Extended Epilogue
JARVIS
Ten years later…
The deck boards are warm under my bare feet. I have been standing here for twenty minutes, maybe longer, holding a glass of lemonade that has gone from cold to lukewarm.
The lake stretches out in front of me, flat and calm, the afternoon sun hitting the water in a way that makes the whole surface glow.
We bought this place five years ago, after the restaurant expanded to a third location and Jolie said she wanted somewhere to take the kids on weekends.
Jett found the property in two days. I signed the papers without looking at the price.
Jolie cried when she saw the dock. She said she had never seen water so clear.
I'm sixty-one years old. My left knee aches when the weather changes, a souvenir from a jump out of a helicopter thirty years ago that I never bothered to fix.
My beard is more silver than charcoal now.
I had surgery on my left shoulder two years ago, and Jett still gives me hell about skipping the physical therapy.
He says I'm stubborn, and he's right. But I'm here, I'm standing, and I'm watching my family.
My youngest, Micah, is on the shore. He's five years old and small for his age, with honey-blonde hair that sticks up in the back no matter how many times Jolie wets it down.
He's crouched over a pile of driftwood and rocks with his tongue poking out in concentration, trying to build a fort that won't fall over.
He adds a stick, but it slides off. He frowns, pushes his glasses up his nose, and tries again.
He doesn't know I'm watching. He's too focused on his engineering problem..
I smile, though I don't often do it and never really did before, but I smile for him. He's the reason I do it every day.
I hear the splash from the dock. Jett is in the water up to his waist, his dark hair wet and slicked back, his arms outstretched.
The twins are with him, almost fifteen now and already so much like us it scares me.
Mason has my build, broad and stubborn across the shoulders, but he has Jolie's hazel eyes and her quiet way of watching a room before he speaks.
Mollie has Jett's sharp grin, humor, and wit, along with Jolie's refusal to back down from anything.
She wears a purple swimsuit and carries a scar on her knee from falling off her bike last summer like it's a badge of honor.
They are arguing about who can skip a stone farther.
Jett says Mollie is cheating because she's using her left hand.
Mollie says Mason throws like a girl. Mason says that's a compliment because Mollie throws better than anyone in her class.
Jett laughs, loud and open, the way he only laughs with them.
Their laughter echoes across the water. It is the best sound I know.
The screen door opens behind me, but I don't turn around. I know her footsteps and the way the deck shifts when she walks across it. I know the sound of her sandals and the soft scrape of rubber on wood. I know the smell of her shampoo, coconut and something sweet, before she even reaches me.
"Sandwiches," Jolie says.
She settles onto the deck chair beside me, but she doesn't stay there.
She never stays in her own chair. She climbs into my lap instead, fitting herself against me the way she has for fifteen years.
She's thirty-seven now. Her hair is still honey-blonde, though she has a few strands of silver at her temples that she complains about every morning and that I find perfect.
She's softer than she was at twenty-two, her hips wider, her stomach carrying the marks of three children.
I wrap my arm around her waist and hold her there, warm from the kitchen and smelling like bread, mayonnaise, and lake air. She hands me a sandwich, turkey on wheat cut diagonally the way I like it.
"Look at them," she says softly. She is watching Jett and the twins. Micah is still on the shore, adding a rock to his fort that immediately collapses the east wall. "They are so happy."
I press a kiss to her temple. Her skin is warm from the sun. "Because of you. You gave us everything."
She leans into me. Her head finds my shoulder. "I did not give you anything. You built it. You and Jett. The restaurants, the house, all of it."
"We built the buildings," I correct. "You built the family. You were the reason. You were always the reason."
She doesn't argue. She used to deflect every compliment, every claim of love, every statement that she mattered.
It took years for her to stop. Now she just accepts it and lets herself be loved.
That might be the biggest change of all, bigger than the restaurants and bigger than the lake house.
