Epilogue
Three Months Later
Mile ninety-eight hit different than the others.
Not harder, exactly. Just more honest. The accumulated miles had stripped away everything that wasn’t essential—the race strategy, the carefully managed pace, the mental calculations Steph had been running since the race started.
What was left was simple. Keep moving. One foot in front of the other. The finish line existed, and she was going to reach it.
Thirty-eight hours and some change were behind her. The cutoff was fifty-five hours, but her personal goal was forty. She was going to make it with time to spare.
The course had done everything it promised.
Subzero temperatures, the wind finding every gap in her layers and working at it patiently.
A section where the snow went from fast and firm to the soft, soul-sucking kind.
Two aid stations so far apart they barely counted, the miles between them the longest she’d run in her life.
She’d kept moving through all of it.
The sled had performed. The harness had held. The food she’d tucked against her body had stayed soft enough to eat, and the stove had worked at elevation the way she’d tested it in the meadow on a training run back in January, which now felt both like a different life and like yesterday.
Even after the terror in December, Steph knew she needed to continue her training plans. If she hadn’t, she might have become forever fearful of being alone in the wilderness at night, and then how could she be expected to finish her race?
Brooke and Gina understood her need and offered to go with her, even though neither of them were fans of winter excursions.
It had been exactly what she needed, not only to prove to herself that she could still do it, but also to show just how good of friends they were, not that she ever doubted that.
She’d tightened her gear then, too, making sure she had everything that was mandatory along with anything she might need just in case. Surviving a night with Jack while being shot at had really driven home how badly things could go wrong.
The finish line was visible now, the banners and the lights and the small cluster of people who had come out in the March cold to wait for finishers.
She recognized the configuration from the two previous years she’d been there, the first as a DNF and the second as a barely-made-it, and she understood this year was different before she could see any faces clearly.
Jocelyn’s voice carried through the air, shouting Steph’s name.
That was always how it was. Jocelyn’s voice carried the way voices did when their owner had spent years projecting to the back of a theater, and the particular pitch she reserved for moments of genuine excitement was unmistakable at this distance.
Steph picked it out of the cold air, and a knot inside her slowly unraveled.
Then she could see them.
Jocelyn with both arms in the air, not caring even slightly about the cold or the spectacle she was making of herself, which was pure Jocelyn and exactly right.
Joe Monroe stood beside her, more restrained but present, his hands coming together, watching her come in with the expression of someone who understood what they were witnessing.
Brooke’s face bright with the joy she brought to other people’s victories, and Tyler with his arm around her shoulders and a grin that said he’d been waiting awhile and didn’t mind.
Gina and Nick farther along the chute, adding their voices to it.
And Jack.
He was easy to find. Bundled up well against the cold, he was the tallest of the group, and he was cheering the loudest, which she would not have predicted six months ago, and which now seemed completely right.
His voice carried over the others, not Jocelyn’s theatrical projection but something more unguarded than she’d heard from him in all the months she’d known him. He had his arms up and his eyes on her and he was not pretending to be composed about any of it.
She kept moving toward the finish line, eyes on him, and thought about everything it had taken to get here. Not just the hundred miles behind her, not just the hours of cold and dark and the particular suffering that The Frozen Divide delivered without apology.
The months before that.
The gear swap and the Jingle Run and the overnight training run that had turned into something neither of them had planned for. The crevice in the rock where they hid, side by side, shoulders touching. Even deep in the danger, Steph knew. She knew Jack wasn’t who she’d convinced herself he was.
Jack Swisher was so much more. And it was then she started having an inkling he was the one she wanted to spend her life with.
She thought about what she’d told herself for years. She was fine alone. Running and her career and the careful life she’d built could be enough without needing a man to be a part of it. Being alone wasn’t the issue as much as the clock, but she’d found a solution around that.
She’d been wrong about most of that.
Jack had become a part of her life, often joining the Wednesday running club and doing things with her group of friends. Steph, too, would go to Elkridge to participate in his club events.
Living thirty miles apart and both of them being busy meant they worked hard to find time to be together and spent hours each week on the phone getting to know each other.
And the more she learned about him and who he really was, the more she understood all of those years of wanting were paying off.
She’d spent years afraid that wanting a family meant compromising on the person, that the clock would eventually make the picture more important than the reality. She looked at Jack at the finish line, cheering with everything he had, and understood she hadn’t compromised on anything.
She’d found the actual thing, the version she hadn’t been willing to believe existed, and she’d almost kept him in the category of obstacle long enough to miss it entirely.
The finish line was right there. The timing clock above it showed the numbers she’d been running toward for three years. She looked back at Jack, holding his gaze as she crossed.
The cheering hit her all at once, Jocelyn’s voice above everything.
Then Jack’s arms were around her. She was still wearing the sled harness, but he didn’t care, and neither did she. He pulled her in, and she let him. Her legs were done, her face was wind-burned, and her eyes were full, and she didn’t do anything about any of it.
“You crushed it,” he said into her hair. “Under thirty-nine hours.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it, Steph. You did it.”
Around them, the cheering continued. Jocelyn said something that would require a response eventually, and somewhere behind her, Tyler was whistling and Brooke was cheering. Gina’s voice was high and tight as she cheered. Nick was clapping and whooping while Joe shouted her name.
A wave of happiness settled over Steph. Not only because she’d reached her race goal, but because this was her family. The people who understood her and were there for her.
She pulled back far enough to look at Jack.
He was looking back at her, eyes glistening and a wide smile.
“You were right,” she said.
“About what specifically? There have been several things.”
She laughed. “That this would work.”
He looked at her for a moment. Then, quietly, so only she could hear it under the noise of the finish line and Jocelyn’s ongoing commentary, he said, “I love you.”
Her breath caught, the world around them blurring into noise and motion.
“I love you too,” she said, the words coming easy now. No hesitation, no fear, just the truth.
Something in his expression softened, like he had been bracing for impact and instead found solid ground. “I have something I want to ask you.” His voice was low, almost hoarse.
“Okay?”
He pulled her close and whispered, “Not here, but soon.”
She pulled back slightly, heart racing, as she took him in. The tears, the smile, the man who loved her.
“You can ask me anything.” Steph rose onto her toes and kissed him.
It was brief, almost chaste, but there was nothing small about it. Warm and sure, it carried everything they hadn’t said, everything they had survived to reach this moment. His fingers tightened around hers, anchoring her there as he leaned into it, as if he didn’t want to let the feeling go.
A cheer broke somewhere nearby, loud and bright, but it felt distant.
When she pulled back, she didn’t go far. Her head leaned against his arm, both of them smiling, steady and certain.
Jocelyn appeared beside her. “I hate to interrupt.” Her tone made it clear she didn’t hate it even slightly. “But there’s a finisher’s medal with your name on it. And I’ve been standing in the cold for hours and would like a hug.”
Steph laughed and stepped away from Jack and let Jocelyn pull her in. “Won’t be long until you’ll have your own finisher medal,” Steph said. “Your first marathon is the first weekend of July, and we’ll all be there cheering for you.”
“You’d better be.”
Over Jocelyn’s shoulder, she could see Joe, Brooke, Tyler, Gina, and Nick, the people who had shown up in the cold because that was what her community did for each other, and Jack stood right next to them with his hands in his pockets and the almost-smile she’d learned to read and the expression that said he was exactly where he wanted to be.
She was too.
Jocelyn thought the marathon was the challenge. She was wrong.