Epilogue
HARRISON
SIX MONTHS LATER
The grain field's got snow on it.
First dusting of the year, barely an inch, but it turns the whole northeast section into something out of a painting. The winter wheat's underneath, dormant, waiting. Come spring it'll push through green and stubborn, the way everything does on this ranch.
I stand on the porch with my coffee, the coffee that's good because she taught me the water temperature, and watch the sun come up over the ridge. The firs are frosted silver. The creek's running low, half-iced at the edges, making that sound it makes when winter gets serious.
Behind me, through the screen door, the cabin smells like bacon.
Paige is cooking. Her boots are by the stove, her hat's on the hook beside mine, and Serenity's in the small stable I built in October, standing next to the sorrel mare Gabe gave us as a housewarming gift that neither of us asked for.
"That's what Gabe does," Paige told me. "He gives you things and dares you to argue."
I didn't argue. Hard to argue with a man who handed me a set of keys to a permanent cabin, tore up my contractor agreement, and put me on salary.
"You're not a contractor," Gabe said. "You're Wild Peak."
That was September. Three months ago. The first time I've belonged to anything in twelve years.
The screen door creaks. Bare feet on cold wood. She comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist, presses her face between my shoulder blades. Her hands are warm from the stove.
"Come eat."
"In a minute."
"Aiden Harrison, if you let my bacon get cold, we're gonna have a conversation."
"We're having a conversation."
"We're having a conversation about breakfast." She pinches my side. "Different thing."
I turn around. She's in my flannel, the gray one, sleeves rolled to her wrists.
Nothing underneath but underwear, and her legs are bare from mid-thigh down, and her hair's loose and wild from sleep, and six months of waking up next to this woman hasn't done a single thing to dull the way my chest tightens every time she's standing in front of me.
I pull her against me. Kiss the top of her head.
"Morning."
"Morning." She tilts her face up. "You've been out here since five."
"Since four."
"Four." She frowns. "You haven't done that in weeks."
"Couldn't sleep."
"Bad dream?"
"No dream." My thumb traces her jaw. "Just thinking."
"About?"
"Eat first. Then I'll tell you."
The cabin's changed. Her things are everywhere. Cedar bark basket on the shelf beside my carvings. Turquoise earrings on the windowsill. A framed photo of her mama next to the bed, beside a framed photo of my granddad that Paige found in my truck glove box and had enlarged without asking.
My chisels share the workbench with her tablet now. The mugs hang on hooks she installed, and they're those same two dented tin ones from the thermos, because she refused to buy new ones. Said they were ours.
We eat at the table. Bacon, eggs, toast she made from bread she baked yesterday because Kidd taught her and won't shut up about it. She eats the way she does everything. Fast, happy, talking between bites.
"Gwen's bringing Julian to Sunday lunch. He's been asking about the horses again, and Hunter's already building him a mounting step, which is the most adorable thing I've ever seen a man do with a power tool."
"Mm."
"And Luke wants to know if you'll look at the fence line along the south creek. He thinks the posts are rotting from the bottom."
"I'll check it."
"Also, Mama called. She's coming up in March."
"Your mama's coming here?"
"She's coming here." Paige grins over her coffee. "She wants to see the cabin. She wants to see the field. She wants to meet everyone. Also, she's bringing chili."
"The good chili?"
"Aiden. It's always the good chili now. You passed the test in August."
August. When we drove to Coos Bay and I sat at Mama Thomas's table with my knees hitting the underside and ate three bowls without breathing while a five-foot-two woman with Paige's eyes watched me from across the counter with her arms folded.
"He eats," she'd said to Paige.
"He eats."
"Good. Too skinny."
I'm not skinny. I'm six four and two twenty. But arguing with Mama Thomas is arguing with the weather. Pointless and mildly dangerous.
"Also," Paige says, mopping egg with her toast. "Eli called yesterday about the barley. First batch is ready for the distillery in April. He wants your input on the malt profile."
"My input."
"You grew it, Aiden."
"We grew it."
"Sure, but you dropped every tree that was standing on it. Eli respects that."
Eli respects timber. Eli also bought me a beer at Sal's last month and sat in silence for twenty minutes before saying, "You're alright, Harrison." Coming from Eli Summers, that's a marriage proposal.
Paige finishes eating. Leans back. Studies me.
"You've got a look," she says.
"I don't have a look."
"You've got the look you get when you're about to say something that costs you." She sets her mug down. "Four in the morning, you said. Thinking."
"Yeah."
"About?"
I get up. Clear the plates. This isn't stalling. This is just what needs to happen before the other thing happens.
"Aiden."
"Doing dishes."
