Epilogue
Sitting on a piece of driftwood down on the empty beach in the back of Blake’s house, I watched as he tossed a stick down the shore, and Maverick went happily bounding after it.
I laughed when Maverick barked at the retreating tide as if he were admonishing it for trying to snatch away his precious stick. With a quick pounce and his paws slamming into the soaked sand, he managed to grab the stick just in time.
Triumphant, he sprinted back to Blake, ready to repeat the entire game.
Blake threw the stick for Maverick again before walking up the sand and sitting beside me. I leaned into his side, and his arm curled around my shoulders as he turned his head, brushing a kiss to my forehead. “We should head back up. I told the others we’d meet them around noon.”
“Okay,” I replied.
We both stood from the driftwood. Blake cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Come on, Mav!” to Maverick, who was chasing the sandpipers a distance away down the beach.
Maverick turned and came racing back to us.
After making our way back to Blake’s house with Maverick, we got ready and left for our next destination.
Thirty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of our brothers’ law firm—Gabe, Wes, and Morgan were already there waiting.
Blake and I got out of his Jeep, and they all greeted the two of us. “Where’s Luke and Callie?” I asked.
“Callie messaged me this morning and said she wasn’t feeling that great, but said that dinner is still on tonight,” Morgan said.
I grimaced. “That poor girl is going through it with that morning sickness.”
“Better her than me,” Morgan quipped.
It was Saturday, and today was Bayport’s annual Spring in the Cove Festival. After greeting everyone outside the law firm, we set out for the waterfront, where the festival was held.
It took place every year at the end of April and ran from the boardwalk down to the cove for which the town was named.
It was filled with games, food, and drink trucks, vendor tables from local and surrounding businesses, and much more.
We planned to hang out for a while before we headed to Lucas’s and Callie’s house.
Usually, everyone would go to The Sandbar on Saturday nights, but since Callie announced she was expecting a few weeks ago, Saturday nights started looking a little different. Instead of the bar, they decided to start hosting dinner every week at their house.
The group of us started at the top of the boardwalk and walked around, stopping at different shops and vendors as we made our way toward the cove’s side. Blake’s hand was clasped in mine as we walked, his thumb absentmindedly brushing my knuckles.
“Oh, looky there,” Wes said, his voice dripping with playful sarcasm.
“Well, hello,” a man’s voice drawled from beneath the large tent we were approaching. His eyes then slid to Morgan, and he smirked. “Morgan, looking as beautiful as ever.”
“Cute,” Wes deadpanned.
I looked up to see the man smirking at my brother. I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure from where.
Morgan chuckled. “Hi, Corbin. Nice to see you again.”
“It’s always a pleasure to see you.” His eyes shifted to Wes. “You, on the other hand…”
“Oh, please,” Wes scoffed playfully.
“You’re not still salty with me, are you?” Corbin joked. “I mean, you did end up with the girl. And it was just one little date.”
Gabe snorted beside Wes, and Corbin laughed as he reached out and shook his hand, then Wes’s and Blake’s. “Tate! Levi!” Corbin called. “Look who it is!”
Two other men beneath the tent turned—the younger looking one grinned, while the other’s unimpressed expression didn’t change the slightest as they approached.
It wasn’t until I saw the gold ‘B’ logo on the younger man’s shirt, as well as all over the tent and its products, that I realized who it was.
‘B’ for Blackwood.
As in Blackwood Distillery.
I didn’t know them personally, but I was familiar with the Blackwood brothers.
Their family owned the largest whiskey distillery in South Carolina.
Corbin, the oldest, was close friends with Lucas, and their connection led to Wes, Gabe, and Blake becoming friends with Corbin and his brothers during their teenage years.
I could have sworn there were four brothers, but only three Blackwoods were present.
“Been a while since I’ve seen your ugly ass around,” the one man said jokingly as he shook Blake’s hand.
“Still as much of an asshole as ever, Tate,” Blake quipped with a chuckle.
Tate almost cracked a smile at that. Almost. “Yeah, well, I got a reputation to uphold and shit.”
“Meanwhile, Levi hasn’t aged a day,” Wes joked. “Still looking like a teenager.”
Levi, who was clearly in his twenties but the youngest one there, smirked, stroking his sharp jawline. “You’re just jealous you don’t look as good as me, Callahan.”
“Where’s Luke and Callie?” Corbin asked.
“Callie wasn’t feeling well—she’s expecting, and is currently suffering through morning sickness,” Morgan said.
“Expecting?” Corbin beamed. “Well, shit. Here…” He turned, reaching down into a box and lifting a bottle. “Give this to them with our best wishes. I know she can’t drink it now, but when the time comes,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s our honey infusion.”
We stayed and chatted with them for a while before making our way through the rest of the festival, then retracing our steps and heading back.
After leaving the festival, Blake and I stopped by his house to get Maverick before heading toward Lucas’s and Callie’s.
After putting Maverick in the backseat, we drove into the outskirts of Bayport.
Blake lifted our intertwined hands, brushing his lips against my knuckles, and I glanced over at him and smiled.
It felt almost unreal to be so content, like I had finally found my footing after so many years of searching.
I spent years being in love with the idea of love. I was in love with hope. I was a sentimental dreamer who wore my rose-colored glasses with pride. And when cracks started forming in those precious lenses of mine, that’s when fate decided to finally step in and intervene.
