Epilogue
Sometimes it hits me just how ridiculous I was when Beckett first walked into the inn. How stupid my refusal to hear his music was, as if it would stop the confusing feelings coursing through me.
Nothing was going to stop the inevitable.
Beckett and I were made for each other. Of that I have no doubt.
Watching him as he plays for a crowd that adores him is a sight I’ll never get over. He has so many reasons to hate the stage and everything it represents about the traumas of his life, but to see the joy he still gets melts my heart every time.
The song ends and the crowd cheers. Having seen the rehearsals, I know he’s supposed to move into the next song quickly, but his eyes catch mine in the wings and the twinkle in them tells me something’s coming.
“Thank you!” Beckett smiles into the mic, his eyes moving back to the crowd. “First, thanks again for being here. The Bridge Foundation wouldn’t exist without support from people like you, and I’m so grateful to each and every one of you.”
He pauses, and I can see him gathering himself. The Bridge Foundation—an organization he didn’t realize would mean so much to him. Every dollar raised tonight goes to music education for kids who couldn’t afford it otherwise, kids like he once was.
He won’t say it outright, but I know he’s thinking about his parents right now, about all the things they sacrificed to give him his dreams, about how proud they’d be of the man he’s become.
“Now I have to apologize.” Beckett’s eyes move back to mine for a brief moment. “I’m making a slight tweak to the set list.”
No way in hell he’s about to do what I think he is…right?
“Most of you know what happened earlier this year, but for those of you who don’t, I cut my tour short and made the decision to slow down. To stop touring and pause recording. To take time and focus on living.”
Beckett pulls the strap of his banjo over his head and switches it with the guitar one of his stage hands brings out.
“I’ve spent the last twenty years focused solely on making music and while I wouldn’t change a moment of it, I let it consume me and run my life.
And I’ve gotta be honest. No one thing should run your life. ”
The crowd cheers, and Beckett smiles, his eyes finding me again. Shep waves his arms and kicks his feet, excited when he sees Beckett’s attention on us. I shake my head, still half-convinced he’s going to call me out there.
“Life is about so much more than we give it credit,” Beckett says, bringing his focus back to the audience. “Don’t let your life be consumed by your work, or your duties, even your family. Life’s about all of them and how they work together to build something worth pursuing.”
His smile shifts to something more intimate as he turns to look at me, his eyes holding all the sincerity in the world as he says his next words. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for my career, I know that.”
And just like that, everything else melts away. It’s just the two of us back in our home in Stonebridge Hollow. The last year has been a blessing and a curse. Neither of us would want to go through everything we did again, but Beckett’s never said anything more accurate.
If he’d given up on music at any point over the last two decades, he never would’ve been in my little town at my little inn, and we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
I love you, I mouth, and he smiles once more before turning back to the crowd.
“But I wouldn’t have my career if it weren’t for my parents, and I wouldn’t have survived losing my parents if it weren’t for my friends. Everything around us works together to create the beauty of our lives.”
Beckett strums a few chords on his guitar, fiddling for a moment. I know he’s trying to tamp down the emotions welling inside. The slight shake of his voice, something most people would miss, clues me in.
“All this to say, I wrote a song over the winter. One I chose not to include on my latest album.” He takes a breath. “It’s called ‘The Hollow.’”
My breath catches. Our home. Our beginning.
Beckett doesn’t look at me this time. He keeps his eyes in the distance, on the lights, on everything and nothing, but his voice changes when he starts to sing. It becomes softer, more vulnerable. The stadium acoustics carry it anyway, but it feels like he’s singing in the quiet of our living room.
You found me in the hollow
Where the lights don’t reach
You found me in the hollow
Taught me what I need
The lyrics unfold like a map of our year. The inn, the storms, the morning runs, the night he let me in. It’s nothing anyone else would recognize, but I hear every reference.
You gave me something
Something I didn’t know I was missing
A reason to be more
More than what I was
He doesn’t look at me once during the song, not until the final chorus. The crowd is silent, but I barely notice them. All I hear is the promise in the last line, delivered straight to me across the stage.
I’ll meet you in the hollow
Where we both can breathe
I’ll meet you in the hollow
Where you’re all I need
The applause crashes over us like a wave. Beckett smiles and nods, accepting it, but I see the slight tremor in his hands as he sets the guitar down—the vulnerability of what he just did.
I want to run to him, want to hold him, but I stay in the wings, Shep warm against my chest, and I watch as he launches into the next song like nothing happened. Like he didn’t lay himself bare in front of twenty thousand people. Like the song isn’t going to be dissected and analyzed for weeks.
They’ll never know what I know—that song belongs to us.
He doesn’t pause when he makes it off the stage, sweaty and buzzing from the performance. He pulls me into his dressing room without a word and presses his forehead to mine.
“You heard it,” he says. Not a question.
“I heard it.”
“I meant every word.”
“I know.”
He pulls back just enough to look at Shep, now asleep in my arms. His hand comes up, gentle, tracing the curve of our son’s cheek.
We stay like that, the three of us, while the noise of the venue fades around us. The hollow isn’t a place—it’s this, right here. The space we’ve carved out where it’s just us.