Epilogue #2
This porch. This marsh. This man standing in front of me like he was about to jump out of a plane.
“Walk with me,” he said suddenly. “Just down to the end of the steps.”
Suspicion flickered. Behind us, the noise on the porch dimmed like someone had dialed it down on purpose.
“Is everyone staring at us?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “Come on.”
He led me down the steps to the spot where he, Ethan, and Lucas had stopped Sam Jarrow from getting any closer. The place where my life had split cleanly into Before and After.
The air still felt thinner there.
He turned to face me, taking both my hands in his. His eyes were so serious it made my stomach flip.
“Hazel Bradford,” he said, voice low but carrying. “You know I’m not a man of many words.”
I snorted. He ignored me.
“But there are some things I don’t ever want you to forget.” His fingers tightened around mine. “You brought me back to life. You walked into a dilapidated inn and made it a home. You took a man who’d been a shell half his life and made him want a future.”
My throat closed. The world blurred at the edges. Behind him, I could see shadows of people on the porch—family leaning against columns, women clustered in the doorway, Maude in her apron, Byron’s tall silhouette near the railing.
Gideon swallowed. For a second, it looked like he might actually panic.
Then he dropped to one knee.
The porch went completely silent.
“Gideon,” I breathed, heart hammering.
He let go of one of my hands long enough to pull something from his pocket. A small box, dark and worn around the edges.
“I know you don’t like big flashy things,” he said. “You work with your hands. You paint. You hammer. You climb ladders you shouldn’t. You’re going to be in the middle of renovations for the foreseeable future because you can’t leave anything half-finished.”
“Accurate,” I managed.
“So, I wanted you to have something you could wear every day,” he went on. “Something solid. Something that wouldn’t catch on nails or get in the way when you’re wrestling with Maude’s supply deliveries. Something that … fits.”
He opened the box.
The ring inside was simple and beautiful and very, very us.
A slim band of warm gold, brushed instead of polished, so it didn’t look too new.
A narrow row of tiny diamonds sat flush in the metal, catching the light without rising above it.
In the center, where most people would put a taller stone, there was a single, small emerald sunk into the band—just a whisper of green, the same shade as my eyes when the light hit them right.
It looked like it could withstand a fall from a ladder and a paint spill and a lifetime of dishwashing.
It looked like forever.
“I had it made from your grandmother’s wedding band,” he said quietly. “Maude helped me sneak it out of the safe. We added the stones. Kept the gold. Figured she wouldn’t mind sharing a piece of her history with our future. Just like the inn.”
My vision blurred all the way now. “You—Gideon—”
He held my gaze, eyes steady, voice rough.
“Hazel Bradford, I love you. I love your lists and your stubbornness and the way you talk to this house like it’s listening.
I love that you chose this place and chose me even when everything in your past told you to run.
I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you never have to run again. Will you marry me?”
The world held its breath.
I could feel every eye on us. Every story in the bodies behind him—a ballerina with scars on her toes, a chef with burns on her hands, an actress who’d learned what real stakes felt like, a harpist who’d crossed an ocean, a wedding planner who’d seen a thousand “forevers” and still believed in her own.
Brothers who’d been broken and sharpened and still stood together.
A father who’d come back.
And this man, on his knees in the spot where my old life had ended, offering me a version of the future I’d never dared imagine.
“Yes,” I said, my voice cracking on the single word. “Of course, yes.”
Relief flashed across his face, followed by a grin that could’ve lit the marsh.
He slid the ring onto my finger—steady hands, warm touch. It fit perfectly, snug and sure, the emerald winking up at me like it knew something.
The porch erupted.
Cheers, whistles, someone—probably Ryker—yelling something obscene about “finally locking that down.” Hallie Mae wiped at her eyes. Maude outright sobbed into her apron.
Gideon stood and I launched myself at him, arms around his neck, legs off the ground for a second as he caught me easily.
“Hi, fiancée,” he murmured against my hair.
“Hi, future husband,” I whispered back, dizzy with it.
