild creature in my chest as he opens the box, and I see Agatha’s most spectacular diamond ring flash like a living flame as it’s exposed to the light.
“ ‘With this candle,’ ” he continues, “ ‘I will light your way in darkness. With this ring, I ask you to be mine.’ ”
“Jude—” I whisper, still half-convinced this is some kind of cosplay fantasy and not real life.
But he finds my gaze, removing all doubt from my mind when he says, “Gracie Elizabeth Holland,” with more tenderness than my name has ever been uttered with.
“From the first moment I saw you caught in that horrible plant, I knew I would be fighting a losing battle against falling hopelessly in love with you. Every day since has made me wonder how I ever lived without you. Please—will you make me the happiest man alive by being my wife?”
My eyes blur as I nod and say the only thing I can say in response to this. “Of yes. I mean—of course. Yes,” I stammer, completely overwhelmed. The grin that stretches across his beautiful face is miles wide as he slips the stunning ring onto my finger.
“The perfect headline for our engagement announcement,” he says, standing up and pulling me to him. “She said ‘Of yes!’ ”
I laugh, unable to be embarrassed when he’s staring at me like this—eyes alight like I really have made him the happiest man who ever lived.
“I could always take it back, you know,” I threaten emptily, unable to believe that I found him. My person.
“On what grounds?” he asks in mock outrage.
“On the grounds of needing my future husband to up his pickleball game. Henry and Sofia are killing us.”
At the word husband, his hands on my waist flex possessively. “Noted, but I’m afraid you’d be in breach of clause 87b of No-Take-Backsees,” he tells me in a voice more heated than his joke warrants.
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” I say softly as he tips me back.
“No, we wouldn’t.”
When he kisses me, it feels better than any promise. It’s a proposal—to share a future more beautiful than I ever could have planned.