EPILOGUE
Callum
The sun was low and slow, stretching gold across the orchard like it knew we needed one more perfect day.
I stood just outside the barn, my boots planted in the dirt, arms crossed as I watched a group of kids charge Tire Mountain like it was Everest. One of them lost a shoe halfway up.
Another screamed with delight and launched into a dive-roll.
Nobody cried. Nobody got hurt. The kind of chaos that made a place feel alive.
And it was alive—every inch of it.
It was perfect. Chaotic, a little sticky, probably two safety violations away from a lawsuit—but utterly perfect.
A year ago, this farmland was just overgrown hills and a distant what-if. I didn’t even believe in forever back then—not until a fiery brunette in muddy boots showed up and refused to leave.
The scents of woodsmoke and warm cider curled through the air.
Someone had spilled kettle corn near the firepit, and a trail of toddlers were treating it like a buffet.
The hayride was packed, the tractor rattling down the path behind the barn while laughter and squeals echoed behind it.
The bluegrass trio had set up beside the pumpkin patch and was strumming into the late-afternoon light.
A golden retriever with a bandanna labeled “Hank” was doing laps between tables, joyfully stealing doughnuts off paper plates like it was his personal fall buffet. Someone yelled “Hank, no!” and he responded by snagging another one and bolting toward the hayride.
And Elodie?
She was in the middle of it all. Barefoot in the grass, curls wild from the breeze, her laugh carrying farther than the music.
She was leaning down to tie a child’s shoe, waving at a family she’d met ten minutes ago, smoothing a plaid tablecloth that refused to behave.
Her flannel was too big—because it was mine. Her cheeks flushed pink from the chill.
And she was the most beautiful damn thing I’d ever seen. Barefoot and radiant, curls like wildfire, her laugh lifting above the music. She looked like chaos and comfort wrapped in plaid.
And she was mine.
I could’ve stayed back, just watched her in that golden hour glow like a fool—but I had things to do.
The new sign hung at the front gate, wood-grain lettering carved deep and clean:
Star Harbor Farm & The Drifted Spirit Inn
Est. (again) 2025
Two pieces finally made whole.
We’d closed on the land weeks ago. With JP’s help, Elodie had purchased the farm outright, but not just the farm and orchard or the cottage.
With the historic easement in place, we were able to fold the Drifted Spirit and the acreage into one—just like it had been before time had torn it apart with lines and paperwork and poorly maintained recordkeeping.
Now it was whole again.
And so were we.
The big blue barn was under renovation, one wall already stripped to the studs, the scent of sawdust clinging to the air like possibility. Construction would pick up in the winter when the events slowed down, and by spring, it would be ready. Our restaurant. Her design. My food. Our dream.
I turned from the barn to help an elderly woman with her bag of apples—Elodie’s friend Sheila from bingo, who’d already threatened to steal one of our scarecrows—and walked her to her car. When I turned back around, I saw Elodie standing with Levi at the edge of the bustling pumpkin patch.
His hoodie sleeves were too long, and his sneakers were muddy, but he looked lighter somehow. More settled. Taller.
I watched them talk. She bumped his shoulder, and he rolled his eyes in the exaggerated way that only a teenage boy could. Then she knelt and adjusted something on his boot—probably his laces—and whatever he said made her laugh. That belly-deep, messy laugh I never got tired of.
He looked older.
She looked like home.
They looked like they belonged to each other. Not in the way people say when there was shared blood—but in the way souls just know. Watching them, I had a lump in my throat and no idea what to do with it.
I made my way over just as Levi was biting into a cinnamon doughnut the size of his face .
“You have one?” he asked me, powdered sugar already dusting his hoodie.
I shook my head. “Waiting for the cider slush line to die down.”
Elodie grinned up at me, her face flushed. “You’re gonna be waiting forever. It’s chaos over there.”
“That’s what happens when your secret recipe gets out,” I said, nudging her.
Levi wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “You guys are gross.”
But there was a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth, and I caught the way he lingered when Elodie pulled him in for a hug.
“You sticking around for the bonfire?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe. Or I might go hang at Hayes’s for a bit. Thought I’d give the two of you a break before someone makes me sing ‘Kumbaya’ or whatever.”
Elodie ruffled his curls, and he ducked away with a grin.
After he wandered off, she leaned into me. “He’s okay.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “He is.”
We stood in silence for a beat, watching the sun dip lower behind the orchard, turning the sky to fire.
Then I reached for her hand.
“You trust me?”
She turned to look at me, brow lifted. “Always.”
“Come with me.”
I led her past the cider tents and the bonfire pit, past the barn and down the gravel path that wound through the trees. The farther we went, the quieter it got. Just the crunch of leaves underfoot, the hum of crickets waking up in the grass, the crackle of a fire in the distance.
She looked up at the sky and smiled, soft and secret.
And for a split second I almost backed out.
Because how the hell do you give someone the world when they’ve already handed it to you first?
But I knew, deep down, the perfect moment I’d been waiting for was something I was already living. Every moment with her was perfect.
When we reached the old oak—the one she loved, with the crooked spine and the wooden swing—I stopped.
She looked around. “Cal?”
“I’ve been trying to find the right moment,” I said, “to do this.”
“To do what?”
I dropped to one knee.
Elodie froze.
And then her hands flew to her mouth, eyes already glassy with tears.
“Elodie Darling,” I said, my voice low and steady despite the way my heart was trying to punch a hole through my ribs, “this land might be what brought us together, but you’re what made it matter.”
She let out a tiny sob and immediately covered her mouth again.
“You’re the first thing I’ve ever wanted that didn’t come with a blueprint.
You didn’t just walk into my life like a storm, you rewrote every line I thought I’d already figured out.
And thank god you did, because the life I was building before you?
It didn’t hold a candle to this. If you’ll let me, I want to spend the rest of my life building something that doesn’t need plans or fences or backup options. ”
I pulled the ring from my pocket and opened the velvet box.
It wasn’t flashy. A thin, antique gold band, a marquise-cut sapphire hugged by tiny diamonds on either side. Simple. Vintage. Unmistakably her .
“It may seem quick, but I’m done waiting for my life to start. I want to chase the sun with you,” I said, voice cracking. “Every damn day.”
For a long second, she didn’t move.
Then she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around my neck, tears warm against my skin.
“You jerk,” she whispered, laughing and crying at the same time. “You actual, unfair, impossibly good man.”
I held my breath and waited.
“Yes,” she whispered into my collarbone. “Yes. Of course, yes.”
I held her there, buried in the scent of orchard wind and of the woman who cracked me open and made me whole.
Later, when the stars came out and the fire burned low, she stood next to me with my flannel draped around her shoulders, ring sparkling like starlight as she waved to the last stragglers headed to their cars.
I pressed a kiss to her temple, heart full to bursting.
Some people waited their whole lives for a love that felt like safety.
My safety was wildfire and wonder and warmth.
Elodie was the reason I tore down every fence I’d ever built.
She was the sun.
And loving her?
That was the only thing worth chasing.