Epilogue #2
He goes still. I watch his face transform - wonder, tears, disbelief. I’ve seen this expression a dozen times now, every time she moves, and it never gets old.
“That’s our daughter,” he says. “That’s really her.”
“She’s saying hi to her dad. The one who’s going to burn her marshmallows.”
“I’m going to be the best marshmallow-burner she’s ever seen.”
“That’s not the compliment you think it is.”
“It’s a skill. Controlled charring. It takes precision.”
“It takes setting things on fire.”
“Same thing.”
I laugh. And he holds me. And the fire crackles, and the ocean roars, and somewhere in the distance, Ellen is trying to teach Zak how to make a proper s’more without setting himself ablaze.
***
The fire dies down. The guests drift away.
Ellen hugs me goodbye, her embrace fierce and familiar.
“I’m so happy for you,” she says into my hair.
“Even after everything?”
“Especially after everything. You earned this.”
I watch her walk up the beach toward the parking lot, toward the life she’s built for herself, toward whatever comes next. She’ll always be my person. That won’t change.
Zak lingers a moment longer, pulling Jayden into one of those back-slapping hugs that men use when they’re too proud to admit they’re emotional.
“You did good,” I hear him say quietly. “Don’t screw it up.”
“Helpful as always.”
“That’s what best men are for.” Zak turns to me, and his expression softens into something surprisingly genuine. “Take care of him. He’s a disaster without you.”
“I know. I’ve seen the evidence.”
He laughs, waves, and follows Ellen up the beach.
Then it’s just us.
Sitting alone on the sand as the moon rises, the last embers of the bonfire glowing orange against the darkness. The ocean crashes against the shore in that eternal rhythm, the same sound it made when we were seventeen and stupid and absolutely certain we’d figured out how the world worked.
The house is waiting for us - not the Malibu mansion with its cathedral ceilings and cold marble floors, but the smaller place we bought three months ago. Coastal cottage, the realtor called it. Room for a nursery, I’d thought when I saw it. Room to breathe.
But neither of us moves to leave.
“Think she’ll like bonfires?” Jayden asks, his hand still on my belly.
“She’s our kid. She’ll love bonfires.” I grin. “She’ll probably love them too much. We’re going to have a little pyromaniac on our hands.”
“She’s going to be just like you.”
“Stubborn and impossible?”
“Brave.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “And brilliant. And the kind of person who saves herself and still lets people love her.”
I’m quiet for a moment. Letting the words settle. Letting myself believe them.
“You really think so?”
“I know so. Because I watched her mom do it.”
The baby kicks again - hard this time, a real declaration of presence - and Jayden’s whole face transforms. Wonder. Awe. The kind of expression I used to dream about seeing directed at me, and now I get to see it directed at us. At our future.
“She’s going to be a handful,” I say.
“Good. I could use a challenge.”
“You could use a lot of things. Sleep. Better cooking skills. The ability to make a meal that doesn’t arrive in a paper bag.”
“I made you breakfast last week.”
“You made a disaster. And then you made a phone call to the French place down the street.”
“That’s called delegation.”
“That’s called being banned from the kitchen.”
He laughs - that real laugh, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes him look like the boy who held my hand on this beach eighteen years ago.
The boy who promised me the moon and meant it with every cell in his body.
The man who forgot, and then remembered, and then spent months proving that remembering was just the beginning.
I turn my face. Kiss him. Long and slow, tasting salt and smoke and the cheap beer we’ve been drinking all night. His hand comes up to cup the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, and I feel him smile against my mouth.
“What?” I murmur.
“Nothing. Just-” He pulls back enough to look at me, his eyes bright in the moonlight. “I keep expecting to wake up. Keep expecting this to be a dream.”
“It’s not a dream.”
“I know. That’s the part that gets me.” His thumb traces my cheekbone, feather-light. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to anyway.”
“You already said your vows. You don’t have to keep going.”