The girl who once bound her chest and hid in motel rooms now sits in my lap, eating a sandwich and watching her children play without apologizing for taking up space.
Jett glances back from the water and grins, his teeth white against his tan, then lifts Mason onto one shoulder and Mollie onto the other as they scream with delight and clutch his hair while he wades toward the shore with both of them bouncing and shrieking.
"Dad, put me down!" Mason shouts, and Mollie echoes him, both of them laughing as Jett carries them toward the shore.
"Never," Jett says. "You are stuck up here forever. I am going to carry you both to college like this."
"That's child abuse," Mason says. He's been picking up legal terms from television shows Jolie says are inappropriate for almost fifteen-year-olds.
Jett just laughs, shaking his head as he carries them both to the shore.
Jett drops them both onto the sand and they run toward the fort, where Micah is now trying to prop up a stick with a rock that is too round to hold still.
Mason kneels beside him. Mollie takes charge, because she always takes charge, and starts directing the reconstruction with her hands on her hips.
Jett walks up the deck stairs. Water drips from his shorts. He is fifty-nine and he still looks like he could handle any situation that walks up to him. He grabs a towel from the railing and dries his hair, then he looks at Jolie in my lap.
"Sandwiches?" he asks.
"On the table," she says.
He doesn't go to the table. He walks over to us and sits on the arm of the chair with his thigh pressed against Jolie's hip, reaching down to take her hand without letting go.
The youngest looks up from the shore and sees us on the deck. He abandons his fort and runs toward the stairs with his arms pumping and his knees high, barefoot and tough from a summer of running on gravel and dock wood.
"Dad!" he shouts, and I smile because he calls both of us Dad, and he's done that since he could talk. Sometimes he calls me Papa and Jett Dad, and sometimes it switches depending on who's closest. We don't care. We answer to both. "Can we go fishing? Please?"
Jolie laughs. It is a full laugh, the kind that crinkles her eyes and makes her whole body shake. I feel it against my chest. "It is almost dinner time, honey."
"After dinner," I say. "If you eat all your vegetables."
He makes a face. He hates green beans with a passion that borders on religious. "All of them?"
"Every single one," Jett says. "No bargaining. I have seen your negotiating skills and they are terrible."
Micah considers this, the math clearly serious as he weighs green beans against fishing. He nods. "Okay. Deal."
He runs back to the shore, shouting at the twins that we said yes. Mason whoops while Mollie rolls her eyes because she's almost fifteen and already too cool for whooping, but she smiles as they go back to their fort.
Jolie watches them. Her hand tightens in Jett's. Her other hand rests on my chest, over my heart.
"I cannot believe this is real sometimes," she says.
"It is real," I tell her.
"I know. I just spent so long thinking I'd end up alone, that I was too much, that people would get tired of me." She looks at the kids, then at us. "And now I have this. A lake house, a restaurant empire, three kids, and two husbands who still look at me like I hung the moon."
"You did hang the moon," Jett says. "For us, anyway."
She shakes her head. But she is smiling.
We eat dinner on the deck, burgers and corn on the cob and green beans that Micah picks at until Jett threatens to revoke the fishing deal.
The sun sinks behind the trees, turning the sky orange and then purple.
The twins tell stories about school—Mollie got an A on her science test, Mason made the baseball team, and Micah spills his milk.
Jolie cleans it up without fussing. She doesn't fuss about messes anymore.
She knows life is messy, and she knows we clean it up together.
After dinner, Jett takes the twins down to the dock to look for frogs with flashlights.
I stay with Micah on the shore, helping him rebuild his fort one last time before bed.
He is yawning by the time the moon is up.
I carry him inside. He is asleep before I lay him on his bunk.
I pull the blanket up to his chin. He smells like lake water and sunscreen.
I check on the twins. They are already in their sleeping bags on the screened porch, whispering about something they saw in the woods. I tell them to sleep. They pretend to obey. I close the door and let them whisper. They will be asleep in ten minutes.
