Epilogue
Dexter
The house sits on the hill above the Sound—glass and cedar and light.
It catches the morning like it was designed to hold warmth.
Aly says the walls feel alive, like they’re still breathing in sawdust and sea air.
I like that. The idea that even wood remembers you, if you stay long enough.
We didn’t build this place to show off. It’s not grand, not architectural art. It’s imperfect and wide enough to hold both of us without swallowing either one whole. It’s ready—when we are—for laughter and scraped knees and lullabies in the hallway.
Aly calls it home.
I call it proof.
She’s in our room, half-wrapped in sleep, humming along to the radio. It’s “Thank You” by Dido—off-key in a few places. I love that about her. That she sings anyway.
That she doesn’t try to be perfect for anyone—not even me.
I’m in the music room.
Not a studio. I never wanted that here. Barret’s studio is ten minutes away, and even then, I barely go. Mostly because any time we book space, Cleo and Eddie show up and turn it into a make-out session. Barret kicks us out before we hit record.
Rosie rests against the couch—tuned, waiting. My other guitar leans near the window, where the sun filters through its strings like it’s trying to coax out a song of its own.
There was a time I couldn’t look at them. Couldn’t touch the fretboard without feeling like I owed something I couldn’t give. Like every chord had to cost me something.
Now?
Now I play because I want to.
Because sometimes Aly falls asleep next to me on the couch with her fingers tangled in my shirt, and the quiet feels too wide unless I fill it with music.
Funny how love does that.
Takes what used to break you and turns it into rhythm.
I head toward the kitchen, bare feet against cool wood. The light has shifted—no longer early, not yet late. The fog’s lifting beyond the glass. Out past the deck, the sound shimmers silver, stretching wide and endless. A ferry hums in the distance. Seagulls dive low over the water.
She’s already out there.
Barefoot. Hair tangled from sleep. Wrapped in my old navy sweatshirt—the one she “borrowed” months ago and never gave back. The sleeves cover her hands. Her legs are bare. She’s pure poetry against the morning.
When she hears the door creak open, she glances over her shoulder and smiles.
It’s small. Lazy.
Fucking devastating.
“You made coffee?” she asks, voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Trying to earn my keep,” I say, offering her the mug.
She takes it, her fingers brushing mine. “You’ve already earned it.”
We sit on the back deck, side by side, the wood groaning beneath us like an old friend stretching awake. Her knee touches mine. Her shoulder brushes mine. We don’t speak for a while.
We don’t need to.
The quiet isn’t something to escape anymore.
It’s the music between moments.
Just us. The wind. The salt. The unremarkable miracle of a morning where nothing hurts.
“Do you ever miss it?” she asks softly, eyes on the water.
“The penthouse?” I sip my coffee. “Last I heard, the teenager downstairs set off the fire alarm trying to cook ramen. I think we made the right call. Who wants another cherry bomb incident?”
She snorts. “No. The stage. The world. All of it.”
I think about it. About the crowd roaring like a tidal wave. About the ache in my chest before the curtain rose. The lights. The hangovers. The applause that never filled anything real. The silence that came after—wide, loud, punishing.
I shake my head. “Not like I thought I would.”
I stopped chasing redemption and trying to get a career that I thought I needed because I was a Vaughn. These days, Dead Moth Parade plays unplugged concerts around Seattle, but we don’t announce them. We just do our thing and forget about what’s expected from us.
Aly waits for my response patiently.
“I used to chase noise,” I say. “Because silence scared the shit out of me. But it turns out silence isn’t the enemy. It’s where everything important finally gets a voice.”
She leans into me then, resting her head on my shoulder, her hair brushing my jaw. Her body folds into mine like she’s always known how to fit there.
“And what matters?” she whispers.
I press a kiss to her temple. “You. Coffee. Morning sex. Writing songs that never need an audience.”
She laughs quietly, the sound curling in my chest. “You’re getting good at this.”
“What, love?”
“Being happy.”
She says it like it’s fragile. Like it could break if we breathe too loud.
I slide my arm around her waist and pull her closer, grounding both of us to the moment.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I am. Took a while. I had to meet the right person . . . and find the right venue where I could learn to play my heart.”
The wind shifts. The faint scent of lilac floats through the air from the garden bed below. Somewhere, a dog barks—probably the next door’s retriever chasing a bird again. The day keeps moving. Nothing spectacular. Nothing big.
And somehow, it’s everything.
I think about the man I used to be.
The one who blurred his edges so no one could see the cracks. Who turned himself into noise so he wouldn’t have to hear the silence. Who thought if he played loud enough, maybe he’d drown out what hurt.
Applause used to be my proof of life. Now?
Now I don’t need to be seen. Just held. Known. Loved in the quiet.
She found me there—in that scorched space between who I was and who I was trying to become—and she didn’t try to fix me.
She just made me play out of my comfort zone.
And after that . . .
She laughs when I forgot lyrics.
Dances with me in the kitchen or wherever we feel like it.
And taught me how to breathe again.
That’s love, I think.
Not saving. Not repairing. Just seeing.
Out of nowhere, I start to sing, it’s barely above a whisper:
You built me a house out of second chances,
and I learned how to stay.
You found the melody under all the static,
and taught the silence what to say.
She opens her eyes, and there’s something in them that feels like forever.
“Is that new?” she asks.
I nod.
“You gonna release it?”
“I will. Eventually.” I grin. “But for now, it’s ours.”
She shifts, climbing into my lap like it’s her natural state of being. Her hand finds my jaw, thumb tracing the corner of my mouth. “You know, you never did build that studio.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Building us.”
She kisses me then—slow, easy, the kind of kiss that feels like memory and beginning at once. When she pulls back, her eyes are shining, the way they do when she’s trying not to cry.
“Tomorrow night,” she whispers.
I smile, brushing my nose against hers. “Always.”
She laughs quietly, the sound threading into the soft crash of the tide below. The ferry horn moans again, long and low, like the world exhaling.
I used to think happiness was something loud—a crowd, a chart position, a headline.
Turns out it’s this.
Her heartbeat against mine.
The creak of the deck.
The warmth of her hand anchored in mine.
I take another breath and let the quiet settle.
Finally, I’m not running from the silence.
I’m living in it.
And it’s music.