Epilogue - Skye - One Year Later #2
Hunter goes still beside me, tracking Archer's exit with the same assessing look he gives unstable structures.
"He okay?" I ask quietly after the door closes.
Hunter's jaw works. "His time will come. He will be. He’s the last single one in the brotherhood."
Berg and Hawke leave shortly after, and Hunter helps me clear the table while I tell him about Sadie's commission, the custom planners we’re working on for her bakery's wholesale clients.
"She wants the design to feel handmade but scalable," I say, already sketching ideas on a scratch pad. "Letterpress covers with a modular insert system."
Hunter leans over my shoulder, studying the sketch. "Show me how it works."
I walk him through the design. The base components can be mixed and matched for efficiency without sacrificing customization. His questions are intelligent and specific. Now he's learning my systems. The reversal makes pride bloom warm beneath my ribs.
"You could apply this to the corporate clients too," he says, tapping the sketch. "Scale the model without scaling your hours."
Satisfaction spreads through me. "Exactly."
He kisses my temple, lingering there. "You're brilliant. You know that?"
"I'm starting to believe it."
Pulling me against his side, his arm comes around my shoulders, and we stand at the window watching darkness settle over the mountains. Outside, the first stars appear over Granitehart Ridge, and smoke from our chimney joins a dozen others dotted along the ridge and rising into the darkening sky.
Next week we're hosting the SAR team's monthly bonfire here.
It was my idea and my planning. The following week, I'm meeting Sadie to finalize her planner designs, then stopping by Ridge Hardware for Mack's custom inventory system.
These are my connections now, not just Hunter's connections I'm borrowing.
I'm not just Hunter Channing's girlfriend who moved to town. I'm Skye Lochary, who runs a design studio from the mountain and makes damn good planners.
"There's a gift I want to show you," Hunter says into the quiet. "Anniversary gift. Come here."
My head jerks up. "You remembered."
"One year ago today, you finished those orders and chose to stay." His hand cups my jaw, thumb brushing across my cheekbone while his eyes hold mine with intensity that steals the air from my lungs. "You think I'd forget the day you chose me back? The day everything changed?"
My knees go loose, and I grip his wrists for balance. My throat tightens around words that won't form. He sees the tears gathering, and his expression softens, thumb catching the first one that spills over.
"Don't cry," he murmurs, but there's something in his voice like he knows exactly what this does to me.
"I can't help it." My voice breaks on the words. "You track the details that matter. You remember the moments that changed everything."
"Because you're what matters." Taking my hand, he leads me to the living room, disappears into his workshop, and comes back a moment later with something behind his back.
He presents me with a wooden sign reading Skye Channing Design Studio, Est. with last year's date carved beneath in letters he must have worked by hand.
My vision blurs again, and my hand lifts to press against my mouth.
Skye Channing. Not Skye Lochary. He gets down on one knee, but I throw my arms around his shoulders, almost knocking him off balance.
“I do, I do, I do,” I murmur between kisses without waiting for him to ask the question.
He kisses me back, matching my energy as his mouth captures mine and he deepens the kiss.
When he pulls away, he stands and reaches into his pocket.
My heart pounds, and heat floods my chest, rising upwards to flush my cheeks. The ring he holds toward me is a simple lover’s knot design. I allow him to slip it onto my ring finger, and it fits like it was made for me.
“You went back for it,” I say, wiping my eyes as tears threaten to spill down my cheeks. I tried it on in an antique shop in Charlottesville on a lark when we drove there for custom supplies, and he must’ve gone back for it.
His thumb brushes the ring now settled on my finger, the cool metal warm from his skin. The knot catches the low light, simple and strong, fully connected with no visible beginning or end.
“Marry me, Skye.”
I lift my gaze to his. My heart trips over itself. “Hunter… yes.”
His smile breaks across his face slow and wide, the kind that reaches his eyes and softens every hard edge of him. He pulls me closer, forehead resting against mine.
“Yeah?” His voice drops lower, rough with feeling. “You’ll let me keep you forever?”
I laugh, the sound shaky and bright. My fingers curl into his shirt. “I already let you keep me. This just makes it official.”
He kisses me then, deep and unhurried, the ring pressing between our palms like a promise sealed in metal and heartbeat.
“Forever starts now,” he murmurs against my lips.
“Forever started the moment you walked into the cabin and saw me with my supplies in a pile on the floor.”
His arms tighten around me. “Good. Because I’m never letting go.”
I pull away after a moment to look at the sign. Running my fingers over the walnut, I feel the smooth finish and the care he put into every curve, every perfect letter. What undoes me: he created this because he sees what I'm building and wants to make it permanent.
"I have a gift for you, too," I say, tilting my head back to look up at him.
His eyebrows rise. "Yeah?"
Leading him to the couch, I pull a flat package wrapped in brown paper from behind it. He opens it carefully, and his hands still when he sees what's inside.
It's a framed, hand-drawn blueprint, annotated in my careful lettering of the cabin and studio layout. Every room is labeled. Every window is marked. In the corner, a legend: Home. Built by Hunter Channing and Skye Lochary.
"You drew this," he says, his voice rough.
"I've been watching you work with the contractor for a year. Thought I'd try my hand at speaking that language." Pressing closer to his side, I hold on. "You built me a space. I wanted to show you I see what we're building together. That it's not just yours or mine—it's ours."
He sets the frame down on the coffee table and pulls me against him, arms tight enough that I feel his heartbeat against my ribs. "It's perfect." He pulls back enough to look at me, and the emotion in his eyes makes my pulse kick. "You're not getting rid of me, Skye. Not now. Not ever."
"Good." Pressing my face to his shoulder, I listen to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. "Because I'm not going anywhere."
We snuggle together on the couch, speaking in low voices about our future together. “What’s stopping us,” I ask, “from driving into Luray tomorrow morning and heading straight to the courthouse?”
“Not a thing in the world,” he says, pressing a kiss to my temple.
"I love you," I whisper into the cabin’s quiet.
"I know." He kisses me again. "I've loved you since the moment you let me help. Since you chose to stay."
One year ago, I came to Granitehart Ridge drowning in deadlines and convinced I had to do it alone. I came to save my business.
Instead, I found him. Found this. Found the version of myself who knows how to be held.
Outside, the mountains of Granitehart Ridge stand eternal in the darkness. Inside this cabin, we've built our permanence. And tomorrow, we’ll crown it.
Archer's story is next, the final book in the Granitehart Ridge Guardians series: A storm strands a fallen artist in my mountain cabin. The moment I see her art, I know two things: she’s not broken, and she’s not leaving. Click here to read it now.
Skye's story doesn't end with her wedding ring.
One year later, seventy-two hours before her biggest deadline, a storm isolates her at the cabin while Hunter handles SAR duty in town.
It's the same pressure that destroyed her before, but she's a different woman entirely.
No panic. No breakdown. Just competence.