Epilogue
JUDE GRAVES
One year later
The drive to Ecola Point is quiet. The Audi glides along the coastline while late evening sunlight pours gold across the cliffs and ocean below, the sky streaked with soft orange and fading blue. Wind rushes faintly through the barely cracked windows, carrying salt air into the car.
Beside me, Micah sits with one arm resting near the open window, absently loosening the knot of his tie for the third time in ten minutes.
“You know,” I mutter, glancing over briefly. “Heather is going to see you all dressed up and want to marry you on the spot.”
Micah snorts softly. “I’m actually going to propose to her next month when I take her to Chicago. I was gonna tell you.”
My heart squeezes. “I’m so proud of you, man.”
“Thank you, Jude.”
“Have the ring picked out?”
“Sure do,” he chuckles. “I know she’ll love it. It’s this big pink diamond I know she likes.”
I smile at that. Heather would like a pink diamond. “She will.”
By the time I pull into the overlook, the sun is bathing everything in gold so intense it almost hurts to look at directly.
The ocean stretches endlessly below, with large waves crashing against the cliffs.
Fuck, this place smells like all of the fun and beautiful memories from when I was a teenager.
“You ready for this?” Micah asks quietly.
“Yeah.”
I step out first, dress shoes crunching softly against the ground before I move toward the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Wind tears through my hair and suit jacket, colder out here than I expected.
Micah follows, leaving the passenger door ajar. “Moonchild” by M83 drifts softly from inside the car, mixing with crashing waves and wind in a way that makes everything feel strangely unreal.
I stop near the edge, and for a while, neither of us says anything.
Micah’s shoulder brushes mine gently, and suddenly I’m remembering another night entirely.
Two shaking bodies curled together in a hotel bed while withdrawal tore through us so bad we couldn’t stop crying.
My hands were gripping the back of his shirt while he buried his face against my chest, both of us sweating and freezing at the same time.
I remember whispering over and over:
We’re gonna get through this.
We’re okay. We’re okay.
Even though neither of us actually believed it.
Another flash hits me immediately after.
Another hotel room, months later. The one with the dim yellow lamp and half-empty pill bottles scattered across the nightstand while both of us sat silently on opposite sides of the bed.
We were so tired, high, and too fucking destroyed to keep pretending anymore.
I still remember the way Micah looked at me that night. It was like he was asking permission. Wanted me to tell him not to do it. And I remember taking too much with him anyway. The memory twists so sharply through my chest that I close my eyes briefly against the wind.
“I still think about that night often,” Micah says suddenly beside me, so quietly I almost miss it.
I glance over.
His gaze stays fixed on the ocean. “The hotel,” he clarifies softly. “The overdose.”
My throat tightens instantly. “Yeah,” I admit. “I was actually just thinking about that.”
“Of course you were,” he whispers. “I think about it a lot. Especially quiet moments. Or moments where I’m staring at Heather, wondering how the fuck I got so lucky.
How I almost missed this.” Wind lashes wildly across the cliffs, tossing his shoulder-length blonde hair across his forehead while the music continues drifting softly from the car behind us.
He exhales slowly through his nose. “I used to be angry that we woke up. That Adriana called the ambulance.”
The honesty in his voice doesn’t wound me anymore. Maybe because I’ve spent a year learning how to stop running from the truth.
“I know,” I say quietly.
Another silence stretches, then he looks at me.
Emotion lodges painfully beneath my ribs. “I should’ve protected you better,” I whisper before I can stop myself. The words disappear instantly into the wind.
But Micah hears them anyway. His jaw tightens before he steps closer and grips the back of my neck hard enough to ground me. “Jude,” he says firmly. “I would’ve died without you, brother. Many times over.”
My vision blurs suddenly as I look away toward the horizon, swallowing hard against the pressure building in my throat.
“I’m serious,” he continues more quietly now. “You kept me alive. Even when you were drowning, too.”
