Epilogue
THEO
ONE YEAR LATER
Moving day arrives before I’m ready, but then again, I don’t think I ever could be.
I stand in the middle of what used to be my living room.
The walls are bare. The shelves are empty.
No hum of the old fridge down the hall, no smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen.
Just dust in the corners and light falling through the windows.
It feels wrong and right at the same time—like I’m abandoning something, but also finally setting it free.
The house is sold. The car too. Even the beat-up couch I fell asleep on so many times when the nights felt too long and too lonely. I said goodbye to all of it. Packed what mattered into boxes and sent them ahead—clothes, books, the pieces of a life I can’t bear to part with. Everything else? Gone.
What I’m left with is two suitcases. One with the essentials, one with the things I couldn’t leave behind. And the firefighter LEGO is tucked safely in my pocket. That’s it. My whole life distilled down to baggage I can wheel behind me through an airport.
I should feel unmoored. Instead, I feel light.
Still, I don’t leave without a knot in my chest. Gomillion is the place that sheltered me when everything fell apart.
It’s where I rebuilt my life, where I found steadiness again.
My friends here—they saved me in ways they’ll never fully know.
And saying goodbye to them over beers last night was harder than I expected.
They hugged me and told me I was doing the right thing, even if their eyes betrayed how much they’d miss me.
But there’s no doubt in me. This is the right move.
Because waiting for me on the other end is Caden.
The flight is long, but my nerves make it shorter. I doze once or twice, jolt awake with my chest thudding, then remind myself where I’m going. What I’m doing. Every time I picture his face at the arrival gate, the anxiety softens.
When the wheels touch down, my pulse quickens like I’m eighteen again, waiting outside the college locker room to see him after a game. I grip the handles of my suitcases too tightly, my palms damp.
And then—I see him.
Caden stands just beyond the crowd, tall and steady and grinning like he’s been holding his breath for a year and can finally exhale. His eyes catch mine, bright as they’ve ever been, and everything else blurs.
I don’t think. I don’t pause. I drop the handles of my bags and stride forward.
The moment we collide, his arms close around me, strong and sure, his mouth pressing to mine right here in the middle of the airport.
No hesitation. No hiding. Just us. People stream around, voices echo through the terminal, but none of it touches me.
All I feel is his lips on mine, his smile breaking against my mouth, the relief of finally being here.
We pull back only far enough to breathe, foreheads pressed together, grinning like fools. My eyes sting. His must too.
“You’re here,” he whispers.
“I’m here,” I rasp, my voice shaking.
I want to stay in this moment forever, but then he glances past me, and his smile shifts—softens. “Theo.”
I turn. And freeze.
His parents are standing a few feet away.
For a heartbeat, I can’t move. It’s been sixteen years since I last saw them. Sixteen years since the accident, since the fallout, since everything fractured. My breath stutters. My chest clenches.
But then his mom steps forward, tears already in her eyes, and before I can say a word, she wraps me up in a hug. The kind of hug that swallows you whole, that doesn’t let you go even when you think you don’t deserve it.
My eyes burn hot. The years between us dissolve. “I’m sorry,” I choke out against her shoulder. “I’m so—”
She shushes me, fierce. “No. Enough of that. You’re here. That’s what matters.”
When she finally lets me go, his dad is there, pulling me into an embrace that’s just as tight. His hand claps my back, steady and strong. “Took you long enough,” he mutters, though his voice wavers.
My tears spill freely now, but for once I don’t care. I look at both of them, their faces lined with years but their eyes just as kind, and all I see is welcome.
Behind me, Caden squeezes my shoulder. I glance at him, and his eyes shine too.
The thing is, I know this reunion matters as much to him as it does to me. He broke when we broke. And his parents lost me, too, in their way. They were like second parents once—until the silence swallowed us all.
And now, here we are.
I manage a watery laugh. “Guess I wasn’t the only one who got ambushed at an airport.”
Caden grins, wiping at his cheek with the heel of his hand. “Fair. You saw me when I reunited with your parents in Gomillion.”
