EPILOGUE
Hollis
Six months later…
I had to fight every instinct in my body not to ask Meredith to move in with me.
Not that my place is ready for guests in any way, sometimes, I wonder what I’m doing living in an old cabin I’ve slowly been renovating.
Before I bought this place, mostly for the land, the most recent tenants had been a family of raccoons.
Can’t say I’m a big fan of their decorating style.
They’ve since moved into one of the many sheds on the property.
I could have lived with Meredith the day we met. A few months later, I stand by it.
The thing is, with someone like her, like both the mermaids, unfortunately for me and Redford, you take whatever they’re willing to give you. I love that independence. Though is it really independence if they’re joined at the hip?
I think we both need women who don’t need us around constantly. With our jobs, that’s just not possible. Probably why relationships never worked for either of us. Turns out all we needed was to date mermaids.
“I still don’t know how you guys managed to pull this off,” Meredith gushes, pulling my sweaty body into hers as the last of autumn’s leaves rain down around us.
“For you, I’ll always do what I can to make the impossible happen.”
After Redford declared the structure wasn’t a complete loss, thanks solely to the root cellar I became the luckiest man in the world in, and our connections with town hall, we were able to help the girls rebuild.
They’ve been living in the vacant apartment above Kenzie’s shop, which allows them to drop what they’re doing and run downstairs to personally sign every piece of their artwork that goes out the door. They have a special bell to alert them and everything.
I didn’t realize how fun life could be until these last few months.
It’s not about the big trips and grand gestures, it’s in the way you handle the mundane.
Clearing out the debris, rebuilding the dock, furnishing their temporary apartment, I couldn’t imagine ever looking forward to any of that.
With Meredith, I can’t wait to get off shift and do things I would have dreaded a year ago.
“Hollis, this’ll be my first Christmas in Cedar Spring. I’ve never seen the lake and mountains covered in snow. We need the biggest tree ever. What do you think we can fit in the apartment? Twenty footer?”
“Maybe a little smaller.”
“Ugh, fine, we’ll do an eighteen.”
“I think six might be the cutoff. But I promise, next year, we’ll be able to fit a huge one in the cabin.”
“Okay, deal. I like the sounds of next year,” she says through a grin that cuts through the clouds. “It means this is really home. Finally. It’s not a dream anymore, despite how it feels. This is real, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”
It sure is.
I thought my life was perfect, until the day Meredith Cushing came into it and colored my grayscale world with her vibrant personality. This is what it means to be alive.
If you missed any of the Cedar Spring Lake mountain men, binge the series now.