The house settles. The refrigerator hums. The lake laps against the dock. I walk through the dark living room toward the balcony off our bedroom.
Jolie is already there.
She stands at the railing with her hair down and her arms wrapped around herself, looking at the moon on the water.
It's full and bright tonight, casting a path of light across the lake that leads straight to our shore.
I step up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist, and she leans back into me immediately, fitting exactly the same way she always has with her head under my chin, her back against my chest, and her hips against my thighs.
"Hey," she whispers.
"Hey," I say.
The screen door opens behind us, and Jett steps out in sweatpants and nothing else, his hair still damp from his shower. He walks over and presses his chest against Jolie's back, sandwiching her between us the way she has been for fifteen years. The way she will be until I stop breathing.
"Kids asleep?" he asks.
"Micah is out," I say. "The twins are pretending."
Jett laughs, soft and low. "Mollie was telling Mason she saw a bear in the woods. I heard her through the window."
"There are no bears here," Jolie says.
"Do not tell her that. She is enjoying the drama. Mason is hiding his flashlight under his pillow in case the bear breaks in."
Jolie shifts between us. She is not trying to get free. She is just settling deeper. Her hand finds mine on her stomach. Her other hand reaches back and finds Jett's hip.
"I used to dream about this," she says, her voice quiet. "When I was little, before my mother got too busy with the restaurant. I'd dream about a house by the water, a family that laughed, people who stayed."
"You got it," I say.
"I got more than I dreamed," she says. "I got you two, kids who drive me crazy and make me laugh in the same breath, a life I don't have to run from, and grandparents who visit every holiday to tell the kids stories about when I was little. I got everything."
Jett's lips brush her shoulder. "You never have to run again. We told you that a long time ago."
"I know," she says. "I finally believe it. All of it."
I look out at the water, the moon high and the forest on the other side of the lake dark and still. Everything is quiet, and everything is right.
"You are still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," I murmur against her hair.
It is true. It has always been true. She is not twenty-two anymore.
She has lines around her eyes and stretch marks on her stomach and she is tired by nine o'clock most nights.
But she is the only thing I have ever looked at that made me feel like the world was worth the effort.
"You have to say that," she teases.
"I do not have to say anything," I say. "I choose to. Because it is true."
Jett's hand slides up her side, slow and familiar, not hungry, just certain. "You're ours," he says against her ear. "Forever. No matter how many gray hairs we get, no matter how many kids we raise, no matter what comes next. You're ours, and we're yours. That's the deal. That's the only deal."
She turns her head to look at me, then back at Jett. Her eyes are wet, but she's not sad. She hasn't been sad in a long time.
"I finally found home," she whispers.
I pull her closer, my hand spreading over her hip.
"You were always home, baby girl. We just had to wait for you to realize it.
You gave us everything—a family, a home, a reason to keep building instead of just collecting.
I spent my whole life looking for something that mattered. I found it in you, in this, in us."
Jett's lips graze her ear. "And now you're never leaving."
She laughs. "I'm not going anywhere. I promise. I'm exactly where I want to be."
We stand there for a long time as the moon moves across the sky and the lake breathes beneath us. The house is full of sleeping children, borrowed towels, and half-eaten sandwiches. It's messy and loud and ours.
Jolie turns in our arms, facing us both. She takes my hand and places it over her heart, then takes Jett's and does the same.
"I spent so many years thinking I was too much," she says.
"That I was a burden. That I would never be chosen first. But you two never let me believe that.
You chased me, you held me, you built a life around me until I couldn't deny it anymore.
" She looks at the house, at the lake, at the moon above us.
"I have everything I never knew I wanted.
A home. A family. Love that doesn't run out. I have you two."
Jett presses a kiss to her forehead. I press one to her hair. And we hold her between us, the three of us standing together under the moonlight like we were always meant to.
The countdown ended fifteen years ago. But forever is still going. And it will never stop.
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