Epilogue
NATALIE
Election Day
The Lowcountry had woken soft that morning, the marsh flat as glass, the sun rising gold over the live oaks at Middleton Place.
We had chosen the spot on purpose—close enough to Charleston to get back in time for the day’s madness, but steeped in history and quiet, a private pocket where the only sounds were hooves in wet grass and the hush of Spanish moss in the breeze.
Flapjack tossed his mane like he knew what day it was.
He had Ethan in his saddle, long frame folded into the leather, looking both too big for the horse and exactly right at the same time.
I rode alongside on one of the Middleton geldings, the scent of wet earth and horses in my lungs, the ribbon of the Ashley River flashing silver in the distance.
“This is the only way I was going to survive today,” I said, tipping my face into the morning sun.
“Not champagne in bed?” Ethan asked, grinning like he knew the answer.
“Champagne’s for later. Right now I need hooves and air.”
He leaned forward, rubbing Flapjack’s neck. “He likes it here. No cameras, no sidewalks. Just space.”
“Same,” I said, and Flapjack flicked his ears as if he agreed with me.
We let the horses stretch into a gallop across the wide lawn, the world flashing in streaks of green and gold, and when we pulled up, breathless and laughing, Ethan looked over at me like the whole day could end right there and he’d be satisfied.
But it didn’t end.
By noon, we were cleaned up and sitting at Granddaddy’s kitchen table in Holly Hill, plates of fried chicken and potatoes between us.
Granddaddy poured sweet tea like it was communion wine. “You’re going to win,” he said, matter-of-fact, passing Ethan the cornbread basket like they’d done this ritual for decades.
Ethan took it without flinching, which still surprised me. He’d come to Holly Hill weeks ago, endured zoning arguments disguised as small talk, and even won over my father in the paint-splattered studio. Somehow, the Montana boy fit, like he’d always been meant to sit here, part of us.
“He already belongs to us,” Granddaddy had muttered once after supper, loud enough for me to hear. Today, he didn’t need to say it. The way Ethan laughed at his story about a zoning commissioner who couldn’t tell the difference between asphalt and aggregate said it for him.
“After lunch,” I said, nerves fizzing under my ribs, “we head to the polls.”
“Make sure your lipstick isn’t crooked,” Granddaddy said dryly, and Ethan kicked me gently under the table like he’d volunteered to check for me.
The polling station buzzed like a hive when we arrived.
Reporters crowded, cameras already live.
I cast my vote with Ethan at my side and Granddaddy watching like a hawk, his linen jacket pressed and his pride carefully hidden under the brim of his hat.
People clapped when I dropped the ballot into the box.
Some shouted my name. A little girl tugged my sleeve and whispered, “Make the streets dry.”
“I will,” I promised, bending down to eye level, and Ethan’s hand steadied the small of my back as if he were casting the vote with me.
We waited for results at Kimmy’s borrowed office downtown, a space strung with too many cords and not enough chairs.
Sandwiches sweated in plastic wrap on the table.
Pearl paced like she was still my nurse.
Granddaddy pretended to nap in the corner, but I saw his foot tapping time.
Ethan sat close, his thigh warm against mine, his arm heavy and protective around my shoulders.
When the first results rolled in, I thought my heart would pound straight through the floorboards. Precinct after precinct—blue check marks next to my name. The cheers rose, fell, rose again. Kimmy cried into her laptop. Owen hollered so loud someone brought him water.
And then it happened. The networks called it: Natalie Kennedy, Mayor of Charleston.
The room exploded. Arms around me, voices in my ear, phones recording. Granddaddy pulled me into a hug so tight I squeaked, then shoved me toward Ethan. “Go on,” he said gruffly.
Ethan caught me, kissed me hard in front of everyone, and the room howled like a football stadium. “Forward only,” he whispered against my mouth.
“Only,” I said, tears hot and happy on my cheeks.
This was heaven. Or some version of it.
City Hall smelled of old wood and polish when they led me into the mayor’s office later that night. The cameras had finally left, the speeches done, the handshakes fading. It was mine now—the desk, the chair, the weight of the city.
Ethan closed and locked the door behind us with a quiet click. The office felt too big until he crossed it and bracketed me against the desk, his hands strong on my waist.
“Madam Mayor,” he murmured, lips brushing my ear.
“Mr. Dane,” I breathed, already dizzy from the heat in his eyes.
We didn’t bother with ceremony. He lifted me onto the desk, the polished surface cool under my thighs as he pushed my skirt up. His mouth crushed mine, all hunger and heat, while his fingers stroked between my legs until I was wet and aching.
“Ethan,” I gasped, pulling at his belt, desperate for skin.
