Epilogue
Tatum
A Year Later
The moment they call my name, everything feels surreal.
The applause. The weight of the gown draped over my shoulders. It all blurs together into something I can barely hold onto as I walk across the stage and accept my degree. It doesn’t take long before I’m moving through the crowd.
The noise swells around me as families and friends gather, voices overlapping, laughter echoing across the open space.
Then I see him. My husband.
Lachlan stands just a few feet away, completely still in the middle of all the chaos.
Everything else fades the moment my eyes land on him.
He’s dressed simply, but there’s nothing simple about the way he looks—navy shirt with the sleeves rolled just far enough to show the ink along his forearms, the collar open, dark slacks that fit him too well.
But it’s not just that. It’s the way he’s looking at me. Full of love and intense warmth.
Like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
A wide smile pulls at my lips as I close the distance between us. My heart swells, too full to contain, too real to ignore. For a brief second, I take him in, really take him in. Not just the man standing in front of me, but everything he is now compared to everything we’ve been through.
Everything we survived.
“You did it,” he says, his voice low but filled with warmth and pride as he holds out a bouquet of orchids.
I take it, my fingers brushing his, a soft laugh slipping past my lips. “I did.”
He pulls me closer, his arm sliding around my waist like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Congratulations, counselor,” he adds quietly, a hint of amusement in his tone.
I beam up at him, my heart warming in the best way. “Future counselor,” I correct. “Law school starts in the fall.”
His gaze softens. “You’ll be good at it.”
I nod, my grip tightening on the flowers as I lean into him just a little more, letting the moment settle. My mind drifts back, unbidden but welcome, tracing the path that led us here.
The lawsuit, the long process that followed. The moment everything shifted when Bardon finally admitted on paper what their own testing data had been saying for eight years, and a judge vacated Lachlan’s conviction on a Tuesday morning in a room with fourteen people in it.
He didn’t say a word when it happened. Just stood there while it was read out, very still, the way he goes still. It was three days before I caught him humming in our kitchen and understood that something had actually come off him.
The settlement changed things, not just financially, but also by giving us a chance to build something new. It paid for everything we needed—my tuition, law school, the loft. And it gave Lachlan the chance to start again on his own terms.
A shop on Delano that he’d been walking past for a month before he ever mentioned it to me.
The sign went up in April. GREEN & brOWNING, in black letters, because he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Most importantly, it gave him peace. Enough for him to let go of the guilt that had been eating at him for years. For him to accept that what happened wasn’t something he could have stopped. That Tyler’s death wasn’t his burden to carry forever.
I shift back to look up at him, my chest full as I take in the man he’s become.
His gaze drops to mine, flickering with warmth, before he leans down. His lips brush against mine in a soft, lingering kiss that feels like a promise more than anything else.