Epilogue
ANNA
The air smelled like salt and summertime. It was the kind of night that made the world feel softer, slower, like the ocean had exhaled just for us.
Charleston stretched behind us in a warm amber glow, the skyline silhouetted against the deepening blush of the horizon. Gas lamps flickered along the waterfront. Spanish moss swayed in the breeze. Somewhere behind the clinking of rigging and the hush of the tide, a heron lifted into the sky like the evening was a thing to rise toward.
Atlas held my hand as we stepped down the private dock, the planks creaking beneath our dress shoes. He wore navy again—classic, tailored, devastating. Just like the first night I met him. Except tonight, the weight in his shoulders was different. Lighter. Like some part of the war inside him had settled.
“You look …” His voice was rough, warm. “Like you stepped out of a dream I don’t deserve.”
I gave him a smile that only he ever got. “Still wearing tuxes and making girls weak in the knees, huh?”
His brow arched. “You were immune to that once.”
“Was I?” I teased. “I don’t remember that version of me.”
He leaned close, lips brushing my ear. “I do. She was trouble.”
“So are you,” I murmured back, heart fluttering.
We reached the end of the dock, and my breath caught. There, waiting like a secret meant only for us, was The Revenant . Sleek, modern, impossibly elegant. All dark wood and brushed steel and warm lighting spilling across the polished deck. A discreet crew stood ready at the gangway, dressed in sharp uniforms, hands folded, expressions gracious.
“You … own this?” I asked, blinking as the scope of it hit me. “You’ve had a yacht this whole time?”
Atlas chuckled, resting a hand on the small of my back. “You’ll have to get used to that reaction. There are things I haven’t shown you yet.”
My jaw dropped. “This isn’t one of the things?”
He shrugged, far too casual for a man who just unveiled a literal floating palace. “It’s not the biggest boat I’ve owned.”
I turned, smacking his chest playfully. “How is this real?”
He kissed my forehead, guiding me up the steps. “Because I wanted tonight to be perfect.”
The sun was low now, casting the water in gold as we stepped onto the main deck. A private table was set beneath a canopy of string lights, the china bone white, the crystal gleaming, the silver catching the sky’s fire. Rose petals dusted the floor like someone had walked through heaven and tracked beauty behind them. And just beyond the table, tucked discreetly near the bow, sat a string quartet.
I stopped short.
“They’re from the Philharmonic,” Atlas said softly behind me. “I called in a few favors.”
I turned to him slowly, my chest already aching. “You hired a quartet to play for us?”
He gave a modest shrug, but his eyes sparkled. “You once told me that music was the only thing that could cut through the noise. I figured … we could start the next chapter with no noise at all. Just strings and sky and you.”
My heart cracked open in the best possible way.
Dinner was perfect—lobster and champagne and slow, laughing bites between stories we’d already told each other a dozen times but somehow couldn’t stop sharing again. The musicians played Debussy and Saint-Saens and a little Chopin because I had once, sleepily, told Atlas it made me feel like I was floating.
And then, after the last course had been cleared and the last glass poured, the yacht began to drift gently into the harbor.
The city stretched behind us now in a glow of old bricks and steeples and stories, and the sky burned violet at the edges. Wind teased the hem of my silk gown. The music softened. My pulse didn’t.
Atlas stood.
He reached for my hand and pulled me gently to my feet.
I smiled, tilting my head. “What now?”
He didn’t answer. Just turned, slowly, and lowered to one knee.
Time stopped.
The sea, the wind, the song—they all fell away.
And there he was.
This beautiful, brutal man who’d once told me love was a weakness … now looking up at me like it was the only strength that had ever mattered.
“I don’t have the right words,” he said quietly, voice full of grit and reverence. “And I sure as hell don’t deserve you. But I love you, Anna. I love you with a kind of hunger I didn’t think I’d survive. You’re my beginning and my home. You’re the quiet after the war.”
I was already crying.
He reached into his pocket and held up a ring—simple, stunning, a single diamond framed in two thin bands of platinum, elegant as a promise whispered in the dark.
