Epilogue
Epilogue - One Year Later?
The Greek island of Santorini was exactly as beautiful as the guidebooks promised, and absolutely nothing like the photographs suggested.
No camera could capture the specific quality of light at sunset, the way it turned the white-washed buildings into gold, or the scent of jasmine mixed with sea salt that hung in the evening air.
Theo would try anyway, and if anyone could - it would be him. He was already three memory cards deep, his camera an extension of his hand as we navigated the narrow cobblestone streets of Oia.
“Gin, stop right there,” he called out, and I froze mid-step, my sundress catching the breeze.
I didn’t ask what he saw. After a year together—a year of lazy Sunday mornings and midnight deadlines, of learning to share closet space and compromise on pizza toppings—I’d learned to trust his eye. When Theo looked through his camera lens, he saw things the rest of us missed.
Including, apparently, me.
The shutter clicked three times in quick succession. I waited, patient in a way sixteen-year-old me never could have managed. That girl would’ve deflected with a joke, hidden behind self-deprecation, anything to avoid being the focus of his attention.
This version of me knew better. Being seen by Theo Bennett wasn’t something to fear. It was something to savor. It was everything.
“Got it,” he said finally, lowering the camera with a satisfied smile. He crossed to me, slipped his hand into mine like it belonged there. Like we belonged together. “That’s the header image.”
“You haven’t even looked at it yet.”
“Don’t need to. You had that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re thinking about your next article and mentally composing sentences.” He kissed my temple. “The one where you’re completely in your own world. It’s my favorite.”
I leaned into him, watching tourists stream past us toward the famous sunset viewing spots. We had time. Our hotel was a ten-minute walk, and I’d already written most of tomorrow’s blog post… Mentally of course. Tonight was just for us.
The blog had been Theo’s idea, born from a lazy Sunday morning six months into living together.
I’d been sprawled on our couch—our couch, in our apartment, possessives that still gave me a thrill—editing an article for Heart Soul while he sorted through photos from a recent shoot to go along with it.
He’d stopped and looked at me with bright eyes and a wide smile.
“What?” I’d asked.
“You write,” he’d said. “I shoot. You said you want to travel more. Let’s do it?”
I thought he was joking. He’d already started researching domain names. We passed it by work, and they were happy for us to do it, as long as we still submitted our normal work on time.
Three weeks later, “Everything Between” went live.
My words paired with his images, exploring places I’d once only dreamed about visiting.
We started small—weekend trips to nearby cities, pieced together by our Heart and Soul job opportunities.
But the blog grew faster than either of us expected and now we were travelling to places I didn’t even know existed.
Now, a year after that truck broke down in Hedgefield, we were in Greece. Our followers had quadrupled. A publisher had reached out about a book deal. We were funded fully by Heart and Soul - based solely on account of our popularity.
But tonight, the camera was just for us. Because we still liked private moments, ones that the two of us shared, and loved. Little inside jokes that only we got. Like the fact our blog’s tabs were accented with paper clips, and each article started with a little silver pen.
We found our way back to the hotel as the sun began its final descent. Our room was small but perfect—white walls, blue accents, a balcony that overlooked the caldera. I kicked off my sandals and collapsed onto the bed while Theo set up his laptop on the small table.
“Are you editing now? Come to bed.” I begged
“Just pulling the best shots for you to review tomorrow.” He glanced back at me, eyes crinkling. “You’re the writer. You get final say on which images tell the story.”
This was our rhythm. His photos, my words, our collaboration.
We’d learned it through trial and error, through fights about creative control and compromises about whose vision took precedence.
We’d learned that “I think this works better” didn’t mean “your idea is bad.”
We’d learned to critique each other’s work without it bleeding into dinner conversation.
We’d learned together. Through everything, and while it hadn’t always been easy, it had always felt right.
“Come here first,” I said, patting the bed beside me.
He didn’t need to be asked twice. The laptop could wait. In the year we’d been together, we’d gotten better at recognizing when work could wait and when moments needed to be lived.
He stretched out beside me, pulling me against his chest. Through the open balcony doors, I could hear the distant sounds of tourists gathering for sunset, the murmur of voices in a dozen languages, the clink of wine glasses from nearby terraces.
“Happy?” he asked quietly.
“Ridiculously.” I tilted my head back to look at him. “You?”
