Epilogue
Enzo
Five years later
The cabin looked different now.
Not because the mountains had changed, or the snow, or the old wooden beams I finally replaced after five winters. It looked different because it felt lived in.
Warm.
Safe.
Full.
Like a place that had a heartbeat.
Snow drifted outside the windows like wispy curtains, glowing gold in the late afternoon sun. Inside, the kitchen smelled like gingerbread, vanilla, and the faint pine scent of the tree I’d cut down the week before.
Gianina helped our son, Nico, roll out gingerbread dough on the counter. “Like this, Mama?”
“Yes, just like that, sweetie,” she replied, wiping some flour off his cheek.
While the cookies were baking, he helped her make the icing. “You have to make sure it’s not too thin,” I said. “It has to be able to hold the walls of the house up.”
“Okay, Dada.”
Once the cookies had cooled, we got to work assembling the gingerbread house; just as we had every Christmas since our first one together.
“The roof is falling!” Nico declared with the dramatics of a three-year-old who believed gingerbread architecture was a sacred art. He stood on the chair beside the dining room table, cheeks flushed pink, hair sticking out in ten directions.
“The first time your Mom and I did this, the same thing happened. She made the icing too thin and the house fell apart.”
Gianina rolled her eyes at me. “I did not.” She bumped her shoulder into mine, smiling in the way she only smiled here, in this place where the world was small and safe and ours.
“Did you have to make another one?” Nico asked.
Directing her attention to our son, she brushed hair out of his face. “No. Because even though it was broken, it was still beautiful in its own way.”
I kissed her on the cheek, rubbing my hand over her pregnant belly. “I love you.”
“Daddy, the walls are melting!” Nico shrieked.
He definitely got his dramatic flair from his mom.
I turned to evaluate the gingerbread house catastrophe unfolding on the table, fighting a laugh.
The icing was definitely sliding.
The gumdrops were definitely upside-down.
And the gingerbread walls were leaning like they’d been hit by a mild earthquake.
We worked together—well, I worked, and Nico enthusiastically smeared icing everywhere except where it needed to be. Gianina watched us with that soft, warm expression I never got tired of seeing.
The kind that still hit me deep in the chest, every damn time.
Five years.
Five years since the cabin was a battlefield.
Five years since her father threatened me.
Five years since I stopped running from the one thing that scared me more than bullets ever could.
“You happy?” I asked.
It was the same question I’d asked her a thousand times. The answer never changed.
“Always,” she replied.
Something in my chest loosened. A knot I didn’t even know I was still carrying. This was the happiest I’d ever been.
The most whole.
Five years ago, I never thought I’d have any of this.
Now it was everything.
I kissed her forehead, lingering there, breathing in the warmth of her skin and the faint smell of vanilla and clove.
“Think he’ll remember this when he’s older?” she asked softly.
“He’d better,” I replied. “This was a lot of work.”
Our son sneezed a cloud of powdered sugar. Gianina laughed. I wiped his nose, earning an indignant glare that looked exactly like hers.
We stepped back to admire our masterpiece when we were done: a gingerbread house slanted like it had survived a natural disaster, dripping with icing, decorated with gumdrops placed by someone who had zero architectural vision.
“Wow,” Gianina praised, pretending it wasn’t a monstrosity.
Our son clapped his frosting-smeared hands. “We did it! Can we make gingerbread every year?”
“Every year,” I said, hoisting him onto my hip. “It’s a tradition.”
“Our tradition,” Gianina emphasized, threading our fingers together.
Nico smiled like that was the best promise in the world.
And standing there—gingerbread chaos, snow falling softly beyond the windows, my family pressed close under the glow of warm cabin lights—I realized something.
The cabin didn’t feel like a place we had to escape to anymore.
It felt like home.
THE END