“I’m not done.” His voice drops, goes rough in a way that makes my skin prickle with awareness. “I’m never going to be done telling you.”
The bonfire has burned down to embers. The night air is cool, carrying the salt-spray from the ocean, raising goosebumps on my bare arms. I should be cold.
I’m not. Not with him looking at me like that.
Not with his hand warm on my belly and his eyes dark with something that has nothing to do with sleep.
“Take me home,” I say softly.
“Which home?” His lips brush my ear. “The house, or-”
“You.” I turn in his arms, press my mouth to the corner of his jaw. “You’re home. You’ve always been home. I just forgot for a while.”
***
The cottage is dark when we arrive, just the porch light casting a warm glow across the white clapboard siding.
It’s small - tiny, compared to the Malibu mansion - but every time I walk through the door, something in my chest unwinds.
This is ours. Really ours. Not a showpiece for photographers, not a monument to success.
Just a house where we can hear the ocean from every room and the kitchen floor is comfortable enough for 2 AM conversations.
Jayden unlocks the door, and I’m barely inside before his hands are on my waist.
“Wait-” I laugh, stumbling slightly as he pulls me against him. “I need to take off my-”
“Later.”
“Jayden.”
“What?”
“We’re in the foyer.”
“I’m aware.” His mouth finds my neck, traces a path from my ear to my collarbone. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. All through the ceremony. All through the vows.”
“You were thinking about sex during our vows?”
“I was thinking about you.” He pulls back, and his expression is so earnest, so completely undone, that it steals my breath. “About how beautiful you looked walking toward me. About how I spent years not seeing you and now I can’t look away.”
My heart does something complicated in my chest. “That’s-”
“I know. I’m very romantic. It’s annoying.” He grins, throwing my own words back at me. “You mentioned.”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
He does.
The kiss starts soft - reverent, almost, his lips barely brushing mine - but it doesn’t stay soft.
I grab his shirt, pull him closer, and something shifts.
The careful tenderness gives way to something hungrier.
His hands slide down my back, over the curve of my hips, pulling me against him until there’s no space left between us.
“Bedroom,” I gasp against his mouth.
“You sure? We could stay here. I have fond memories of this foyer.”
“Jayden.”
“The kitchen counter has potential too. Very sturdy. We tested it last week.”
“We tested it this morning.”
“I’m thorough.”
I laugh despite myself, and he uses the distraction to scoop me up - actually scoop, one arm under my knees and one behind my back, like I weigh nothing.
“What are you doing?”
“Carrying my wife over the threshold.” He grins down at me. “We did the ceremony. This is the next part.”
“We’ve been married for over a decade.”
“We got remarried today. New wedding, new threshold-carrying.” He’s already heading for the stairs. “I don’t make the rules.”
“You’re literally making them up right now.”
“Details.”
The bedroom is dark except for the moonlight streaming through the windows, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. He sets me down on the bed gently - too gently, given the urgency I can feel thrumming through him - and takes a step back.
For a moment, he just looks at me.
I know what he’s seeing. The white dress, now wrinkled from the beach and the drive home.
The bare feet, still sandy from walking the shore.
The hair falling loose around my shoulders, windswept and wild.
The belly that’s changed everything - the way I move, the way I sleep, the way I see my own body.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to write poetry or something equally embarrassing.”
“I might.” He kneels on the bed, crawling over me slowly, bracketing my body with his arms. “You deserve poetry. You deserve sonnets and ballads and those really long epic things with battles in them.”
“Epics.”
“Those. You deserve all of them.” His mouth brushes my jaw. “But I’m not good with words. So I’ll have to show you instead.”
He unzips my dress slowly. Peels it down my shoulders, over my belly, past my hips. His eyes track every inch of skin as it’s revealed, and his expression - God, his expression. Like I’m something holy. Something sacred. Something he can’t quite believe he’s allowed to touch.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m admiring.”
“It’s the same thing.”