Second Epilogue #2
“Or Mia if it’s a girl.” She bites her lip. “But Mia makes me think of mine, and you already call me that—your menacing possessive tendency is rubbing off.”
“It’s not a tendency.” I drop my mouth to her neck and find the place she keeps just for me. “It’s a policy.”
She shivers. “Your policies are very thorough.”
“Always.”
She tips my jaw back up with a finger. “Also—and I’m just brainstorming here, don’t panic—Axelle.”
I pretend to think, then deadpan, “Approved.”
“Stop.” She laughs into my mouth when I kiss her. “We are not naming our daughter after you.”
“It’s a strong name.”
“It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Firefly?” I offer, because her eyes do that thing when she’s happy.
“Now you’re just trying to seduce me.”
“It working?”
“Yes,” she says simply, and heat sweeps the room in a way the hearth can’t compete with.
I set the photo carefully on the coffee table, the way you set a lantern down on a night trail—deliberate, with respect—and pull her into me like gravity met its match.
The kiss starts soft because that’s the only way to hold this much, then deepens because I don’t know any other way to tell her what the ultrasound took out of me and filled me with.
Her hands go under my sweatshirt, palms flat to my back, and for a heartbeat I’m not a hero or a husband or a man who survived a fire.
I’m just a person who gets to love her without apology.
“Axel,” she breathes when I slow us down again, mouths barely apart. “We’re really doing this.”
“We always were,” I say, forehead to hers. “We just didn’t know which page we were on.”
She smiles and it’s the one that gets me—bright, a little feral, a lot free. “You’re going to be ridiculous.”
“I’m going to be lethal.” I tip my head, meet her eyes. “I’m going to build railings on every surface. I’m going to research car seats like a psycho. I’m going to invent a new smoke detector that also sings lullabies.”
She laughs so hard she wheezes. “Please don’t.”
“I’m going to carry you when you pretend you’re not tired.”
“You do that anyway.”
“I’m going to put a bassinet in every room.”
“I want one on the porch.”
“Done.” I trace her lower lip with my thumb. “I’m going to teach our kid how to listen to the river and how to come home when the mountain calls.”
She swallows. Her fingers curl at my nape. “I’m going to teach them how to run toward people who need help and how to stop when they’ve given enough. I’m going to teach them that joy is a skill.”
“We’ll show them,” I say. “We won’t just tell them.”
She nods, misted eyes steady. “Read one old letter. Write a new one. That’s going to be our parenting plan too, isn’t it?”
“Rituals and fire safety,” I agree. “And breakfast tacos.”
“God, marry me.”
“Already did,” I remind her, and she kisses me for it, happy and hungry.
When we finally peel ourselves off the couch, the room feels different.
Not bigger. Truer. I tuck the ultrasound into the shadowbox behind the front layer of letters, not hidden, not front and center—just there, where it belongs, the newest page joining the stack.
Savannah watches, arms folded, that crooked grin I’d go to war for curving her mouth.
I step back. We take it in together: the box, the fire, the river outside moving like a long, slow word. The past is present, but it’s not the loudest voice anymore.
I slide behind her and pull her into me, hands splaying over her stomach without me deciding to do it. She lays her palms over mine. The fit is obscene—it always is—and I bury my face in her hair and breathe.
“Happy anniversary,” I say into her crown.
“Happy anniversary,” she says, leaning back into me like a fact.
“I’m going to be insufferable.”
“You already are.”
“I can’t wait to be more.”
She tilts her head. “How much more?”
“Dangerously more.”
“How many kids more?” She’s laughing when she asks it; she doesn’t expect my answer.
“A dozen,” I say, dead serious and grinning. “Minimum. I want a team. I want a firehouse worth of Christmas stockings. I want to forget what quiet sounds like.”
She spins in my arms and plants her hands on my chest, mock horror warring with the heat in her eyes. “A dozen?”
“Fifteen if they’re as pretty as you.”
“Axel.”
“Fine. We’ll renegotiate after two.”
“That’s more like it.” She rises onto her toes and kisses me once, then again deeper, like she’s refinancing a cathedral. “But for the record, the way you said a dozen just now was obscenely hot.”
“I meant it.” I drop my voice. “I want everything.”
“You have it.” She curls her fingers in my shirt. “Now take me upstairs, Mr. ‘Dangerously More,’ and we can discuss middle names.”
We leave the dishes in the sink, the bottle uncorked, the letter I wrote for her still open on the table like a candle that doesn’t go out when you walk away.
I lift her because I can and because she likes it and because sometimes carrying is an act of worship.
On the landing, we pause at the window and look out.
Snow has started—small flakes caught in the porch light she likes to leave on.
I don’t argue with it anymore. It’s not for the past. It’s for the future finding us when it’s ready.
In the bedroom, she slips from my arms and stands by the window, the river’s shine ghosting her profile.
I come up behind and wrap her again, palms smoothing low over the place that will be a curve soon enough.
We stand like that until the world quiets, until our breathing syncs, until the only thing that moves is the snow and the pulse under my hands.
We go to bed and talk baby names and breakfast foods until the sentences turn to softer sounds, until words stop being useful, until the night has one job and it does it—holding, warming, keeping.
When we finally fall into the kind of sleep that only happens after joy, the house hums its contentment and the river carries the sound of tomorrow down to somewhere with more light.
Before I close my eyes, I look toward the doorway.
The mantel is out of sight from here, but I picture the shadowbox anyway: the stack of what we survived, the picture of who we’re becoming.
The past isn’t gone. It’s mounted. We honored it.
Then we turned toward the fire and each other and the little life that just put its first mark on our wall.
“Leave the porch light on,” I murmur.
“Always,” Savannah says, already drowsy, already mine. “From inferno to forever.”
The End