Epilogue
DEAN
Tay’s family was… loud. Holy hell.
When he’d asked if I wanted to skip the traditional holiday gathering on his mom’s side, I said it was about damn time I met his family.
In hindsight, maybe we should’ve started smaller—but between clashing shifts, this was the night that worked, and since I hadn’t wanted my parents to wander New York alone, we’d decided to bring them along, too.
So now here we were—Tay by my side, my parents trailing behind, into a brownstone hallway that hit like a wall of sound. Huh. Maybe he’d had a point about skipping the whole thing.
Two rooms had been knocked together sometime in the nineties, then stuffed with every available family member.
Thirty-odd relatives spilled across couches and folding chairs, a tiny dog bolting between ankles.
Persian rugs overlapped. Kids squealed. Someone argued about getting more beer from somewhere.
English and Turkish mixed into an incomprehensible tangle while music pressed in around the corners.
“Hey.” Tay’s voice was soft and close—something to latch on to amid the chaos. “You good?”
I inhaled and met his eyes, my pulse dropping back to normal. “Yeah. I am.”
His grin flashed. “Liar.”
I was robbed of my chance at a suitable comeback when a woman swept over and right into Tay’s arms—her cheeks flushed, her curling dark hair streaked with silver. She had his smile.
“Hayat-um,” she said—or something very much like it—fond and practiced, like a beloved name uttered hundreds of times.
He drew her in with a gentle, “Anneh.” It carried slightly foreign emphasis, not quite a name, and I knew it wasn’t hers anyway.
The Turkish equivalent of mom? Jesus, I should have checked with Tay what it all meant, should have crammed basic Turkish words the way I’d prepped for med school tests. Tay was just as important, more, and I…
I wanted his family to like me.
Maybe I didn’t care about some random cousin, but his mom, his dad, his siblings?
They all knew we’d started as a vacation ruse before things turned real, and Tay had promised they wouldn’t give the game away with my parents—but the point, the point was that I really fucking wanted them to like me.
Even his sister, who probably had some beef with me since she knew about my temporary, hurtful emotional blackout.
Uphill battle, yeah. But I was ready for it.
“And you must be Dean,” a gentle voice cut through the mess of my thoughts. “It’s so nice to meet you, sweetheart. And your parents, too.”
Melis, right. Her smile was like a spotlight, eyes the exact same shade as her son’s. Next to me, Tay leaned in just enough for our shoulders to bump, and it grounded me in ways I couldn’t really define—like gravity but without the heavy pull.
“Thank you for inviting us,” I said, offering my hand. I was pulled into a firm hug instead. Oh. Okay.
I felt strangely weightless when Melis let me go, a warm hum behind my sternum that was a little bit like my own mom’s presence—who was just now stepping forward to wrap her arms around Tay’s mother, no hesitation, just… family. As if they knew each other already.
“Come on, babe,” Tay said, drawing me further into the apartment.
Three tables had been pushed up against a wall in the living room, dishes jostling for space.
Metal and ceramic platters, some still covered in foil, smells wafting over—tomato, lamb, something minty.
Glossy flatbreads were stacked high. Rice baked with dried fruit, yogurt flecked with cucumber and dill, a perfectly executed su bore?i, positioned like a smug centerpiece.
It looked nothing like the slumped, soggy lasagna I’d produced in my attempt at a romantic dinner.
I’d still gotten the guy, though. So.
The social carousel swirled around me. Names I forgot a second later—uncles, cousins.
The volume objectively ridiculous. Then Tay’s oldest brother, Deniz, halfway through his forties, married with three daughters.
He scanned me once, quietly evaluating, before he pumped my hand like a friendly test.
“Dean. Heard a lot about you.” His tone was relaxed while his gaze carried keen scrutiny. “Tay’s never brought anyone home, you know? Big deal.”
“Thank you,” Tay said quickly, pointedly, his shoulders a touch too tense. “Maybe dial it down a notch, yeah? Don’t start interrogating him about kids just yet.”
“Tay.” I turned slightly into him and dropped my voice to a level that barely made it over the noise. “If you think that could scare me off, you really don’t understand how far gone I am.”
The way he looked at me made the room go quiet—just for a moment, nothing but static and the brightness in his eyes.
“All right,” Deniz said from somewhere far away, his voice like a rush of water in my ears. “Good answer.”
Hmm? Except then a little kid in reindeer pajamas collided with Tay’s legs first and then wrapped herself around Deniz’s calf. “Baba!” she crowed. “Look!”
