Epilogue Annalise
Epilogue
Annalise
Four Seasons, A Second Chance, And No More Running
?? Fall
The shows feel different now. Louder in the right ways. Softer in the ones that matter.
A label picked us up. We’re back on tour.
Not a hundred cities in a hundred days, not chasing numbers or fame, but choosing our stops like we choose each other. With purpose. With breath.
Rock starts journaling.
Kenna’s suspicious. I’m proud. Zach is just shocked he found a pen.
We opened our fall leg in Asheville. The crowd knew every word to our new single. Chase couldn’t see them, but he could hear the love. He stood next to me onstage and said afterward, “That was the clearest I’ve ever seen.”
I wrote that down. I don’t want to forget it.
***
?? Winter
Chase had another scan in December. Stable. Two syllables that meant everything.
We celebrated with grilled cheese and champagne. Not fancy. Just us.
He’s still healing. Still adjusting. There are days he disappears into his music and days he just disappears, needing quiet, needing less.
I don’t take it personally. I get it. And when he reappears, he’s softer.
Calmer. Like whatever storm he went into left him lighter somehow, even if it still rains now and then.
We don’t talk about fear the way we used to. Not as a monster in the corner, but as something we’ve learned to live beside. Something that reminds us to hold each other tighter.
Some days, we make music.
Some days, we make space.
Both feel like love.
Tag started a nonprofit in January. A support fund for survivors of opioid overdoses and their families. He doesn’t talk about what happened to him. Not directly. But I see it in the way he shows up for the ones who haven’t figured out how to stand back up yet.
He named it “Second Verse.”
I cried when he told me. He pretended not to notice.
***
?? Spring
Kenna accidentally proposed to Tag.
We were packing up after a show, and she was ranting about his socks ending up in her makeup bag. Then, out of nowhere: “Maybe we should just get married if you’re gonna keep living in my damn suitcase.”
Silence.
Panic.
Then she bolted.
Tag didn’t follow her right away. He just looked down at the place she’d been standing, grinned, and said, “Guess I need a ring now.”
Three days later, he pulled her out onto an empty venue balcony after soundcheck, dropped to one knee with a ring he definitely didn’t buy in a hurry, and asked her for real.
She said yes.
They’ve been fighting over who proposed first ever since.
Mom and Dad visited last week. They’re lighter than I remember them. Less worried about all the wrong things. Mom cried when she saw Chase’s guitar line in the store near our venue. Dad asked for a T-shirt with the band name in glitter. Kenna was so proud.
Chase paid me a compliment that made me blush, and Dad said, “He’s got limited vision, and he still sees you better than the last one ever did.”
I’ve never believed in spring more than I do right now.
***
?? Summer
I walked barefoot down an aisle made of wildflowers while my band members played something that sounded like moonlight. Tag stood beside Chase, unusually quiet, his jaw clenched like he was holding back every feeling he didn’t know how to say. Kenna reached over and slipped her hand into his.
The sun came out just as I said “I do.”
Chase smiled wide.
“I love your smile,” I whispered.
He pulled me close and whispered back, “You smile, I smile. It’s as simple as that.”
There was no spotlight. No stage. Just our people. Our sound. Our love, stripped down and honest and real. The kind of music you don’t need to rehearse. The kind you feel in your bones.
Later, when the cake was half eaten and my dress was grass-stained at the hem, Chase picked up an old acoustic and played something slow.
Something just for me. I sat and watched him in the flicker of the lanterns, and for a moment, I saw what the world sees when they call him the man who strums stars.
Just before we packed up for the night, I spotted an earthworm on the edge of the path, glistening from the brief evening rainfall.
Five hearts.
Still surviving. Still moving forward.
Summer ends on the perfect high note.
***
It’s a full moon tonight.
A floating ball of honey.
We lie in the grass behind the white Cape Cod—our brand-new house in the heart of Rutland—with Toaster sprawled between us like a little furnace in a fur coat.
Chase has one hand laced in mine, the other resting on his chest, fingers tapping out a rhythm he hasn’t written yet.
He hums under his breath, trying to lure the melody closer.
Half Motown, half stardust. All him.
The deck behind us is partially finished, splintered wood stacked like building blocks for a life still unfolding.
But the view is already perfect. Wide and soundless in a way we didn’t know we needed.
He said he wanted a place to hear the sky while he worked.
Said the silence here sounds like possibility.
So different from the roar of stages and city lights.
There’s a candle burning back inside the kitchen window. The same one I lit months ago, whispering something into the wax that sounded like thank you.
I used to dream about escaping, about a vacation somewhere warm and far away, where nothing hurt and everything stood still.
I don’t need that anymore.
Not when I have this.
I turn my head toward Chase, fingering his silver ring dangling around my neck. “What do you see?”
His eyes are aimed at the sky. He’s quiet; he’s always quiet when it matters. Then he smiles, slow and certain, the way he does when he’s not just answering, but telling the truth.
“Pieces,” he says.
It’s the same answer he gave me back in that cabin when everything felt like it was falling apart. Back when the world cracked open and asked if we still wanted to stay.
But this time, it doesn’t sound broken.
Because I know exactly what he means.
Pieces of a fractured sky.
Pieces of a beautiful life.
Pieces of the night still holding us together.
THE END