Epilogue – Ivy
The road curves gently around the familiar bend, and my heart starts doing that fluttery thing it always does when we’re close to Coral Bell Cove.
It's been a year—twelve full months of change and growth and late-night laughter in unfamiliar cities. Still, this stretch of rural highway, with its flickering sun through oak branches and the faint scent of hay on the breeze, feels more like home than anywhere I’ve ever been.
Rowan’s hand rests on my thigh, fingers tapping to the rhythm of the country song playing low from the truck speakers. He hums along—off-key, on purpose—and I smile even though he’s not looking at me.
His knuckles are still a little rough, calloused from working the farm even after all the changes this past year. Even after we built a new life that looks nothing like what either of us expected.
“Two more miles,” he says quietly, glancing toward me. His eyes flick down to my bare legs—propped on the dash like I always do—and the corner of his mouth kicks up.
“You counting?”
He shrugs, thumb stroking slowly against my skin. “Maybe.”
We’ve just wrapped a months-long press tour for my album—an entire loop around the US, from LA to Chicago to New York City, which helped convince my label to push back the world tour to next year.
This is the first time in weeks that the quiet feels real. Like the world’s finally catching its breath again. It took some finagling and a few new manager hires, but Rowan was able to leave the farm and animals in good hands. Of course, his father and siblings were also there to help out.
I lean back against the seat, letting my eyes drift shut for a moment, the road humming softly beneath the tires.
“It’s going to be weird not waking up in hotel beds,” I murmur.
Rowan chuckles. “Better weird than empty.”
“You didn’t hate it?”
“Waking up next to you in fifty different cities? I’m not that grumpy.”
I grin, cracking one eye open. “You sure? You growled at a room service tray in Boston.”
“That tray had the nerve to deliver cold bacon.”
“You ate it anyway.”
“Because you fed it to me,” he says, voice dipping lower. “In bed. Naked. That kind of makes a man forget his standards.”
Heat crawls up my neck, but I don’t look away. “Good thing I plan to keep doing that everywhere we go.”
He makes a low sound of agreement, hand sliding up a little higher on my thigh.
We fall into silence again, the kind that only comes from knowing each other inside out. After a beat, Rowan slows the truck.
My brows knit. “Did we miss the turn?”
“Nope.”
He eases onto the gravel shoulder and pulls to a stop in the shade of an old oak tree, right at the edge of a curve where the road narrows. For a second, I don’t understand until I look out the windshield and realize exactly where we are.
Right here. This is where it started.
My car had skidded off the road right into that shallow ditch, tires sank, my clothes rumpled, heart pounding, and mascara streaking down my cheeks. It’s sitting back in Nashville with a new owner as we speak.
I hadn’t even realized I was crying when Rowan pulled up behind me in this same damn truck, arms crossed and jaw tight, looking like a cowboy-shaped wall I couldn’t climb. Or maybe like the one I needed to lean against.
He shifts into Park and turns to me, the expression in his eyes softer now, threaded with memories.
“This is it,” he murmurs. “Right here. Where you nearly ran your spaceship into a cow sign.”
I laugh, hand pressed over my heart. “You were so grumpy.”
“You were so lost.” He leans back, resting his arm across the back of my seat, eyes sweeping the empty stretch of road and overgrown grass. “You looked like a fairy tale in a car commercial.”
“I was a mess.”
“You were mine, even then.”
The words sit between us, tender and heavy and full of every mile we’ve traveled since.
Rowan turns toward me slowly. “I don’t stop here often. But every time I drive past, I think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t come around that corner when I did.”
I squeeze his hand. “You did. That’s all that matters.”
He leans in and brushes a kiss over my temple, lips lingering against my skin. “I just wanted to stop. Remind you where we began.”
I smile, watery and real. “Like I could ever forget.”
We stay there for a moment longer, wrapped in morning light and memory, until the sound of a truck passing behind us reminds us we’ve got one more stretch to go.
Rowan shifts gears and pulls back onto the road, his hand sliding back to my thigh, grounding me the way he always does.
Otter Creek Farm is just ahead, and for the first time in weeks, my shoulders settle.
The hum in my chest—that restless, electric pull that always buzzed under my skin when I was away—goes quiet.
Because we’re home, not just for a week or two, but for a while, and we made it back together.
We’re five minutes from the house when I catch Rowan glancing at me for the fourth time in a mile.
“What?” I ask, raising a brow.
He smirks, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s holding in a secret. Which… he is.
“Nothing,” he says, but there’s too much warmth in his voice, too much tension in his shoulders.
I narrow my eyes. “Rowan.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re fidgeting.”
“I don’t fidget.”
“You do when you’re sitting on something big.”
He shrugs, impossibly nonchalant, but I can see the edge of a smile tugging at his jaw. The way his fingers tap the steering wheel. The way he’s fighting the urge to pull me across the seat and spill the thing that’s been sitting between us for the past two weeks.
I lean closer, letting my voice drop. “You thinking about telling them?”
“Hadley will freak,” he says. “Lila might cry. Crew’s gonna pretend he knew the whole time.”
“Your mom might throw another dinner party.”
“That’s the risk.”
I bite my lip to keep from smiling too hard. “So… this weekend?”
Rowan glances over at me. Really looks. And then he lifts my hand off my thigh and presses a kiss to the band on my finger —the delicate gold thing we picked up on a whim in a vintage shop just outside of Asheville that matches my engagement ring perfectly. But it’s still hidden, still ours.
“This weekend,” he confirms, eyes soft, voice steady. “We tell them we’re married.”
Just like that, my stomach flips in that breathless, delicious way it always does when he says something that feels like a promise.
“I kind of love that we’ve had it to ourselves this long,” I admit. “Just ours.”
“Me, too,” he says, thumb brushing along the edge of the ring. “But I also kinda want to see your mom’s face when she finds out.”
I snort. “She’ll combust.”
He pulls into the long gravel drive, the house coming into view with its wraparound porch and familiar creak of wind chimes. Home. Even better this time. Because it’s not just where we began.
It’s where we came back to. As us .
I reach for the door handle, but Rowan leans over and hooks his finger into my belt loop, tugging me back into his space.
“Hey,” he says, voice low. “I know this next year might get loud again. Bigger stages, more flights, interviews, flashing lights… But I meant what I said.”
I turn, caught in the quiet storm of his gaze.
“I can exist in your world,” he says softly, “if you can still exist in mine.”
The emotion catches me by the throat, warm and full and gut-punching.
“I don’t want two worlds,” I whisper, brushing my nose against his. “I just want ours. Whatever it looks like. Wherever we go.”
He kisses me then—slow and deep and anchoring.
And just before we break apart, he murmurs against my lips, “Then let’s go show them what that looks like.”
THE END