Epilogue
The Handkerchief Stays Up: Once raised in the second line, the white cloth does not come back down. That is not how this works.
The bedroom window is open, bringing the Gulf air through the sheer curtains in slow pulls. Brine and the distant sound of the marsh settle into the night.
I've been taking my time with her. It’s the best part of getting to be inside of her every night.
The first few months were urgent in a way I didn't fully understand until later. It was almost like we were both afraid the other might disappear if we moved too slowly.
Six months in, I've learned to slow down. To make it last. To watch her come undone by degrees instead of all at once.
She's on her back beneath me, her legs wrapped around my waist, her fingers twisted in the sheets because I told her to keep them there.
Her hair spreads across the pillow, and her lips are parted. She looks exactly like what she is, which is mine, completely, in a way that still stops my breath if I think about it too hard.
I pull back slowly, almost all the way, and watch her face.
"Reeves." A warning.
"I've got you."
I sink back into her until I feel the resistance of her deepest point. She gasps like all the air has left her body, and she arches off the mattress.
"Right there." Her voice is wrecked. "God, right there, don't you dare stop—"
I do it again. Same angle. Same pace.
She's so warm and tight around me that keeping my head is its own kind of discipline. I've spent my entire career learning discipline, but nothing in any training cycle prepared me for Charli Parsons asking me not to stop.
Her legs tighten around my waist, pulling me deeper, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder, letting go of the pace I was keeping.
"Yes." The word leaves her on an exhale. "Yes, like that, exactly like that—"
I put my mouth against her throat, her pulse hammering there. This specific combination of want and gratitude crushes me every time in the best way.
"Look at me," I say against her jaw.
Her eyes open, and she looks at me the way she only does here, with every careful, measured thing about her stripped away. No armor. No managing. Just her.
"I've got you," I tell her.
She exhales like she's been holding her breath for years.
"I know." Her hips roll against mine, urgent now, chasing the finish. "I know you do. Reeves—" My name breaks apart in her mouth. "Come inside me. I want to feel you—"
I groan into her neck.
Her nails rake down my back, ten sharp points of pressure that pull a sound out of me I don't bother to control. I want the marks. I want every reminder that this happened, that she's real, that I'm here.
She comes apart around me, clenching tightly, her whole body shaking with it. I follow her over the edge seconds later. The release tears through me, and I press as deep as I can go and stay there while she trembles beneath me.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Her chest rises and falls against mine. My hand finds her hip and stays there.
We lie tangled together, her legs still draped over mine, my body still joined with hers.
I shift to pull her closer, my arm moving easily without thinking about it. The shoulder doesn't catch. It hasn't caught in weeks.
No more fast-roping or open water, or the kind of strain that kept reopening the same damage before it could close.
It’s not perfect. I can still feel the ghost of it mornings after a busy weekend. But the constant low-grade war my body was fighting against itself has gone quiet. Turns out the shoulder wasn't the problem. The life was.
I bury my nose in her hair and drink her in.
The Gulf air moves through the curtains. The marsh sounds drift in. Her heartbeat slows against me, and I feel the warmth of what I left inside her settle between us, a seal on something we've both already decided.
She shifts first, rolling to her side to face me.
"I think that was the one," she says.
I look at her, completely mesmerized by her beauty and quiet confidence. I love this woman with every fiber of my being.
She's already smiling that particular smile she saves for things she doesn't want to jinx.
"Yeah?" My voice comes out after that particularly intense lovemaking.
"I don't know. I just—" She presses her palm flat against her stomach. "I feel different than the other times. I know that probably sounds crazy."
"It doesn't sound crazy." I touch the tip of her nose with my pointer, and then come in for a kiss. Those lips….
"The doctor said three months was the magic number. Off the pill long enough that everything resets." She tips her head back against the pillow. "It's been exactly three months today."
I do the math without meaning to. She went off the pill the week before she and Benjy moved the last of the boxes in.
I remember because I drove the truck and Benjy spent the entire afternoon telling me exactly where each piece of furniture should go with the authority of a five-year-old who has opinions about feng shui.
