Epilogue
Lucian
I’ve been body-checked by two-hundred-pound linebackers, thrown into Gatorade coolers, and tackled on national television with a mic still clipped to my jersey.
But nothing—and I mean nothing—compares to the sheer, uncontrollable madness that is Olivia wearing a headband with tiny syringes bobbing from springs and declaring, “We need more glitter glue.”
At seven in the morning.
Seven on a Monday morning.
She’s using my day off to boss me around.
I’ll teach her who’s the boss later tonight.
I lean my hip against the front desk of the clinic.
Arms crossed, trying not to stare like a guy who’s just realized his whole future might include glitter glue and goats in sweaters.
Sarah, in a velvet navy bow tie, lounges at my feet with the kind of sigh that says she’s already over the day.
Smart dog.
“Lucian,” Olivia breathes, panic already curling around her words as she rushes past me holding two mismatched mugs and a clipboard with a disturbingly colorful sticky note situation, “please tell me you know how to fix an espresso machine, because I just broke ours. I panicked.”
Her voice is higher than usual.
Her hair is pinned back in a way that makes her eyes look impossibly wide.
She’s got that determined sparkle that says she’s going to get through this even if it kills both of us.
And maybe the goat.
I push off the counter, tugging at the bottom of my hoodie as I follow her toward the back room.
“Let’s assume I do. Is it hissing or flashing any sort of demonic code?”
She whirls around, eyes wild.
“It beeped four times, hissed like a cat, and then said something that sounded like . . . ‘please refill receptacle.’ What the hell is a receptacle? Why does it need to be refilled? I already refilled it. I told you we only needed a regular coffee maker not some fancy espresso machine that can vaporize us.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
“I’m guessing it meant the water tank.”
“Oh.” She blinks.
“That makes more sense. Less apocalyptic.”
Olivia points to the espresso machine as if it was personally attacking her.
“It’s our first day, Lucian. Soft opening, remember? Just family and friends. Not a full launch. And yet somehow, it feels like we’re hosting a gala and the carpet is on fire.”
“Technically, the carpet’s fine. Just the sign that’s wrong.”
Olivia groans and pulls her stethoscope down from her neck like it’s choking her.
“Don’t remind me. Who puts Halston’s Exotic Pet Emporium on a vet clinic sign? Do I look like I sell lizards in trench coats?”
I look her up and down—hair in disarray, glasses smudged, mascara smudged-er—and say, “Honestly? Maybe just on weekends.”
Should I tell her that it was probably my mistake?
I was goofing around when I called about the sign and .
. . well that’s what came out of it.
Fuck, she shouldn’t put me in charge of important things.
Her glare is immediate and weak.
“Don’t make me throw my favorite coffee mug at you.”
“You have seventeen of them.”
“That one has a llama and says ‘No Prob-llama,’ Lucian. It’s sacred.”
I can’t help it.
I laugh. That full-body, bent-at-the-waist kind of laugh that sneaks up and knocks you breathless.
Olivia scowls as if she wants to stay mad, but her lips twitch at the corners, betraying her.
She’s trying so hard to hold it all together, as she always does.
But I know her.
I know the breath she just took was shaky.
I know she hasn’t eaten yet.
I know she triple-checked the animal wellness chart at four in the morning and that she’s been spiraling ever since the sign arrived.
And I know—know—this woman doesn’t need a hero.
She needs someone who can carry a goat in a tutu without flinching.
“Where is Sir Wiggles?” I ask.
She perks up. “Oh. In the breakroom. He’s wearing a top hat.”
Of course, he is.
Sir Wiggles, for the record, is not a sir.
Nor is he particularly wiggle-prone.
He’s a grumpy rescue goat with one ear and a fondness for nibbling shoelaces.
Olivia found him half-frozen behind a barn last Saturday and is beginning to nurse him back to health until we can find him a home.
I’m pretty sure he lives here.
She just won’t tell me until she makes it official in her mind.
“He doesn’t like me,” I mutter as I lift the goat into my arms. “He thinks I’m trying to replace him.”
“You’re trying to find him a home before he’s ready,” Olivia says from the counter, where she’s now arranging cookies shaped like paw prints next to a sign that reads, Treat Yo’Self (But Please Don’t Feed the Ferrets).
I raise a brow. “We have ferrets?”
