Epilogue #2
The terrace is overflowing with every person I love, and the whole crowd erupts into cheers the second we clear the doorway. I spin to look up at Cillian, beaming, then back out at the sea of faces in front of me.
It's decorated exactly the way I like, elegant but homey: string lights and flickering candles, soft music, long tables laden with food, and flowers spilling out of every corner, all of it overlooking the autumn vineyard glowing in the low evening light.
Sabrina is front and center, jumping up and down, alongside Isabelle, Alex, and Celeste, and behind her my parents are beaming, Mom already dabbing at her eyes.
The entire Fright Club is here too, Dot and Miriam included.
Diane, Carol, and Elaine are waving from the nearest table, and Cillian's whole family has made the trek from Ireland, Fiadh raising a glass of champagne toward me.
Jonesy, Betts, Tom, and half the Renegades squad are cheering from the bar.
The celebration I was going to have to spend a week planning, and he'd already done it. Every detail handled, all exactly as I like it. If to be seen is to be loved, then I have never been so loved in all my life.
"Aye, I've had this in motion for a while now since I suspected you’d say yes. An engagement party, to celebrate properly." He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. "Everything's taken care of. All you have to do is enjoy it."
I barely get a smile out before I'm swallowed whole by Isabelle and Celeste, everyone talking at once.
"Congratulations!"
"We're so happy for you!"
"Oh my god, that rock!"
I laugh through a pile of hugs from his family, his mother clasping my hands and declaring, "I knew you two were meant for each other from the very start.
Didn't I say it, the night she stayed for dinner?
I turned to his father and I said, that's the one," while Fiadh squeezes my shoulder from behind her.
Saoirse shyly presses a wrapped book into my hands, the exact one I mentioned wanting months ago.
Carol and Elaine fold me into hugs in turn, and José appears just long enough to present me with an armful of cream roses cut from the walled garden.
Alfie, Diane's beagle, works the party tirelessly for scraps and pets.
Luna, José's cat, trails him at a dignified distance, wanting nothing to do with anyone's affection but too attached to her beagle friend to be anywhere else.
Then Dot shuffles up, tonight's earrings a pair of hand-painted grasshoppers, and pulls me into a hug that's surprisingly fierce for a woman her size. "I'm so happy for you, dearie. You're one of the sweetest people I've ever known, and you deserve someone who makes you this happy."
I squeeze her back, tight, my eyes stinging. "Thanks, Dot. That means a lot. Truly."
She pulls back, and her smile turns sly. "Good. Because there's a certain fiddle-leaf fig being delivered to your house tomorrow. Consider it an engagement gift."
I gasp. "The fiddle-leaf? You're letting me have it?"
She nods, solemn as a judge. "You've kept the last plants thriving, and I think it's time you graduated to the tropics. Besides." She winks. "Who am I to stand in the way of true love?"
Laughing, I hug her again, and over her shoulder I spot Cillian across the stone terrace with his sisters and Sabrina—who has officially been adopted as his fifth sister—all of them doubled over laughing at something on Ellie's phone.
He looks up mid-laugh, his gaze finding mine through the crowd, and the look he sends me is so intimate, so heavy with a quiet sort of promise, that it steals my next breath.
I return the look, warmth spreading through my chest. The anxiety still shows up some days, quieter now that I'm back in therapy and got a bump in my meds, and it doesn't get to run the show anymore.
I used to be terrified of anyone seeing me mid-spiral.
Cillian loves me through the heavy days just as fiercely as the bright ones, and it's the steadiest love I've ever known.
We weave through the party as the evening deepens, eating our way down the tables Isabelle and Alex catered, and then Celeste pulls me aside and presents me with three bottles from her family's reserve collection, wines I have only ever read about in books, and I come very close to hyperventilating in front of witnesses.
Diane corners me about the label expansion and neither of us can keep the excitement off our faces, talking over each other about vintages that don't exist yet, until Carol wanders past and reminds us both, fondly, that this is a party and we are legally prohibited from working at it.
Cillian and I drift together and apart and together again, pulled into different circles, always finding our way back.
At one point I catch him across the terrace with Miriam hanging off his arm, telling anyone in range, "I always said he was a sweet boy.
Charming, and handsome to boot! And I knew our Margot had excellent sense.
" I smile into my wine, because it was here, on this exact terrace, on a spring evening that feels like a lifetime ago, that a too-charming hockey player caught me mid-fall and I informed myself I hated him.
Eventually we drift back together at the railing, and I snuggle into his side, leaning against the stone, looking out over the party and every person we love gathered in one glowing place. I tilt my face up at him.
"I love you so much," I whisper.
"I love you too, Ace." He draws one slow finger along my cheek. "More than anything in this world."
He smiles and kisses me, and it's everything at once, safe and electric, steady and dizzying, the way only he has ever managed to be. And I'm certain, all the way down to my bones. Whatever comes next, it's together.
THE END
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