Epilogue II
TIANA
The first thing I do when I unlock the front door of my café is stare at the little hand-painted sign beneath the glass that reads The Yellow Door in soft, looping letters.
My café.
My actual own coffee shop.
I stand there for a second with the keys in my hand and let myself look at it. I am standing inside something I built.
Something we built.
The bones of the space are Griffin’s. He designed every line, from the wide front windows to the curved counter to the little reading nook near the back where Sylas already declared he would be “working” after school.
Mya handled the interior, which means the place somehow feels like sunshine, comfort, and subtle expensive taste without looking like we tried too hard.
W.H.M. did the construction, and every time I look at the finished space, I can see all of them in it.
I run my palm over the smooth edge of the counter and swallow around the lump in my throat.
For a long time, I thought losing Willow’s meant losing the dream. I thought one door closing meant the whole future I had imagined for myself had disappeared with it. I didn’t understand yet that sometimes life does not hand you the exact dream you asked for.
Sometimes, if you are lucky and loved by people who refuse to let you shrink, it hands you something better.
Naming the café The Yellow Door was for Lila. The woman who loved Griffin first, gave him Sylas, and shaped parts of him that I love every day.
When Griffin and I started our relationship for real, he stopped making me feel like I was competing with a ghost. He’s never used Lila as a measuring stick. He never brought her into our relationship in a way that made me feel second or smaller or like I had to earn a place beside him.
But he also never erased her.
And somehow, that made me love him more.
He let his past exist without asking me to live inside it. He let me love him without asking me to replace what came before me. He made room for me, for us, for this messy, beautiful life we have now, and I wanted him to know that I see all of it.
I see the grief that shaped him.
I see the love that raised Sylas before I ever got the honor of being his mother. Legally, officially, and forever, as of three months ago.
I still can’t think about that day without wanting to cry.
Griffin held my hand so tightly I lost feeling in two fingers, and when the judge asked if Sylas understood what was happening, he told her, very seriously, that I was already his mommy.
I was useless after that—mascara everywhere, dignity nowhere.
Though it took me a little while to fully forgive Griffin.
I love him, but love did not magically erase the hurt, and trust did not rebuild itself just because both of us wanted it badly enough.
We had to talk through the ugly parts. We had to sit in discomfort.
Griffin had to learn how to tell the truth before it became a crisis, and I had to learn that forgiveness did not mean pretending something never happened.
But I always knew I would get there, because even when I was angry with him, needed distance, or even when I made him work for every piece of me he got back, I still could not imagine the rest of my life with anyone else. I wanted the hard days with Griffin.
I wanted all of it with him. I still do.
The bell above the door jingles behind me.
“We’re not open yet,” I call automatically, even though I already know who it is.
“Good,” Griffin says. “Because I didn’t come to order coffee.”
I turn, and there he is.
My Griffin Hayes, standing in the doorway of the café he designed for me, wearing a black coat over one of those fitted shirts that make him look unfairly delicious.
Sylas stands beside him in his little button-down, holding a bouquet of yellow flowers with both hands and wearing the proudest smile I have ever seen.
My chest goes soft.
“Mommy,” he says, rushing toward me. “These are for you.”
I crouch before he reaches me, and he all but crashes into my arms, nearly crushing the bouquet between us. His little body fits against mine so naturally now that I barely remember what it felt like before I met him.
“Thank you, bug,” I whisper, kissing his cheek. “They’re perfect.”
Griffin crosses the café slowly and stops in front of me. “Hey, Trouble.”
“Hey, Stranger.” I lift myself off the floor, reaching up to give him a kiss.
Behind him, my dad clears his throat like he is trying very hard not to make a comment.
I pull back with a laugh. “Hi, Dad.”
He steps farther into the café with my stepmom tucked beside him, both of them looking around the space with awe.
“Look at this, TJ,” he says softly. “You did it.”
He pulls me into a hug, and my stepmom joins us a second later, wrapping both of us up until I am squished between them and laughing through the tears I refuse to let fall.
When they let me go, Sylas is already tugging on my dad’s hand.
“Grandpa, did you see the yellow door?”
My dad looks down at him, his whole face softening. “I did. It’s pretty special.”
My stepmom bends to kiss the top of Sylas’s head, then reaches for Griffin, surprising him with a warm hug. He stills for half a second before his arms come around her, and something in my chest twists at the sight of it.
The bell above the door jingles again, and Mya walks in with Worth and Brianna behind her.
“TJ,” my sister says, stopping just inside the entrance. Her eyes move over the space. “Wow.”