“You cried harder than Mom,” I murmur, nodding, remembering the time four months ago fondly.
“Lies,” he says, but his smile gives him away.
The four of us stand there, tangled in laughter and tears, and there’s another shift—it feels like we’re no longer carrying the weight of what happened. We’re not trapped in the past anymore. We’re here, all of us, and the future is wide open.
Caden’s mom touches my cheek, her thumb brushing at the tear tracks. “You look good, Theo. Happy.”
I glance at Caden, at the man I’ve loved for more than half my life. “I am,” I whisper. “I really am.”
His dad nods, his hand firm on my shoulder. “That’s all we ever wanted. For both of you.”
We gather my bags, and as we walk toward the car, I can’t stop glancing at Caden, at his parents, at the way this all feels so impossibly right.
The dread that gnawed at me for months—the fear of how this reunion would go when I eventually saw them—melts away with every step.
In the last year, every time I came out to see Caden over school breaks, it just never worked out.
Once they were traveling, another time Caden and I slipped away to Hawaii together instead, greedy for the kind of time we’d lost. Each trip passed without crossing paths, and part of me wondered if fate was giving me more time to prepare. Turns out I didn’t need it.
This isn’t about the past anymore. It’s about what comes next.
At the car, we pack the bags into the trunk, then pile in—his dad driving, his mom up front, Caden and me squeezed together in the back seat like no time has passed. His thigh presses against mine, and his hand covers mine on the seat between us.
The city lights slide past the windows as we merge into traffic. For a while, it’s quiet, everyone breathing the same air, the weight of reunion still settling. Then his mom turns slightly in her seat.
“So,” she says lightly, “where to first?”
I glance at Caden. He’s watching me already, his smile small but certain.
“Our house,” he says.
My chest tightens at the word. Not his. Ours.
I try to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I was going to say maybe dinner together? Or at least—you could come by for a bit.”
Before they can respond, Caden lets out a groan and drops his head back against the seat. “Theo.” The word is half warning, half plea.
I raise my eyebrows, pretending innocence. “What?”
“You’ve been on a plane all day. I’ve been waiting for this day. And you want to invite my parents over the second we walk in the door?”
His mom laughs softly, shaking her head. “You two haven’t changed at all.”
“Unbelievable,” his dad mutters, though there’s humor in his voice.
I grin, leaning closer to Caden. “Maybe I just wanted to have a celebratory drink at our house.”
His eyes narrow, but he can’t fight the way his mouth tips up at the corner. “You just like making me suffer.”
“Always have,” I whisper, and the way his breath catches makes heat lick up my spine.
From the front seat, his mom clears her throat pointedly. “We’ll take a rain check. You two clearly have… catching up to do.”
I flush, but Caden’s grin turns wicked, like he’s proud of the way she phrased it. His dad chuckles low, steering us off the highway toward our neighborhood.
“Don’t keep him up too late,” his dad says dryly.
Caden groans again. “Dad.”
The laughter that spills through the car is easy, unforced. Sixteen years have gone by, but the rhythm is still here, alive between us all.
When we pull up outside Caden’s house—the house he’s owned for six years but which, starting tonight, will be ours—his mom just twists around in her seat, eyes shining as she looks at me.
“It’s so wonderful to have you home,” she says softly. “With him. That’s what we hoped for.”
Something in me cracks open at her words, and I nod, swallowing hard. “Thank you.”
They hug me quickly across the console, his dad giving Caden a pointed look that makes him groan for the third time. We climb out and haul my suitcases out of the trunk. His parents wave as they drive off toward their own place, headlights sweeping across the street until they’re gone.
And then it’s just us.
Caden leans in before I can grab the bags, kissing me slow and deep, one hand cupping the back of my neck. When he pulls away, his smile is pure trouble. “Finally.”
“Finally,” I echo, and it tastes like forever.
He grabs my hand again, squeezing tightly as we face the front door together. And as I look up at the place that is now our home, I agree. Finally. I’m not just stepping into his life. I’m stepping into ours.