I let her and Benjy decide what stayed from the curated furniture and what came with them from Magnolia. It’s a mixture of both of our things, but it’s her furniture and touch that make this house a home.
We weren't even officially trying yet. She just looked at me one morning and said she stopped taking the pill. And that was the whole conversation.
"How do you feel?" I ask.
"Hopeful." She considers that word for a second. “Ready to build our family together.”
I slide my hand over hers, where it rests on her stomach.
"Benjy's going to lose his mind," I say.
She laughs, the real one, the one that goes all the way up to her eyes. "He's going to want to name it something completely unhinged. Last week, he told me his favorite name for a girl is Stingray."
"That's a strong choice."
"He's committed to it." She shakes her head, still smiling. "He said it can be shortened to Ray for everyday use."
I stare at the curtains dancing in the breeze for a moment. Stingray Stone.
"We'll workshop it," I say.
She laughs again and turns her face into my shoulder. Her breath is warm against my skin.
Outside, an egret moves through the marsh grass, and the water beyond catches the last of the moon before it drops below the tree line.
I've lived in a lot of places. Base housing in Virginia Beach.
My father's estate in New Orleans. A rotation of luxury condos, tents, and forward operating bases that all started to look the same after a while, regardless of the disparity.
Places where I kept exactly what I needed and nothing that weighed me down.
This house has Charli's reading glasses on my nightstand, Benjy's artwork taped to the refrigerator, and a collection of shells along the windowsill that gets added to every Saturday morning when we walk the beach.
It has a marsh fort in the backyard that keeps getting added onto and a dock that Benjy has already deemed the official headquarters of all future pirate surveillance operations.
It has them in it.
That's the difference.
"How was the drive today?" Charli asks.
"Fine. Hit some traffic coming through Metairie, but I made it before the morning briefing."
She tilts her head up to look at me. "You're sure you're not tired of it?"
I've answered this question approximately forty times since she moved in. I don't mind.
"Charli."
"I know. I know, you're not tired of it." She lays her head back against my shoulder. "I just don't want you resenting the commute when the newness wears off."
"The newness of what. Driving to work."
"You know what I mean."
I do. She means the newness of this. Of us. Of choosing to absorb an hour of highway each way instead of choosing the easier home that would have put distance between me and them.
"I'm not going to resent it," I tell her. "I lived out of a duffel bag for six years. An hour on I-10 is not a hardship. It’s what brings me back home to you.”
She's quiet for a moment. "Ridge said you're doing well."
"When did you talk to Ridge?"
"He called me." The corner of her mouth turns up. "He wanted to know if you seemed happy or if you were white-knuckling it."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him to ask you."
I exhale through my nose. "I'll call him."
"He's proud of you, Reeves. He doesn't know how to say it, but he is."
I let that sit for a second. Ridge and I don't operate that way. We never have.
He took the news about Benjy the way he takes everything, which is quietly, then thoroughly. Two days after I told them, Ridge showed up in Bay St. Louis with a savings bond and a ride-on Range Rover toy. Cain called it the most Ridge thing that had ever happened.
Keller was the one who got me the most. He had an actual tear roll down his face, which none of us will ever mention again.
I think becoming a father himself taught him that love doesn't only break you. It builds you, too. When I told him about Benjy, he understood that in a way the rest of us couldn't yet.
He also pointed out, with complete seriousness, that his daughter had held the title of oldest Stone cousin for four months. He hasn’t fully accepted it.
None of us saw me being first. Least of all me.
"The Magnolia renters settled in okay?" I ask.
"Marta says the dishwasher makes a noise. I told her that dishwasher has always made that noise, and it's essentially a feature at this point."
“I would never have the patience to deal with managing a rental. You never cease to amaze me.”
She pauses. "It's strange, renting it. I drive past sometimes when I go to Mom’s and Dad’s and see their porch light on. It’s weird not seeing Benjy’s toys in the front yard.”
"Does that bother you?"
She considers this honestly. That's one of my favorite things about her. She never reaches for the comfortable answer.
"No," she says finally. “This is the way things are supposed to evolve. I bought that house for Benjy and me when we needed it. We don't need it the same way anymore."
I press my mouth to her hair.