Epilogue
The firefighter helmet is too big for his head.
It has been since Elias brought it home six months ago—a miniature version of his own that he carried through the door with an expression I’d never seen on his face before.
Pride and tenderness and something a little sheepish, like he wasn’t sure if buying your three-year-old a firefighter helmet was the kind of thing that made you a good dad or a ridiculous one.
It makes him a good dad. The best I’ve ever seen.
Oliver wears the helmet everywhere. He’s wearing it right now, standing on a kitchen chair in his pajamas and his little yellow rain boots that he calls his fire boots, eating banana bread I made last night from the same recipe I’ve been making in this kitchen for five years.
The cabinets that used to hold two mugs and a box of peppermint tea are full now.
Mixing bowls, baking sheets, three kinds of sugar, a shelf Elias built me above the stove for my cookbooks.
Every time I look at it, I think about the first night I opened his cabinets and told him his kitchen was a cry for help.
“Mama, I’m putting out a fire,” Oliver announces, pointing his banana bread at an imaginary blaze somewhere near the refrigerator.
“Is it a big one?”
“The biggest.” He chews seriously. “Daddy would need the ladder truck.”
The front door opens. Elias comes in smelling like pine and fresh mountain air, a paper bag from Sugar Moon in his hand.
He still goes every morning. Alicia runs the counter now, and he actually talks to her.
Full sentences, sometimes even a joke. Every time I hear about it, I think about the man who used to nod and leave, and I love him so much it hurts.
“Daddy.” Oliver holds up his banana bread. “I saved the fridge.”
“Good man.” Elias lifts him off the chair, helmet and all, and settles him on his hip. Five years ago, this man couldn’t let anyone depend on him. Now he carries a three-year-old around the kitchen like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done.
He looks at me over Oliver’s head. I know this look. It’s the version that makes my skin warm and my pulse quicken and usually ends with Oliver taking a very conveniently timed nap.
“I could drop Ollie at preschool,” he says, voice casual, eyes not casual at all. “Then we could take a drive up the ridge.”
The ridge. The lookout. The rock where he held my hand for the first time and told me about Chaz Monroe and I didn’t try to fix it, and he loved me for it.
“I could pack a lunch,” I say.
“Already handled.” He nods toward the bag from Sugar Moon, and I realize it’s bigger than his usual order. He planned this, and the thought of it makes something warm bloom in my chest.
Oliver goes to preschool in his helmet and his fire boots. Elias buckles him into the car seat while I stand in the doorway of the cabin that used to have nothing on the walls and now has Oliver’s drawings taped to every surface and a photo of the three of us on the mantel above the woodstove.
I think about the woman who drove to Wildwood from Colorado Springs with everything she owned in the back seat. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I just knew I needed to be somewhere that nobody needed anything from me.
Turns out what I needed was someone who didn’t need me at all. Someone who just wanted me. There’s a difference, and it took Elias Riggs to teach me what it was.
He’s back in twenty minutes with two fresh coffees from Sugar Moon in the console.
Mine with cream and sugar. His black. I climb into the passenger seat, and he drives up the mountain road, past the cabin, past the fork—all the way to the dirt track that dead-ends at the clearing.
The same road, the same trees, the same light coming through the branches like the mountain is showing off.
He parks and grabs a blanket from behind the seat, the bag from Sugar Moon, and my hand. We walk the quarter mile to the lookout, and the valley opens up below us the same way it did the first time—green and gold and endless.
He spreads the blanket on the flat rock. We sit. He hands me the coffee he grabbed from the console on the way up—cream and sugar, the way I like it—and unpacks the bag. Scones, fruit, two muffins. I take a bite and look at the valley and feel the sun on my face.
“You planned this,” I say.
“I did.”
“You never plan things.”
“I plan things.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “I just don’t announce them.”
I look at him. He’s leaning back on one hand, his long legs stretched out on the blanket, the sun catching the gray that’s just starting at his temples.
Forty looks good on him. Better than good. He’s broader than he was five years ago, steadier, more settled in his own skin. The haunted look behind his eyes is gone. Not forgotten, just quieted, the way a wound quiets when someone finally lets it heal.
“Come here,” he says.
