25. Epilogue
The baby comes in February.
She arrives on a Tuesday, unhurried and apparently already on her own schedule, seven pounds four ounces with her father's dark hair and a set of lungs that General Tso would respect.
Cole holds her first, in a hospital room gone quiet except for the soft beep of a monitor, and he goes so still and so quiet that I reach over and put my hand on his arm just to check.
He looks up at me. His eyes are wet.
"Hey," I say.
"Hey." His voice is wrecked in the best possible way. He glances back down at her. "She's Suzanne."
"I know."
"She's ours."
"She is."
He presses a kiss to her forehead, then reaches over and takes my hand without looking up, and holds it.
Outside the room, I can hear the Harper brothers in the hallway. Beau's voice, low and certain. Nash, uncharacteristically loud over something. Jett is telling someone to stop blocking the window.
Willa and Holly are almost certainly crying.
Butter & Bean reopens in March, rebuilt with new floors, a proper back exit, the espresso machine in the same spot, and a new menu board on the wall where the old one used to hang. My grandmother's apron is framed now, hung where I can see it from behind the counter.
The first morning, Cole comes in before opening, Smokey at his heels. He doesn't order. I already know what he wants.
Smokey beats him through the door anyway, tail going like a flag. He makes a beeline for the corner table, the one that's been his for weeks now, and noses at the baby carrier once. Careful. Checking. Then he drops down beside it with a grunt, settling in like he's clocking in for guard duty.
By the time Cole folds himself into the chair, our daughter tucked against his chest, his coffee is already waiting on the counter.
He lifts two fingers off the cup without looking up.
Thanks. I go back to the machine, and Smokey's tail thumps once against the floor when the baby makes a small, sleepy sound.
The bell over the door chimes. Patsy from the flower shop, right on schedule, talking before she's all the way through it.
She leans over the carrier and coos at the baby, then tells me she's already got Cole's scowl.
I laugh and start her usual order. I don't check the street behind her.
I don't count the exits. There's just Patsy, the steam wand, and the smell of fresh coffee.
Outside, General Tso struts past the window like he's inspecting the block for slackers. He pauses at the door, considers it, then moves on down the sidewalk. Even he seems to know there's nothing here that needs guarding this morning.
Cole catches my eye over the counter. For a second, the noise of the shop, the bell, the steam, Patsy's chatter, all of it blurs at the edges. It's just him, me, and our daughter asleep in his arms.
He doesn't smile. Not exactly. But the look on his face is the softest thing I've ever seen on a man who spent years convincing the world he didn't do soft.
I'm not bracing for anything. For the first time in years, I'm just here. In this town, in this life, in this love that showed up like a fire call and turned out to be the thing that saved me.
I smile enough for both of us.
Some things, it turns out, are worth coming home for.
The End