He freed himself, his cock thick and heavy in his hand, then pushed inside me in one long, claiming thrust. I cried out, clinging to his shoulders as he drove deep, the desk rattling under us.
This wasn’t the kind of slow, reverent lovemaking we’d save for quiet nights.
It was fast and fierce, celebration turned into motion—my skirt bunched at my waist, his shirt still half-buttoned, papers skidding to the floor like confetti.
We were laughing and swearing between kisses, breathless with victory and relief, meeting each other hard because the day had earned it and our bodies knew exactly what to do.
“Mine,” he growled, pumping hard, each thrust a promise and a brand.
“Yes,” I panted. “Yours.”
He shifted my legs higher, his hands gripping my hips, slamming into me until stars burst behind my eyes. I came hard, shuddering around him, but he didn’t stop—kept pounding, relentless, until sweat slicked his chest and his breath tore ragged from his throat.
Somewhere in the blur of the last weeks he’d rewired my body so thoroughly that climax felt like a default setting.
He gave me orgasms the way other men gave compliments—easily, often, like he couldn’t help himself—and it was almost funny to try to remember the version of me who’d ever gone without.
“Look at you,” he groaned, watching my face contort with pleasure. “Mayor of Charleston and still begging for me.”
I came again, spasming around him, nails raking his back. His rhythm broke, hips jerking, and he came with a roar, hot and thick inside me, filling me until I sagged boneless against him.
We stayed like that, tangled and breathless on the mayor’s desk, the city quiet outside, the world changed forever.
Later, when we were dressed again and laughing at the mess we’d made of my first executive workspace, Ethan leaned against a wall, hair damp from sweat and eyes dark with something deeper than lust.
“Atlas wants us to move into a suite at Dominion Hall,” he said. “Near Jacob and Caleb’s.”
I tilted my head. “And do you?”
“I think sometimes, yeah. It’d be good to have a bolt-hole. A place where no one can touch us.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “But I want to live with you. In your little house that smells like coffee and lavender.”
“Both,” I said. “We’ll take both. Home and fortress.”
His smile softened. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
We had already tested the road together—Miami, New Orleans.
Standing on pump houses, talking with city engineers, eating gumbo with planners who had scars from their own storms. He teased me about turning our love story into homework, and I teased him about not fitting in plane seats, his long legs jammed against tray tables like a punishment.
But those trips had done something steady to us—burnished us, sealed us. Traveling together, working together, loving each other through fatigue and laughter, it had fused us in ways even sex couldn’t.
That night, after the desk and the victory and the laughter, we lay in bed at my little house. Ethan’s hand rested heavy on my stomach, his breath warm against my neck.
“You’re mayor,” he whispered.
“I am.”
“And I’m yours.”
“You are.”
He went very still, then pushed up on an elbow like a thought had just found him and wouldn’t let go.
“Wait,” he murmured, voice rough from everything we’d done and said that day.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, pawed his jeans off the chair, and came back to me—then did the old-fashioned thing that split my chest open: he knelt, big body folded at the edge of my ridiculous little bed.
“Natalie,” he said, looking up at me like I’d hung the constellations he navigated by.
“I don’t have poetry. I have a life I want to build, walls with windows, a porch with your feet in my lap, and every boring heroic day in between.
Let me be the man who keeps you alive and laughing, who holds the line when the storm is loud, who is your shield when you need one and your open door when you don’t. Marry me.”
From his fist he opened his palm: a slender gold ring crowned with a bright, clean diamond, warm from his skin. I knew immediately he’d carried it for days, waiting for the moment that felt like us.
My yes came up from someplace older than language. “Yes,” I said, and then again, because once wasn’t enough. “Yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger, and it seated like something that had been destined for that exact piece of me. I hauled him up and kissed him, salty and laughing, the two of us grinning like thieves who’d just gotten away with the best thing.
“Flapjack’s going to be offended he wasn’t part of this,” I said against his mouth.
“He’ll pout,” Ethan agreed. “We’ll make it up to him—ring bearer at the wedding. Braided lead rope. Formal mane.”
“With a boutonnière,” I said. “And yes, before you ask, someone will try to televise it.”
“National primetime: The Horse, The Mayor, and The Guy With the Ring,” he deadpanned.
“Hard pass,” I said. “This one’s just for us.”
“Just for us,” he echoed.
“Forward only,” I said, my heart so full it ached.
Outside, Charleston exhaled, a city waiting for boring heroics, for drains that worked and buses that ran and a woman who had almost died and come back stronger.
Inside, I held the man I loved—my fiancé—already writing the next chapter in the quiet of our breaths. And when the quiet turned to heat, I pulled him back to me and we loved each other again and again, until the night itself seemed to surrender.