“We might. Aspen’s bringing a few from the rescue. Just for today.”
“Of course.”
Sir Wiggles lets out a honk-like bleat, and I swear it’s judgmental.
Olivia’s chewing her lip now, staring down the espresso machine.
I slide Sir Wiggles into the designated goat pen—yes, that’s a thing—and crouch beside the coffee machine, popping the tank and checking the plug.
“Problem solved,” I say a minute later, wiping my hands on a towel like I’ve just defused a bomb instead of fixing the espresso machine.
“You didn’t push the tank in all the way. The machine’s a little . . . temperamental. Like someone I know.”
She gasps, outraged and radiant.
“I am not temperamental.”
“You’re right,” I deadpan.
“You’re an extremely stable, grounded individual who once yelled at a cardboard cutout of a cartoon sloth because it fell on you at the pharmacy.”
“That was self-defense, and you know it,” she snaps back, yet she’s already laughing—this bright, breathless kind of laugh that hits me harder than it should.
The kind that makes my ribs feel too tight and my brain short-circuit in the most inconveniently romantic way possible.
And then—God help me—I say it.
“I’m going to marry you. Full buying a ring, kneeling in front of you and proposing.”
The words tumble out like I’ve been holding them in my mouth too long and they just gave up waiting for permission.
She freezes. “I’m sorry—what?”
I stand up too fast and immediately regret it.
“I mean—I didn’t mean—not right now. I just—fuck.”
“You’re going to what me?” Her eyes are full-blown saucers now.
Her hands grip the edge of the espresso counter like she’s bracing for emotional whiplash.
I rub the back of my neck, my mouth dry, my brain trying to catch up with the part of me that just sprinted ahead and proposed like we’re in the finale of a reality dating show.
“Eventually. Maybe very soon. I just—I think about it. A lot. You and me. This place. Sarah with a ring on her collar. You saying something ridiculous like ‘you had me at neuter.’”
“I would never say that.”
“You totally would.”
She stares at me, expression unreadable.
My heart decides now’s the perfect time to throw a tantrum inside my chest.
And then—softly, like it’s something sacred and a little scary—she says, “I think about it too.”
That sentence wrecks me in the best way.
She clears her throat, trying to sound casual, like she didn’t just hand me her entire future in a whisper.
“Not, like, that specifically. I mean, Sir Wiggles would obviously be the ring bearer. But yeah. Sometimes. You and me. This. Just . . . being a thing.”
We stand there in it, this almost-too-big silence that’s not empty at all.
It’s full of everything we haven’t said and everything we already know.
And then, in possibly the most on-brand moment of our entire relationship, Sir Wiggles farts loud enough to register on the Richter scale…
and promptly rolls off his bed.
We lose it.
Olivia snorts.
I double over, gasping for air.
Sarah barks like she’s deeply offended.
Tears prick my eyes from laughing so hard.
And just like that, the moment’s gone—but not erased.
It’s still here, tucked under our laughter.
Real.
She wipes her eyes.
“Okay. New plan. You handle the espresso machine. I’ll go figure out how to turn Halston’s Exotic Pet Emporium back into Olivia’s Small Animal Clinic before someone shows up with a python and an attitude.”
I catch her wrist as she turns.
Her skin is warm beneath my palm, and her pulse is a little too fast. Mine probably matches.
“Soon,” I say, quieter now.
“I’m going to get a ring and propose. Not today. But I will. Okay?”
She doesn’t look away.
Her gaze softens, drops to my mouth for a beat, then back up.
She nods once, and my fucking heart almost explodes.
Then she cups my face like she’s about to kiss me, leans in close .
. . and wipes something off my cheek with her sleeve.
“I think you had goat poop on your face.”
“Romantic,” I mutter.
She grins, wicked and beautiful.
“Welcome to forever, Crawford. I can’t wait to say yes when you propose.”
I pull her in before she can walk away, slide my hand around her waist, and kiss her.
This time it’s not a question, not a maybe.
It’s slow but solid—full of the future and a thousand half-formed promises.
Her lips taste like coffee and bad decisions and everything I want to come home to for the rest of my life.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE CRAWFORD FAMILY PLAYBOOK?
Scottie and Jason Tate’s story (yes, that’s Leif’s best friend)
PLAYING FOR THE HAT TRICK