I’d never know what she meant because Tay used that moment of distraction to tug me away, through a shifting sea of relatives.
He kept up a running commentary—“Yasemin, cousin, just started at Harvard. Uncle Cem, keeps bees.”—as we nodded left and right and kept moving.
Near a makeshift bar set up on a folding table, my parents were laughing with Melis and Tay’s dad, who I’d already met a week ago.
He’d quizzed me about my values and intentions under the guise of dropping off a big container of home-cooked food while Tay was staying at my place, and I hadn’t been sure I’d passed until he patted my shoulder and said, “You seem steady.”
“Where are we going?” I asked Tay, laughing a little as he picked up two shot glasses in passing and handed me one. Sake?
“Excellent question,” a female voice said over whatever Tay had been about to answer. “Because I’d like a word.”
He turned and drew me around with him, grinning like someone about to enjoy a good show. “Ley!”
Ah, shit. Leyla—his sister. She looked angelic in a cranberry sweater, dark hair piled high. Her smile, though? Brace for impact.
That was fine—I could handle her. I could handle anything if it kept Tay by my side.
“Dean. Hi. So good to finally meet you.” Her tone was sweet. The way she leaned in to fix me with a hard look was not. “Let’s hope you don’t fuck this up. Because if you do, I’ll make you regret it.”
I barked a laugh. “Funny, you sound just like my sister. You two should compare notes.”
“Charley said that?” Tay sounded rather pleased. “When?”
“Karaoke night.”
“But that was before we even—” He cut himself off, head tilting, while Leyla watched us with keen attention.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sisters, though. And I don’t think I was terribly subtle about how much I…” Wanted you? Too weak. Sure, I’d told myself that’s all it was, but I’d been falling even then. “How much you were coming to mean to me.”
“She sounds smart,” Leyla commented. “I have a feeling I’m going to like her.”
“I honestly don’t know if the world is ready for the two of you to meet,” Tay told her.
“Charley’s coming down for Easter,” I said. “So I guess we’ll see.”
“Easter, huh?” Leyla cocked a brow—or two, rather. Seemed some traits ran in the family. “Excellent. Should be enough time to gather evidence.”
“It’s not an audition,” Tay said.
“Oh, but it is.” With another sharp smile, she disappeared into a tide of relatives.
“Well,” I said, turning to Tay. “That was fun.”
He laughed, soft and sweet, the brightest spot in this room filled with too many people. “Better than Rory, though. Right?”
The first night I’d slept over, Rory had woken me up in the middle of the night with a dishwater sponge to the face. I’d shot up, sputtering and blinking, to find them watching me from a foot away. “Consider this a warning,” they’d said.
“I expected worse,” I’d told them while Tay stirred next to me, grumbling a little at the commotion. “Would have deserved it, too.”
Rory had snorted, tossed me a towel, and left. The next morning, they’d given me their first real smile over a cup of coffee so strong the spoon just about stood upright. A truce.
“Rory likes me,” I claimed now, with an air of grandeur that rivaled the Chief Medical Officer’s speech at the hospital’s year-end gathering. “I totally won them over.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Tay said, but his tone implied I wasn’t entirely off.
He caught my sleeve to draw me with him toward the buffet.
We emptied our glasses before we loaded two plates with stuffed grape leaves, baklava dripping with sugar, and su bore?i done the right way, then ducked through the kitchen and out onto a narrow balcony.
The winter night snapped cold like a twig, bargain-store fairy lights strung around the windows of neighboring houses.
We set our plates on a small metal table and leaned against the railing, Tay tilting into my side.
Our exhalations burst into visible clouds.
Voices and music drifted through the balcony door, traffic roaring below, but up here, it all felt distant—just us for a second or two.
“How’re you holding up?” he asked, so much affection tucked into the folds of the question that I had to blink against a stupid swell of emotions.
“I’m fine. Great, actually.”
“Really?” Wondering, not challenging.
“Yes, really.” I draped an arm around his shoulders to bring him closer, fingers curled against the side of his neck.
Strange how I’d spent so much of my life chasing silence—a pillow over my head as a kid, a few uninterrupted hours of sleep during a night shift, the first rental place I’d been able to afford alone.
But somehow, what I’d really needed was the right kind of noise. “I’m right where I want to be.”
“Yeah?” He sounded flattered, happy, a little disbelieving. That was okay—I believed it enough for the both of us.