I laugh once under my breath, but it breaks apart halfway through. Because the truth is, there were years when neither of us thought we’d survive long enough to see thirty.
And now I’m getting married in a few hours.
To Emma.
The thought feels so impossibly beautiful that grief rises alongside it almost immediately. But not grief for what I lost. Grief for the versions of us that suffered before we ever got here.
The wind shifts harder around us then, and “Moonchild” swells softly from the Audi speakers behind us while I finally reach into the inside pocket of my suit jacket.
Micah goes still beside me when he sees what I pull out.
The white mask rests silently in my hand, still splattered with the blood of men I’ve killed. Even now, after everything, seeing it still makes me nauseous. I stare down at it while the sun’s light touches it, and suddenly it feels impossible that this thing once represented my entire life. Me.
For a while, I thought this mask was the only reason I survived. Now it just feels like a ghost.
My fingers tighten around it before I pull the lighter from my pocket. The wind fights me twice before the flame finally sparks alive. Orange light flickers across the mask, and for one suspended moment, it feels like the entire world is holding its breath with me.
Then I touch the flame to the edge. Fire blooms slowly at first. Then, the flames spread rapidly across the white surface, orange and gold devouring it, while smoke curls upward into the sunset sky.
Heat licks against my knuckles as ashes begin lifting into the air around us, spiraling outward over the cliffs like blackened snow.
I can’t stop staring at the way it burns. At the way this version of me finally dies in my hands. And somewhere deep inside the fire and smoke and memory, I see Adriana again. And despite everything…
Despite all the pain. All the rage. And all the things we did to each other while trying desperately to stay alive...
She still saved us.
Had she not done that, then my best friend wouldn’t be standing beside me right now.
A tear slips down my face before I even realize I’m crying.
That fucking knot expands, and then I remember what Emma told me about holding onto pain and how it can eat at you if you let it.
I’m done holding onto it. My lips part, the words crawling past the trauma and the sadness, desperate to finally break free after all this time.
“I forgive you,” I whisper. The words vanish into the wind.
And suddenly it feels like something inside my chest unlocks for the very first time.
The knot…loosens. The sensation is so intense that I suck in a broken breath.
The flames begin to collapse inward after that, consuming the last fragile remains of the mask, ashes blowing out towards the sea, like the funeral of an entire lifetime.
Then I let go.
The burning remains tumble over the edge of the cliff before disappearing into the crashing ocean below.
Micah grabs me after that. His arms wrap around me so hard it knocks the breath out of me, and the second I cling back to him, both of us break apart completely. But this doesn’t feel like the brutal grief of before, or the hopelessness. No, this feels like love and relief.
I bury my face against his shoulder while tears spill freely down my face, and I can feel him crying too, his hands gripping the back of my suit jacket while ocean wind howls around us and the last ashes disappear into the darkening sky.
For years, we thought this story would end with us dead. Instead, the sun keeps setting.
***
By the time we arrive at my parents’ house, the sun has begun its final dive toward the horizon. I adjust my tie without really thinking about it, though it doesn’t need adjusting anymore. Nothing about me feels like it needs fixing tonight.
Micah walks beside me in silence, but it’s a comfortable one now, after we just broke down together.
Ahead of us, the dock is lined with string lights swaying gently in the ocean breeze, and at the very end of it, I see Nova trotting forward, ears perked, tail wagging. We move together toward the end of the dock, and I can feel my heartbeat with every step, slower and louder at the same time.
Heather is the first to reach me, smiling brightly. And then she leans in and presses a quick, happy kiss to my cheek, her hands briefly squeezing my arm like she’s trying to say everything without words. Then she steps back, eyes already watering. And I look past her.
That’s when I see Emma.
Everything inside me stills in the simplest, most complete way it ever has.
She’s at the starting end of the dock where the string lights gather brightest. Her dress moves with the wind in soft, living motion. The bodice fits her in a way that makes my thoughts, for a very brief moment, stop functioning in any responsible capacity at all.