No, I didn’t know what the future held for us, but for all of my hopeless romantic daydreaming, for the first time, I knew deep in my soul that Blake was it.
It was odd to think the guy I’d known my whole life, only as my brother’s best friend, was the one my invisible red string was tied to.
Maybe that’s what fate had planned all along.
The girl who believed she had to fix everything, and the man who came to her broken and showed her she didn’t have to.
In the end, he was the one who fixed me—by showing me that I didn’t need to fix anything that was truly meant to be mine. And he also showed me that what I wanted out of love and a relationship wasn’t as far-fetched as I started to believe.
Because Blake Pierson was everything I ever wanted and then some.
“Let us see it,” I said to Wes, standing in the parking lot of the Bayport Country Club early Saturday morning.
We were meeting for a goddamn 6:30 a.m. tee time Wes scheduled, and if it weren’t due to us celebrating him, I’d have stayed my ass in bed.
“I don’t have it on me.”
“You’re so full of shit.” Gabe chuckled. “You’ve been carrying that thing around in your pocket for the last three weeks.”
“Okay, fine,” Wes relented, dipping his hand into his pocket, earning a laugh from the three of us at being caught.
“Burning a hole, is it?” Lucas joked.
“Shut up,” Wes snapped playfully. “I’m just afraid of her finding it if I leave it at home. She’s a sneaky little shit.”
He held out the box in his hand, and I took it, flipping open the top to reveal the diamond ring inside. “Damn. Nice. And you had Callie help you?”
Lucas took it, looking it over as Wes nodded. “Yeah. I took a page from Luke’s book, since he had Morgan help with Callie’s. I had a pretty good idea of what she’d like, but I wanted to be sure.”
Wes and Morgan were going to Aruba for vacation with Morgan’s family—her parents, her two brothers, and their wives.
And Wes was planning to propose while they were there.
They were leaving that evening, taking a flight out ahead of her family so they could have a couple of days to themselves, which was why we were golfing this morning.
I chuckled. “Haley is losing her mind.”
“I guess she knows Brody’s wife and asked her to record it for her.” Wes rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.
“She’s just excited to see you making an honest man out of yourself,” I teased.
“Yeah, and it could be worse. She could hate Morgan,” Lucas said. “At least they get along.”
“They get along too well,” Wes scoffed. “They gang up on me. Ask Blake. At Sunday dinner, they’re damn near relentless together.”
“They are pretty brutal on him,” I agreed with a laugh. “It’s great entertainment for me, though.”
“Yeah,” he mocked. “Yuk it up, ya dick.”
I snorted out a laugh as I clapped his shoulder. “Damn, you get sassy when you’re nervous.”
Wes sighed. “I am not nervous.”
Gabe, Lucas, and I all shared a look. Wes was most definitely nervous about the proposal. “You’ll be fine,” Gabe said. “She loves your crazy ass.”
We finished our golf game just before eleven. After saying goodbye to the guys, I made my way back to my car. Switching gears from the early morning at the country club, I shot off a text to Haley, telling her that I was on my way to her place and to be dressed and ready.
I gave her no context. I didn’t answer her questions when she texted back, asking what we were doing. I just swung by my place, got Maverick into my Jeep along with some things I might need for him—food, his water dish, treats, his leash—and headed over.
For the first time in a long time, things felt calm, even when I was away from Haley—but they were always better when I was with her. I was still going to therapy, and while my sessions had dwindled to an as-needed basis, I still saw Nate twice a month.
I had a bit of a breakthrough a few sessions ago, when I finally spoke the words, “It wasn’t my fault.”
I never realized the power that speaking something out loud could have. However, when I uttered the words for the very first time and said them as if I was actually starting to believe them, I felt a weight lift.
Thanks to Haley.
I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t put in the work myself to finally get to a point where I could say those words out loud, and I still had a way to go before I believed them entirely. If it wasn’t for Haley, however, I don’t know that I’d ever have gotten to that point at all.
I meant what I told her that day when I said that she saved me. There wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t believe it. She came into my life when I needed it most. And she stayed, even when she saw the broken pieces I tried to keep hidden from everyone else. She saw them, and she stayed.
Haley chose to walk beside the broken and help me heal.
There was nothing that I would ever be able to do or say to show or tell her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her. But I was damn sure going to spend every day trying.
If it took the rest of my life, so be it.
And if it took the next life, that was just another I got with her.
When I pulled up outside of Haley’s townhouse, she was already sitting on the porch, waiting for me. She stood up and walked to my Jeep, opened the door, and slid into the passenger seat.
“Hi,” she greeted me with a grin before leaning across the center console to kiss me.
I smiled against her lips. “Hey, yourself.”
“How was golf?”
“Your brother kicked all of our asses, as usual.”
She chuckled when Maverick stuck his face up front for her attention. “Hello to you, too, Mav.” She reached back and pet him before turning back around and buckling her seatbelt as I started down the road. “So, where are we going?”
“Don’t know,” I answered with a shrug as I stopped at the end of the street before pulling out onto the main road. “I thought we’d figure it out once we get there, wherever ‘there’ is.”
Haley looked at me from the passenger seat and grinned at my idea for a random drive.
I reached over, taking her hand in mine and lifting it to my lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles before resting our now intertwined hands on my lap.
“Blake?”
“Hm?”
Haley smiled. “Tell me something real.”
I squeezed her hand, returning her smile with my own. “I love you, baby girl. That’s as real as it gets.”