Epilogue
Seven months later
The front door opened with a blast of cold so sharp it stole the air from the room.
“I forgot,” Tristan said, stomping snow from his boots, “how absolutely unforgiving these winters are.”
I laughed from the kitchen. “That’s because you blocked it out. We all do. It’s a survival tactic.”
He shrugged out of his jacket, thick and dusted with snow, and hung it on the hook by the door right beside mine, where it had started living sometime in November without either of us ever naming it. He rolled his shoulders like he was shaking the cold from his bones.
“End of January,” he muttered. “It’s not cold. It’s personal.”
Josh snorted from the couch. “That’s Athabasca for you. That what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. It builds character.”
“And resentment,” Tristan added easily.
The house hummed around us. Beef barley soup bubbled on the stove. Music played low from the speaker on the counter. The windows fogged enough to blur the streetlights outside. It felt good in the way only lived-in warmth ever did.
Allie leaned against the island, scrolling on her phone, one socked foot hooked around the other. “You should’ve seen him come in,” she said to me. “He looked personally offended by the weather.”
“I was,” Tristan said. “Still am.”
Josh’s girlfriend, Claudia, sat at the table with a mug cupped in her hands, watching everything with a soft smile. She’d been around long enough now to feel comfortable, but not so long that she’d stopped noticing.
“You get used to it,” she offered kindly.
Tristan gave her a skeptical look. “I’m not convinced that’s true.”
Without asking, I handed him his very serious black coffee. He took it with a quiet smile meant for me.
Seven months hadn’t dulled that look. If anything, it had softened into something steadier. Something that stayed.
He took a sip and sighed. “Okay. This helps.”
Josh watched us before speaking. “So you flying back next week, or sticking it out?”
“Heading home for a few days,” Tristan replied. “Then I’m here for February. We’ve got a tasting event at the community center. Cold-weather reds.”
I leaned against the counter beside him. “He says that like it was his idea.”
“It was my idea,” Tristan said. “I just didn’t realize it would involve hauling cases through snowbanks.”
Claudia laughed. “Welcome to Alberta.”
I looked around the room; my kids, grown in ways that still caught me off guard, the easy way Tristan fit into the corners of their lives and the growing warmth that had nothing to do with the thermostat.
“Soon,” Allie said, glancing up from her phone, “you’ll be complaining about rain instead.”
“Excuse me?” Tristan said.
Claudia grinned. “End of April. She moves back to the island. Remember?”
“I remember,” he said. “I’m choosing denial until March.”
I nudged him with my hip. “You’ll survive.”
Josh raised an eyebrow. “So you’re really doing it? The island thing?”
“April to September,” I said easily. “Seasonal contract near Victoria. Auntie Tina pulled a few strings for me.” Several strings really, but I was grateful. It had been impossible to ask for help, and yet when I did, those who mattered more than stepped up without hesitation.
“And then I get her back,” Tristan added, looping his arm around my waist and tugging me closer. “Like a very patient, very capable migratory bird.”
I smiled. “You say that like you don’t come visit.”
“I do,” he said. “Frequently. For my health.” He winked, but there was more behind the wink than he dared to speak.
Josh shook his head, amused. “Still wild to me that you two figured this out without making it weird.”
Tristan glanced at me. “Oh, we made it weird. Just... privately.”
I laughed and leaned into his side.
Claudia watched us, thoughtful. “It’s kind of nice,” she said. “The way you do it. Like you’re not giving anything up.”
Something settled in my chest.
“That was the point,” I said softly.
Later, when the heart of the house quieted and the kids disappeared into their separate corners, Tristan stood by the door again, adjusting his scarf.
“Still brutal,” he said, glancing outside.
I slipped my arms around his waist from behind, pressing my cheek between his shoulder blades. “You’ll warm up.”
He covered my hands with his. “I already have.”
The future was no longer something that pressed or pulled, or waited.
We didn’t belong to one place; we belonged to each other.
And somehow, that was enough.
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Thank you so much for reading Highways and Heartbeats.