“You already have your parents’ blessing,” he went on. “And you’ve had my heart since the second I saw you. All that’s left is this.”
His eyes burned into mine. “Will you marry me?”
My knees went weak.
“Yes,” I whispered, breathless. “God, yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger, then rose and pulled me into his arms, kissing me like the stars might crash into us if we waited a second longer.
The quartet began to play again. Or maybe they’d never stopped:
The boat drifted on, slow and steady across the harbor, while the city lit up behind us and the sky turned to fire.
I didn’t need a ceremony to know I was already his.
But when it came, I would walk down that aisle with a full heart, steady feet, and the kind of love people wrote legends about.
The wind caught my hair as I leaned into his chest, the new weight of the ring on my finger grounding me in a way nothing else ever had. Atlas held me like I was his entire axis, the center of some larger, unnamed force that only made sense when we were touching.
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then rested his chin there, voice low. “Will you take my name?”
I blinked up at him, surprised. “You’re asking?”
“I didn’t want to assume,” he murmured, his eyes tracing mine. “But I want it, Anna. I want to hear it. I want to see it written down. I want it in your passport, on mail, in every stupid little form you ever fill out. I want you to be mine in every way they make official.”
My lips parted, heart clenching. “Of course, I’ll take it.”
Something dark and possessive flickered through his expression, and he made a soft, dangerous sound that vibrated through my bones.
“Anna Dane,” he growled, and then grinned like a man who’d just claimed an empire. “Yeah. I like that. I’m gonna start calling you that now.”
I laughed, breathless. “You’re not even going to wait?”
“Nope,” he said, brushing his thumb over my jaw like I was the most sacred thing he'd ever touched. “You said yes. You’re mine. That’s all the waiting I ever plan to do.”
We stood there for a long moment, the sky deepening into a rich indigo around us, the string quartet’s melody trailing softly on the breeze. But even in all that sweetness, I felt the weight of something unsaid between us.
I pulled back a little, searching his face. “Can I ask you something?”
His brow furrowed, but he nodded. “Always.”
I hesitated. “That night Ryker drove me back to the Hall … he said something. About before. About a woman who?—”
He stilled, just slightly. But his hand didn’t leave mine.
“She broke your heart at the altar,” I finished softly.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yeah. She did.”
“You proposed once before,” I said, my voice careful. “I guess I didn’t … I didn’t realize.”
“And you were proposed to once before, by Eugene.”
He was quiet for a beat, then added, “It wasn’t this.”
I looked up at him.
“It was never this,” he continued, his voice low and certain. “That proposal was made by a man trying to fill a void. Trying to make the pain quieter. I didn’t know who I was yet. Didn’t know what I needed. And she—” He shook his head. “She wasn’t you.”
I swallowed hard. “But it still hurt?”
He nodded. “Of course, it did. But it also led me here. And I swear to you, Anna, I haven’t thought about her. Not since the night you walked into that dinner and played like the world owed you nothing and still couldn’t take its eyes off you.”
My chest swelled. “You really mean that.”
“I do,” he said. “This is the only time that’s ever mattered. I don’t regret anything that brought me to you.”
I kissed him then—soft and sure and full of everything I didn’t know how to say.
When we pulled apart, his eyes danced. “So.”
“So?”
He leaned in, lips brushing the shell of my ear. “What do you say we go below deck and start making some little Danes?”
Heat rushed through me, blood sparking to life. “You want kids tonight?”
He pulled back, that wicked glint back in full force. “I’ve wanted kids with you since the second you told me you’d always be ready for me. You think I don’t picture them? Running around this yacht with your eyes and my temper?”
I laughed, flushed, and achy in the best way. “That sounds terrifying.”
“That sounds like home,” he said.
He took my hand again, lacing our fingers together. “Come on, Mrs. Dane. Let’s go make a memory we’ll never tell them about.”
The quartet faded behind us.
The moon rose over the harbor.
And I followed the only man who ever made me feel like I belonged—into the dark, into forever, into everything.
* * *
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