Epilogue
Dane Gallagher
There’s no mistaking it. I feel it before I fully see it.
Something tightens in my chest, sharp and certain. I’ve been scanning horizons for months—getting it wrong enough times that I stopped trusting that feeling. Stopped letting it mean anything.
This time is different. I know that shape. I never forgot it.
Charlotte’s hand closes around my arm. “Dane—”
That’s when I know she feels it too.
It’s taken almost a year to find this place. That’s once we were actually able to start looking.
We had to leave our cottage not long after Cameron was born and go back to Australia. There wasn’t a way around it.
What followed wasn’t quick. There was no path waiting for us—we had to build one ourselves.
The DNA results confirmed what my mother and Marcus had always known. Even then, separating one identity from another wasn’t simple. Everything had to be proven and formalized.
Cameron turned one before the courts recognized me as Dane Shepherd.
It had to be done. There was no other way to make Charlotte my wife in a way the world couldn’t question.
I’m not a Gallagher anymore.
Neither is Charlotte. Neither is our son.
We’re Shepherds.
That revelation set the media off all over again. New headlines. New theories. New people deciding they understood our lives.
In the end, it made the next step easy.
We left it all behind.
We anchor offshore and drop the tender.
The water is exactly as I remember it—a blue-green that only exists here. I know the depth at this distance without checking.
I lift Cam into my arms. He grabs my shirt straight away, both fists, the way he does when something’s new and he’s not quite sure about it yet.
Charlotte takes my hand as she steps into the tender. I steady her in, then bring us across.
She steps onto the sand first.
We stop there for a moment, just looking.
The first time I stood on this beach, I was twelve years old, and something inside me was broken.
I had no idea what this place would become. Or what Charlotte would become to me. I couldn't have imagined that the girl I resented would one day be the most important person in my life. That she'd be standing here now.
My wife.
The mother of my son.
Or that she’d end up holding my heart so completely.
The paths we wore into this place have grown over, but I find them anyway. My feet move before my eyes catch up. Muscle memory.
Cam watches everything, his head turning slowly as he takes it all in. He reaches for a low branch, and I let him. He grips it with both hands, then looks at me—waiting.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s all right, bub.”
He lets go, and his fists go straight back to my shirt.
I lift him onto my shoulders, settling him there. His hands go straight into my hair, fingers tangling, and I keep both hands on his thighs to steady him.
Charlotte moves ahead along the tree line, quiet and focused, taking it in her own way. Then we see it—what’s left of the shelter is still standing.
The back wall is gone. The roof didn’t last. But the uprights I drove into the ground are still there—weathered gray, worn down by years of wet season, but holding. The crossbeams are still joined, still doing their job.
I stop in front of it, taking it in.
There was no real plan when I built it. Just instinct. What Ryan taught me. I’d never built anything like it before—and it held. Longer than it should have.
Charlotte comes up beside me, her shoulder brushing mine and staying there. She looks at the frame, then up at Cam.
“This is where Mummy and Daddy lived.”
Cam shifts on my shoulders, his grip tightening in my hair.
Charlotte's gaze stays on what's left of the shelter.
“This is where you and I decided we were going to be happy, no matter what the world had taught us.”
I glance at her, but she doesn't look back—just keeps her eyes on it, something private moving through her expression.
I know what she's remembering.
I remember it too.
The wreck sits further in, where the trees open toward the beach.
What’s left of the yacht is barely recognizable now—the hull sunk deeper into the sand, sections of the deck collapsed and open to the sky.
Rust has eaten through the metal, and vines have taken hold, threading through the railings and into what used to be the cabin.
“It feels like a lifetime ago,” she says.
“It does.”
She reaches up, brushing her hand over Cam’s leg. “And then we left, and you came along,” she says to him. “And everything got better.”
Cam shifts, then reaches down toward her, his hand opening and closing. Charlotte takes it, presses a quick kiss to his fingers, then lets go.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go see them.”
We find the graves easily.
Time has softened everything. The mounds have settled, the edges less defined—but still there. The markers remain, weathered and leaning slightly, but standing.
Charlotte goes to them without hesitation. She crouches and starts clearing the growth with her hands, brushing debris away the same way she used to.
“Dane and I made it back. We told you we would.”
She moves from one to the next, clearing away the growth, straightening what she can.
“You’re grandparents now. His name is Cameron.” She glances back at us over her shoulder. “He’s an amazing little boy. You would have loved him.”
She shifts across to Jameson and Ryan, her hand resting on the ground for a moment.
“You’re uncles.” She laughs. “He’s always on the go. He would’ve kept you busy.”
Then our attention moves to the last grave.
Connor’s.
The ground has settled here too, but the marker is still in place.
I lift Cam and set him on his feet. He steadies himself in the grass, taking everything in at once. I crouch, and Charlotte comes down beside me, gathering him in and turning him toward the marker. He studies it with the same quiet focus he gives to anything he doesn’t yet understand.
“Connor,” she says, her voice soft. “This is your little brother.”
Cam leans forward and pats the ground once, open-palmed.
Charlotte’s breath catches, just for a second, but she keeps going.
“His name is Cameron, but we call him Cam.” She pauses. “I look at him sometimes and wonder if you would’ve looked like him.”
I place my hand on the ground. “We didn’t mean to stay away so long. But we know how to get back now. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
We take a few minutes to tidy what we can—clearing the last of the overgrowth and setting things back in place. Cam explores within the space, hands in the grass, attention everywhere at once. Charlotte brings out the flowers she picked on the way in and places them across each grave.
“Can we stay a while? Maybe take him down to the lagoon and let him play in the water?”
I look at her. “We’ve got more than enough supplies. We can stay as long as you want.”
She nods, something in her easing. “I’d like that.”
I pull her in and hold her, tighter than usual. “Me too.”
There was a time I thought this island was the end of everything. The worst part of it. Somewhere I’d spend the rest of my life trying to forget.
I had that wrong.
Everything I have now started here.
I look out across the island—the place that broke us and remade us—and I know we'll bring all of our children back here one day. I'll stand in this exact spot and tell them everything.
But not today.
Today, I take Charlotte's hand and lift Cam back onto my shoulders. Then the three of us walk out of the clearing together.
The island remains exactly as it always was. The difference is us.
Behind us is where our story began.
Ahead of us is the life we built from it.
The End
Please enjoy the following excerpt from
You Have My Attention:
A Dark Stalker Romance.