Epilogue
One Month Later
The ribbon is red.
Isabel picked it out. She said it had to be red because “red is for passion, and romance is passion, and anyone who has a problem with that can fight me.”
Macy agreed.
Mateo said he didn’t care what color the ribbon was as long as I stopped rearranging the display tables.
I’m standing in front of Wildflower Books on a Saturday morning in December, and the ribbon stretches across the new front door, a custom wood-and-glass installation Dean and Mateo installed last week.
The windows are new too, and behind them, the shop looks better than it did before someone tried to destroy it.
Better than I ever imagined it could look.
The shelves Mateo built are wrought iron and reclaimed wood.
A desert wildflower motif is worked into the brackets.
He spent two weeks on them after finishing the Tucson gate commission, which, despite being late, earned him a matching fence commission and a referral to two more ranch properties.
Turns out the work spoke for itself. His father would have been proud of that.
Above the door, where the old hand-painted sign used to hang, there’s a new one. Forged iron letters spelling WILDFLOWER BOOKS, with tiny metal wildflowers winding through the lettering.
He won’t tell me how long it took. When I asked, he shrugged and said, “Long enough to get it right.”
Below the shop name, in smaller iron letters, he added without asking: HOME OF SIENNA SAGUARO.
The man’s all about the details.
The crowd for the reopening is bigger than I expected. Isabel’s mural is visible here on the community center wall, two blocks down, blazing with color to match the sunset landscape. Desert wildflowers and Red Rock Cliffs and a sky that looks like it’s on fire. She finished it last week.
Ryan wasn’t at the unveiling.
Dean was.
I don’t know the full story yet. Isabel hasn’t said much. But she’s smiling more, and Dean keeps finding reasons to stop by the newest mural she’s working on.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and see a voicemail from Jess. She wanted to be here, but with her brother’s wedding just around the corner, she couldn’t escape.
I press play.
“Hey. It’s me. I’m so mad I’m missing the ribbon cutting.
Take a video for me. And Sadie? I’m so proud of you.
Like, obnoxiously proud. The kind of proud where I tell strangers on the street about you, which I’ve been doing, and they’re very confused, but also now they want to buy your book.
I always let them know chapter fourteen is a real treat.
” A pause. “Also, I need to talk to you about something when you have a moment. It’s good.
Really good. I think. So don’t let me forget, okay?
I love you. Go cut that ribbon and look gorgeous doing it. Call me later. Bye.”
I save the voicemail and smile. Whatever Jess needs to tell me will have to wait a little longer, but the way her voice sounded makes me think I already know.
“You okay?” Mateo’s voice, low and close.
I turn. He’s standing beside me in a clean Henley and jeans, looking like he stepped out of one of my books. His hand finds the small of my back, automatic now, like breathing.
“I’m good,” I say. “Really good.”
“Nervous?”
“A little.” I look at the crowd, at my shop, at the iron sign with my pen name on it. “But the good kind.”
He follows my gaze to the sign. “You know, I keep meaning to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I read your book.”
I go still. “When?”
“About a week before any of this happened. Before it went viral.” He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the sign, a half-smile on his face. “I bought it the day it came out. The dedication got me. ‘To S.R.’ I knew.” He pauses. “And I knew who Diego was.”
“Mateo—“
“The carpenter’s hands.” His smile widens. “You described them in chapter three. ‘Hands that could build fortresses but touched her like she was something precious.’ That was me, Sadie. You wrote me into your book and didn’t even realize it.”
I did realize it. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you weren’t ready. And I wanted you to get there on your own.” He turns to face me, both hands on my waist. “Thank god, you did.”
I kiss him. Someone whistles. Macy, probably. When I pull back, Mateo’s grinning.
“Ready to cut a ribbon?” he asks.
I take the scissors from Macy.
“Welcome back to Wildflower Books,” I say to the crowd. “We have a lot of new inventory, fresh coffee, and yes, copies of Wildfire Summer are finally on the shelves.”
Laughter ripples through the crowd.
I cut the ribbon.
The applause is warm and real and mine.
“Give me one minute,” I tell Macy. She nods, holding the door while I slip inside alone. Just for a minute, before the doors open and the crowd pours in.
The morning light comes through the new windows differently than it did through the old ones.
Wider, warmer. It falls across the floor in long rectangles that reach all the way to the back wall, where the romance section used to be crammed into a corner.
It’s not in a corner anymore. I gave it the whole back wall, floor to ceiling, the best-lit section in the shop.
If someone walks in and the first thing they see is romance novels bathed in sunlight, good. That’s the point.
The staff picks board is back. Macy restocked it yesterday with fierce determination and a handwritten sign that says “MACY’S PICKS! ARGUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!” I left it. She earned that board.
The display tables are set up near the entrance. I arranged them twice this morning before forcing myself to stop. Mateo noticed, handed me my coffee, and kissed my temple. That was enough.
The shop stays packed until closing. By the time we lock up, my feet ache, my cheeks hurt from smiling, and my heart is so full it feels impossible.
Mateo drives us home. Our home. His pueblo-style adobe on the quiet side of town, which somehow became mine too. My books are on his shelves, my coffee mug next to his, my laptop open on the kitchen table where I’ve been drafting book two every morning while he makes breakfast.
But instead of pulling up to the house, he parks by the workshop.
“I want to show you something,” he says. “In the forge.”
“If it’s another set of fireplace tools, I’m staging an intervention.”
He laughs but doesn’t answer. He takes my hand and leads me through the back door.
The workshop is dim, lit only by the banked coals and the December moonlight coming through the windows. It smells like smoke and metal and him. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.
He crosses to his workbench and picks up something small wrapped in a cloth.
“I’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks,” he says. “It’s not a commission.”
He unwraps the cloth, revealing a band of white gold, delicate and smooth, with a tiny forged wildflower centered with a fiery red stone. The petals are impossibly fine, detailed in a way that shouldn’t be possible from hands that bend iron for a living.
“White gold is a nightmare to work with compared to iron,” he says quietly. “Too soft. Too precise. No room for brute force.” He turns the ring in his fingers. “Took me eleven attempts. My father would’ve done it in three, but he also would’ve told me the effort is the point.”
“Mateo—“
“I know it’s only been a month.” He looks up at me, and his eyes are steady, but his voice isn’t.
For the first time since I’ve known him, Mateo Herrera sounds nervous.
“But I’ve loved you for five years, tesoro.
I’ve known since the day you walked into this forge, and I don’t want to wait another five years to ask. Not when I know absolutely.”
He doesn’t get on one knee. He just stands there in his forge, holding the ring between us, surrounded by the tools of four generations.
“Marry me, Sadie. Whenever you’re ready. But let me ask now, because I’ve been waiting to say the words, and I’m done waiting.”
I look at the ring, at his hands. The hands I wrote about before, I even understood why. And then at the forge that smells like home.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Yeah?” That half-smile. The one that should come with a warning.
“I’ve been writing this happily ever after for years, Mateo. I just didn’t know it was ours.”
He slides the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly, because of course it does. He’s been paying attention for five years.
Then he kisses me in the forge, and the coals glow warm around us, and I think about how metal becomes stronger when you shape it through fire.
“So, how does this chapter end?” he asks.
“That’s the best part.” I smile. “It’s just getting started.”