Epilogue
Jamie
June
The coworking space had that particular Friday quiet, the kind that settled in around four o'clock when everyone started watching the clock more than their screens.
Brandy was at her desk, emerald reading glasses perched on her nose, shuffling through a stack of folders with the focused energy of someone who'd already mentally started her weekend.
Marceline and Bubblegum had claimed their spot under my desk hours ago, Bubblegum curled into a tight ball while Marceline sprawled with her belly up, paws twitching through some dream.
I was pretending to work on website mockups for a boutique hotel in Aspen. The client wanted “elevated mountain aesthetic” with “approachable warmth,” which meant I'd been staring at the same color palette for twenty minutes, trying to decide if sage green read as sophisticated or dated.
Four-fifteen. Holden would close the shop at five.
The door opened.
Marceline was on her feet before I registered the footsteps, her whole body vibrating with recognition. Bubblegum lifted her head, tail already going. I turned in my chair and felt my heart beat faster.
Holden stood in the doorway with flowers in his hands.
Not a big arrangement. Something small and perfect—sweet peas in shades of lavender and white, a few stems of dusty miller, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. Gratitude. Pleasure. His grandmother's language, spoken fluent. They smelled like summer, faint and sweet.
“You're early,” I said.
“Jake's covering.” Holden crossed the room, the dogs circling his legs in frantic greeting. He bent to scratch behind Marceline's ears, then Bubblegum's, before straightening and holding out the flowers. “For you.”
I took them. This was our Friday now. Every week since Valentine's Day, Holden showed up with flowers he'd made for me.
Brandy made the same delighted noise she made every time, a sort of sighing coo that she probably thought was subtle. “You two are disgustingly adorable. You know that, right?”
Holden's ears went red. Same as every time.
I lifted my head up for a kiss.
The kiss was brief. We were in public, Brandy was watching, the dogs were trying to insert themselves between our legs, but it still made my pulse kick. His arm wrapped around my waist, and when I pulled back his eyes were soft in that way they only got when he looked at me.
“Holden, you're spoiling him,” Brandy said.
“That's the plan.”
I laughed, and Holden's mouth curved into that rare smile that still felt like a victory every time I earned it.
“Speaking of plans.” Brandy stood, gathering something from her desk—a folder, manila, with a stack of papers inside. Her manicured nails tapped against the edge as she crossed the room. “This came through while you were working.”
She set the folder on my desk. I opened it and grinned.
A lease agreement. Year-long, starting next month. The address I'd been hoping for since I toured the place three weeks ago: white clapboard with a porch and a yard that backed up to the foothills.
“The owners finally got back to you,” Brandy said, reading glasses sliding down her nose. “Everything's ready. Three bedrooms, fenced yard for the girls, mountain view from the kitchen.” She paused, and her mouth twitched. “High ceilings.”
“Interesting feature,” I said, flipping through the pages. My hands weren't quite steady.
“Very practical.” Brandy looked at Holden. “For tall guests who might visit frequently.”
“Brandy.”
She produced a pen from somewhere—she always had pens, they multiplied in her presence—and pressed it into my hand. “Sign, hon. Before you overthink it.”
I looked at the lease, at the address, at the line waiting for my signature.
A year. Not month-to-month, not keeping my options open, not one foot out the door. A year in Prospect Ridge, in a house with room for the dogs and space for us to grow into.
I signed.
Holden's hand settled on the back of my neck, warm and steady, his thumb tracing small circles against my skin. I leaned into the touch without thinking about it. Our rhythm now, familiar as breathing.
“Congratulations.” Brandy took the folder back, her smile knowing. “Keys will be ready next week.” She was already retreating to her desk, already giving us space she pretended not to be giving. “Now get out of here. It's Friday. Go celebrate.”
We walked home through the late afternoon light, the dogs trotting ahead, my flowers tucked against my chest. The June air was warm, the kind of early summer evening that stretched on forever, and somewhere down the block someone was grilling.
Holden's hand found mine without either of us reaching for it.
“There's a lot of space,” I said. “In that house.”
“There is.”
“Room for more than one person.”
He was quiet for a few steps. His thumb moved against my knuckles, back and forth.
“The thing is,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected, “I don't want you just visiting. I want you there. With me. All of it—the mornings, the bad days, the dogs hogging the bed.” I stopped walking. He stopped too. “Move in with me.”
In the warm light, his expression shifted. The walls he'd built so carefully, the distance he'd maintained for years—they fell away entirely. Just Holden, looking at me like I was the answer to a question he'd stopped asking.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes.” His voice was rough. He reached for me, one hand cupping my jaw, tilting my face up to his. “Yes. I want that too. All of it.”
I grabbed his shirt and pulled him down until his forehead touched mine. “Good. Because that Victorian dresser you've been restoring? I'm claiming it for my sweaters and I know exactly where it’s going.”
He laughed, actually laughed, the sound startled out of him, and then he kissed me. Right there on the sidewalk, one hand in my hair, the other wrapped around my waist. The flowers got crushed between us and Marceline barked once, impatient, but neither of us pulled away.
When we got back to my apartment, I put the flowers in water. Set them on the kitchen counter, next to the window where the evening light caught the petals.
Next to them, in a small glass frame I'd picked up at Timberline Antiques, were a few pressed petals.
Ranunculus and soft pink garden roses, edges gone brown and papery.
From that first arrangement, the one I'd ordered for myself before any of this started, before Holden kissed me in the park, before our Valentine Arrangement and the shop and the nights tangled together learning each other.
You're more than enough. Remember that.
He'd written those words for a sad lonely man who didn't exist anymore. Someone who wanted to believe he deserved flowers even when no one else was buying them.
Holden came up behind me. His arms wrapped around my shoulders, his chin settling on top of my head—the height difference that used to make me feel small now just made me feel held.
I leaned back into him, into the solid warmth of his chest, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my shoulder blade.
Outside, the mountains had gone golden in the fading light. The dogs had found their spots on their beds. The new place was waiting, with a yard for the girls, room for both of us, and walls tall enough for a man who'd spent years convinced he took up too much space.
“Just because,” Holden murmured against my hair.
The same words. The first words. The ones that started everything—a stranger's kindness disguised as duty, before I knew his name, before I knew his hands, before I knew the way he'd hold me.
I turned in his arms, rose up on my toes, and kissed him.
Home wasn't a place. It was this—his arms around me, his heartbeat under my palm, the flowers on the counter and the dogs at our feet and a whole town that had somehow become ours.
Home was him.