Epilogue
Christine
Two Years Later
The sand is warm between my toes.
I sit on the beach of the island we chose together, after a year of coming back to it.
Not because either of us believes a thing can make a person stay - we know better than that now.
Because Isabella fell in love with the ocean on our first visit and cried when we had to leave, and because for once we had the time to keep coming back and find out whether she’d still love it the fourth time.
She did.
Isabella runs through the shallow water, shrieking with joy as the waves grab at her ankles.
She’s fearless - has been since she learned to walk, throwing herself at the world with a determination that’s pure Morgan stubbornness.
She has my nose and his eyes and a laugh that makes everything else disappear.
Benedict chases her, making monster sounds that echo across the empty beach. He’s ridiculous - arms raised, voice growling, pretending to be some creature from the deep while our daughter screams and giggles and runs, fast now, faster than either of us expected.
My hand rests on my belly. Four months along. A boy, this time.
“Daddy!” Isabella crashes into Benedict’s arms. He swings her up, presses a kiss to her cheek, carries her back to me.
“Your daughter,” he says, collapsing onto the sand beside me, “has my stamina.”
“Your daughter has your stubbornness.”
“Our daughter,” he corrects, pulling me close, “has your heart.” He kisses me - soft, sweet, home. “Just like her brother will.”
I smile against his mouth.
“I love our life.”
“I love you.”
Isabella, deciding we’ve ignored her for too long, splashes water on both of us. We yelp, laughing, and she dissolves into giggles at her own mischief.
“Isabella Grace Morgan,” I say in my best stern-mother voice. “Did you just attack your parents?”
“Yes!” She beams, utterly unrepentant.
Benedict looks at me. I look at him. Without a word, we both reach down, scoop handfuls of water, and splash her back.
Her shriek of delighted outrage echoes across the beach.
The camera shutter clicks - Mom, capturing the moment from her chair beneath the umbrella. She’s been with us for a week, tanned and relaxed in a way I’ve never seen her, reading romance novels and spoiling her granddaughter rotten.
“That’s a good one,” she calls. “I’m framing it.”
“You frame everything,” I call back.
“You give me good things to frame.”
My phone is in a drawer in the house. Holloway Events has two people in it besides me now, and this weekend my team is running a wedding in Montauk without me, and I found out yesterday that I am capable of not checking.
On Thursdays when we’re home, I have dinner with Nadia and the two other women I spent years telling I was too busy to see. They gave me a hard time about it for roughly six months. Then they stopped.
I built something that can stand up without swallowing my life. It took me longer to learn that than it took him.
I lean into Benedict’s shoulder, watching our daughter splash in the waves, feeling our son shift inside me, listening to my mother’s laughter carry on the salt breeze.
A family. A future.
A forever that almost never happened.
But did.
And as Benedict’s arms tighten around me, as Isabella shrieks with joy and the sun melts into the sea, I realize something I couldn’t have understood before we almost lost each other. Couldn’t have believed.
I used to think love was a feeling.
Now I know it’s a choice. A thousand choices. A million tiny moments where you decide to stay. To try. To reach for someone’s hand even when you’re terrified they’ll let go.
Benedict didn’t let go.
Neither did I.
And this - this - is what’s on the other side of almost.
Everything.
THE END