Worth sets a box on one of the tables and looks around with a satisfied smile. “It looks good.”
Mya turns to him. “Good? It looks incredible,” she corrects.
I laugh and cross the café to hug her. “You made it.”
“Obviously.” She squeezes me back. “I was not missing this.”
Brianna comes over holding a tray of cookies wrapped in ribbon that immediately gets stolen by Sylas. “TJ, this is beautiful.”
Today’s soft opening is small. Family, friends, a few neighbors, and the people who helped this place become more than a dream will be coming to support The Yellow Door.
As the door opens again and again, and people fill the room, pride blooms in my chest until I can barely contain it.
I walk over to Griffin, slipping behind the counter where the two of us can have one small pocket of privacy in the middle of the noise.
“You okay?” I ask.
“How could I not be? Look around us. You did this. I’m so proud of you, baby.”
I look out at the café again, at the yellow door, and the people I love standing inside the dream I thought I had lost, and the last piece of nerves inside me finally settles. I smile up at him.
“I love you, Hayes.”
“I love you more, Jones.”
By late evening, the crowd has thinned to only a few people.
I’m exhausted, but beneath that, I’m buzzing with restless energy.
I am wiping down the counter for the third unnecessary time when Griffin comes up behind me, his presence settling over my back before his hand does. His palm slides to my hips, and his mouth lowers near my ear.
“You’re hiding.”
“I am absolutely not hiding. I am cleaning.”
“It’s already clean.”
“Maybe I have high standards.”
His thumb moves against my waist, slow enough to make my breath catch. “You do.”
There is something in his voice that makes my stomach dip.
I glance over my shoulder, and that is my first mistake, because Griffin is looking at me like he has been patient for hours and has finally reached the end of whatever thin thread was holding him in place.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Mine drops to his.
“Griffin,” I warn quietly.
His mouth curves. “What?”
“That look is not family appropriate.”
His hand tightens around me and he leans closer, close enough that his chest brushes my back. “Then maybe we should move somewhere they can’t see us.”
My pulse trips.
Across the room, Mya is saying something to Worth, Brianna is scrolling on her phone, and Sylas is playing with Steggy and my parents in his dedicated corner.
No one is looking at us. Still, my face heats.
“You are shameless,” I whisper.
“I’ve waited all day.” His lips brush the shell of my ear, and the answer leaves him low and rough. “For five minutes alone with my fiancée.”
Every thought in my head disappears.
I turn slowly in his arms, keeping one hand braced on the counter. “I am not your fiancée.”
“Not yet.”
My breath catches.
I try to be playful because anything else might make my knees give out. “That sounded dangerously close to a proposal.”
His eyes stay on mine. “It wasn’t, but it will be soon, Sugar.”
My heart stumbles so hard I almost hate him for it.
“Griffin Hayes,” I whisper, “you cannot say things like that to me while I’m holding a cleaning cloth.”
He reaches down, takes the cloth from my hand, and sets it on the counter. “Problem solved.”
I stare at him, then I laugh under my breath.
His hand slides from my waist to my lower back. “Come here. Closer.”
Griffin’s mouth brushes my temple. “Office?”
My stomach flips again.
I glance toward the small hallway behind the counter, where a narrow door leads to the back office Griffin designed with built-in shelves, a massive desk I definitely did not need but absolutely love, and one very lockable door.
Then I look back at him. “Five minutes.”
His gaze drops again. “I can work with five minutes.”
We slip away. Mya pretends not to notice us disappearing, though the look she shoots me over her shoulder says she absolutely does and will be asking me about it later.
Griffin closes the office door behind us, and for one breath, neither of us moves.
I go to him.
The kiss starts soft, just his mouth brushing mine, his hand settling at the side of my neck while my fingers curl into the front of his shirt. The second his other hand grips my waist, the kiss changes.
My back meets the door with a thud, and Griffin makes a sound low in his throat that sends heat sliding through me so fast I forget we are technically in public.
“Griffin,” I breathe against his mouth.
My hands slide up his chest, over the hard line of his shoulders, into his hair. His beard scrapes against my jaw as his mouth moves to the corner of mine, then lower.
I tug at his hair.
He groans, then his mouth is on mine again, hungrier, and I forget the café, the guests, the cookies, the entire concept of professionalism.
“Five minutes,” I remind him weakly.
Griffin braces his hands on either side of me, his forehead resting against mine as we both breathe like we have been running.
“On your knees, Trouble.”
Think Tiana and Griffin are done?
Not even close.