“Getting there.”
Something in his tone made me turn fully. He was smiling, but there was a nervousness underneath it. An energy that felt like anticipation.
“What did you do?” I asked suspiciously. God, if he’d accidentally wiped one of the SD cards we’d need to redo the photos we’d taken this morning for the blog.
“Nothing yet. But I need you to look at something.” He disentangled himself and crossed to the laptop, typing quickly. “I’m trying to decide on the header image for tomorrow’s post.”
I sat up, curious. Theo rarely asked for my input on composition—that was his domain, just as word choice was mine. We’d learned our lanes.
He turned the laptop toward me. Three images filled the screen, each stunning in its own right.
The famous blue domes against an impossibly blue sky.
The white buildings cascading down the cliff like a waterfall.
And the sunset shot from tonight, the one he’d taken of me mid-thought, unaware and unguarded.
“The sunset,” I said immediately. “It’s—wait. What is that?”
There, poorly photoshopped on to my hand in the sunset image, was a ring.
Not subtle. Though Theo was pretty talented when it came to photo editing, it was obvious he’d just copy and pasted a pixelated picture of a ring onto my hand.
The lighting was all wrong, the perspective completely off, the placement nonsensical.
I looked at him. He was watching me with barely contained excitement and terror in equal measure, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“That’s terrible photoshop,” I said slowly.
“I know.” He laughed.
“You’re good at photoshop… usually”
“Gin.”
“The lighting’s completely off. And the ring is way too big for the scale of—”
“Imogen.”
I turned and looked at him, his eyes wide, earnest and lined with tears.
He pulled an actual ring from his pocket—simple, silver, perfect—and dropped to one knee right there on the tile floor of our hotel room in Santorini. “I can fix the photo if you’ll marry me?”
The world tilted. Righted itself. Became something entirely new.
“You’re proposing,” I said stupidly.
“I’m proposing.” His voice wavered slightly. “I’ve been carrying this ring for three days, waiting for the perfect moment. The perfect light. The perfect location. But the truth is, the perfect moment is whenever I’m with you. So. Imogen Grey. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I said, looking at Theo kneeling on our hotel room floor, the ring catching the dying sunlight from the balcony. “Yes, of course yes.”
His face transformed—relief and joy and love all at once. He slid the ring onto my finger with shaking hands, before pulling me close and kissing me softly on the lips.
When we finally broke apart, both of us crying and laughing, he rested his forehead against mine.
“Thank fuck.”
“You thought I’d say no?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow, not that he could see it.
“No,” he began. “I mean, maybe… I didn’t want to assume. But the anticipation of asking was eating at me. I’d decided to wait till tomorrow, but then-”
“But then what?”
“You got that look, and I could have proposed there, in front of everyone, all the tourists- but I know you well enough to know, you’d prefer it’s just us.”
I kissed him again. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too. Now, you said something about bed?”
I laughed and then looked at the sparkling diamond on my hand. “We should call Sloane and tell her the good news.”
“I called Sloane first,” he admitted. “Asked her permission.”
“You what?”
He’d asked my best friend, his sister - for my hand in marriage? I laughed at the thought.
“She’s your best friend. And she forced us into that hotel room.” He grinned. “Felt like she’d earned it.”
I laughed through my tears. “She’s going to be insufferable about this.”
“She already is. I called her from the airport. She screamed so loud Jasper had to take the phone.”
“Of course she did.”
“She also said, and I quote, ‘I’ve been waiting for this since you were both stupid teenagers. Tell Gin I accept all credit and expect a prominent mention in the wedding toast.’”
I could picture it perfectly—Sloane’s smug satisfaction, her vindication, her absolute certainty that she’d orchestrated our entire love story. And maybe she had, in a way. Without that “forgotten” hotel booking, without her strategic meddling, would we have found our way to each other?
Maybe. Eventually. In some other timeline.
But I liked this one better.
“The lake,” I said suddenly. “We should get married at the lake.”
Theo’s smile was soft. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Of course. The lake. Where everything ended and everything began. Where he’d photographed me at sixteen and I’d felt seen for the first time. Where we’d reclaimed my secret spot and made it ours. Where Sloane and Jasper had promised to choose each other every day.
Where I’d learned what it meant to be chosen.
And where I’d learned how to choose myself.