"The dishes can wait."
"Your bacon grease gets in that cast iron, you'll—"
"Aiden Harrison." She's standing. Arms crossed. The flannel falls off one shoulder. "Talk to me."
I dry my hands. Reach for the shelf above the stove where the carvings sit. The walnut bowl. The spoon. The bird with the half-turned wings.
And behind them, a small box I put there three weeks ago.
My hand's shaking. First time since the day she bled in the field and I couldn't hold tweezers steady.
"Paige."
Her arms uncross. Her eyes track the box.
"My granddad gave my grandmother a ring he carved from the heartwood of the first tree he ever dropped on their land. Walnut. Sixty years, she wore it. When she died, he put it in a coffee can on his workbench and kept it there till he died too."
Her breathing's changed. I can hear it.
"I don't have that ring. It's gone. Sold with the property after he passed." I open the box. "So I made one."
The band is black walnut, cut thin, bent over steam, shaped on the mandrel I bought in town with hands that wouldn't hold still at three in the morning.
The grain runs through it the same way it runs through the bowl she held up to the light that first night in my cabin.
On the inside, I inlaid a thin line of cedar bark. Her wood and mine.
"Oh my God," she whispers.
"My mama passed in November." My voice holds.
It holds because she's standing here, and when she's standing here, my voice holds.
"And I sat in this cabin at four in the morning, and for the first time, I wasn't thinking about the past. I was thinking about the future.
About spring. About barley. About Sunday lunch and your mama's chili and a cabin with two horses in the stable and your boots next to mine by the stove. "
Tears. Running down her face. She's not wiping them.
"Paige Adulsa Thomas." I go down on one knee on the cabin floor, the floor I swept at five this morning because that's who I am now, a man who sweeps.
"I came to Wild Peak to disappear. You rode into my clearing with a thermos and decided that wasn't happening.
You brought me coffee I didn't ask for. You made me eat.
You held my hand in a gravel yard in front of a woman who broke me and you said you were mine. "
"I am yours."
"Marry me."
"Yes."
"I haven't finished asking."
"I don't care." She's laughing and crying at the same time, pulling me up by the shirt. "Yes, Aiden. Yes."
"Marry me and stay on this mountain. Marry me and fight me about the thermostat. Marry me and bring that horse up the trail every morning even though she lives here now and the trail's unnecessary."
"She likes the trail."
"Marry me."
"I already said yes." She grabs my face. Kisses me so hard I taste salt. "You beautiful, stubborn, impossible man. I said yes."
I slide the ring on her finger. The walnut's warm from the box. It fits, because I measured her finger while she slept two weeks ago and she didn't know, and if that's creepy, I don't care.
She holds her hand up. The grain catches the morning light through the window, and the cedar line glows against the walnut.
"You made this at three in the morning," she says.
"Three, four, five. Lost track."
"Aiden."
"Hm."
"You're never sleeping through the night, are you."
"Probably not."
"Good." She wraps her arms around my neck, presses her whole body against mine, my flannel on her shoulders, her bare legs against my jeans. "More time for carving."
I hold her in the middle of our cabin, in the middle of our mountain, with the snow falling quiet on the grain field we grew together, and for the first time in twelve years, four in the morning isn't a punishment.
It's just early. Just dark. Just the hour before the sun comes up over the ridge and lights everything gold.
I'll take it.
Paige
[photo of the ring on her hand]
Gwen
OH MY GOD
OH MY GOD PEACHES
I'M SCREAMING HUNTER IS STARING AT ME
KIDD OWES ME TWENTY DOLLARS HE SAID VALENTINE'S DAY
Paige
Tell Kidd he underestimated the man.
Gwen
TELL HIM YOURSELF AT SUNDAY LUNCH FUTURE MRS HARRISON
Wait.
Is he gonna take YOUR name? Because that was Hunter's move and I will be offended if your man copies my man
Paige
He's keeping Harrison. But he wants me to keep Thomas.
Gwen
Paige Thomas-Harrison. I'm sobbing. Julian just brought me Bun-Bun because he thinks I'm sad. I'm not sad I'm just SO HAPPY FOR YOU
Paige
I love you, Gwen.
Gwen
I love you too. Now go celebrate with your fiancé. And by celebrate I mean CELEbrATE.
Queue all the fire emojis.
Paige
Goodnight, Gwen.
Gwen
IT'S NINE IN THE MORNING
Paige
Exactly.
Be sure to get your hands on book one of Eden Ridge: Lost & Found series, where Ava’s second-oldest brother, Caleb, gets his story. Getting snowed in with Harper Moore, Logan’s little sister, leads to enough tension to melt your e-reader.
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