He kissed me then, in front of everyone—possessive and careful all at once, like he wanted the whole world to know I was his.
Somewhere behind us, Portia was already shouting something about dates and venues and “don’t you dare elope without me,” and Isabel was muttering about package discounts and off-season rates.
But all of that faded to background noise.
All I knew was his mouth on mine, his heartbeat under my hands, the weight of the ring on my finger, the solid feel of the rebuilt porch beneath my feet.
Home.
Later, after champagne appeared from nowhere and toasts were made and Maude eventually bullied everyone into going home or to their rooms because “tomorrow doesn’t care that you’re in love,” Gideon and I climbed the stairs to our room.
Our room.
The once-haunted space with its crooked floors and peeling wallpaper now held a freshly painted wall, a new bed, soft lamps, and a framed photograph of the marsh at dawn that Caleb had taken without meaning to be poetic and then absolutely had been.
I closed the door behind us, the quiet falling over my shoulders like a blanket.
Gideon leaned back against the edge of the dresser, watching me. The ring caught the light when I lifted my hand, still disbelieving.
“Say it again,” I said.
He pushed off the dresser, crossing the room in three slow strides, every inch of him focused on me. His eyes were darker now, the soft lamplight turning them stormy.
“Marry me,” he said. “Tomorrow. Next year. Ten years from now. Doesn’t matter. Just … marry me.”
“I already said yes,” I whispered.
“Say it again.”
“Yes,” I breathed, heart tripping. “I’ll marry you.”
His mouth curved, something hungry and reverent moving through his expression as he reached up and brushed his thumb over the emerald. “My fiancée,” he murmured, like he was testing out a new weapon. “My future wife. My innkeeper.”
“Your what?” I laughed.
“My innkeeper,” he repeated, stepping closer until my back met the door. “My home.”
The word wrapped around me, warm and sure.
He braced one hand beside my head, the other settling low on my hip, fingers spreading over the place he always liked to anchor himself. His body heat seeped through my clothes, familiar and still somehow new every time.
“You know,” I said, voice shaky, “if we’re both going to work here, you’re going to have to learn how to fold fitted sheets.”
“Absolutely not,” he said, leaning in to skim his mouth along my jaw, the scrape of his stubble sending shivers down my spine. “I kill people who try to hurt you. I rebuild porches. I carry heavy things. You make the beds.”
“That’s not exactly a feminist division of labor,” I managed, though my hands had already found his shoulders, fingers curling into muscle I knew as well as the grain of the bannister.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he promised, lips hovering just above mine. “Frequently.”
His kiss was slow at first—testing, savoring, like he had all the time in the world and refused to rush a second of it. I melted into him, the edges of the day—the laughter, the noise, the ring, the porch full of people—blurring until all that remained was this.
Us.
He caught the back of my thigh and lifted, and my body remembered the path without needing instructions, wrapping around him like we’d been built for it.
When he carried me to the bed, his mouth never left mine.
When his hands mapped the new, small circles my ring traced against his skin, my heart felt too full for my chest.
Later, much later, when we lay tangled in sheets that smelled faintly of fresh paint and salt air and us, I stared up at the ceiling and listened to the quiet.
No shouting. No gunshots.
Just the creak of the inn settling for the night and Gideon’s breathing, steady and slow, his hand curved around mine where it rested on his chest, the ring a solid weight between us.
“I love you,” I said into the dark.
He didn’t hesitate. “I love you more, babe,” he murmured. “And I’m never leaving.”
For the first time in my life, the future didn’t look like something to outrun.
It looked like a porch and a ring that wouldn’t snag on nails. It looked like a family that fought like hell and loved even harder. It looked like a man who’d once lived in the shadows choosing to stand in the light with me.
It looked like this inn, forever.
And I knew—with the same certainty I’d once reserved for worst-case scenarios—that whatever the world threw at us next, we’d face it together.
Gideon and Hazel.
The Dane who’d come home.
The woman who’d claimed him.
And the house that would always, always be ours.
We hope you enjoyed this story.