His voice drops the way it does when we’re alone and Oliver is asleep and the cabin goes quiet and he looks at me the way he’s looking at me right now. Low and rough and full of intent.
My pulse picks up. “We’re outside.”
“We are.”
“Anyone could hike up here.”
“Nobody hikes this trail.” His hand finds my knee. Slides up my thigh. Slow, deliberate, like he has all day and plans to use every minute of it. “Nobody has ever been up here but us.”
“Elias…”
“Come here, Morgan.”
I lean into him, our mouths meeting in a slow, deep kiss that quickly turns hungry.
His lips are warm from the sun, tasting of coffee and the sweetness of the scones, and I melt against him as his hands slide under the hem of my T-shirt, palms rough and sure against my bare skin.
My fingers thread into his hair, tugging lightly as his palms roam up my back, then down to cup my ass, pulling me closer until I’m half in his lap.
Elias breaks the kiss only long enough to tug my shorts and underwear down my legs in one smooth motion. I kick them aside, heart pounding, as he shifts lower on the blanket, guiding me back onto my hands.
The sun warms my face as I tilt my head up, eyes closed, breathing in the pine-scented air.
His mouth trails hot, open kisses up the inside of my thigh, teasing, making me shiver despite the heat.
Then his tongue finds my clit and he begins circling with just the right pressure, and I gasp, biting my lip to stay quiet.
Two of his fingers slide inside me, curling perfectly, stroking that spot that makes my thighs tremble. I sigh as I savor every lap of his tongue, every thrust of his fingers, the wet sounds mixing with the distant rustle of leaves.
The pleasure builds fast and sharp under the open sky, his mouth relentless, sucking gently as his fingers pump.
I keep my cries quiet, reduced to soft whimpers and shaky breaths, until the orgasm crashes over me—waves of heat pulsing through my core as I clench around his fingers, my whole body arching toward the sun.
He doesn’t stop until I’m weak and panting, and then he rises up, already reaching for the hem of my T-shirt.
I lift my arms as he pulls it over my head, his eyes dark with want as he unhooks my bra and tosses it aside.
I help him shove his shorts down, freeing his cock—hard and thick, the sight of it making fresh heat pool between my legs.
I push him onto his back on the blanket, climbing over him, straddling his hips. Bracing my hands on his chest, I tease him first, rubbing the slick head of his cock along my wet entrance, circling my hips so he nudges against my clit.
Elias groans, his hands gripping my thighs. “Morgan…”
Finally, I sink down onto him in one smooth plunge, moaning at the stretch, the perfect fullness as he buries himself deep inside me.
He feels so good—thick and hot, filling every inch.
He reaches up, running his thumbs over my nipples, pinching lightly until I moan again, eyes fluttering closed at the sparks shooting straight to my core.
I start to move, rocking my hips, then reach down to circle my clit with my fingers. The way his gaze locks on the sight—hungry, almost reverent—makes it even hotter, knowing how much it turns him on to watch me touch myself while I ride him.
“Fuck, you’re so hot like this,” he rasps, voice low and rough. “Look at you, taking my cock out here in the sun, playing with that pretty clit. So wet for me. Ride me harder, baby. Let me feel how much you need it.”
His dirty words spur me on. I move faster, grinding down on him, my breasts bouncing with every thrust as I chase the building pleasure. He meets me with upward strokes, hands on my hips, guiding me, telling me how tight I am, how beautiful I look coming on his cock, how he’s going to fill me up.
The tension coils tighter, hotter, until it snaps—my orgasm hitting hard, pulsing around him as I cry out, trying to muffle it against his shoulder. He follows right after, groaning my name as he comes deep inside me, hips jerking up.
I drop forward onto his chest, both of us breathing hard, skin slick with sweat. After a moment, I shift and settle into the crook of his arm, his heartbeat steady under my cheek as the sun warms us both.
The sun has moved by the time I open my eyes.
I’m lying on the blanket with my head on his chest and his heartbeat under my ear, steady and slow.
The valley is still spread out below us and the sky is clear.
His fingers are tracing lazy patterns on my shoulder, and I can feel the hum of contentment in his chest, low and constant, and I think about how I used to confuse being needed with being loved.
They’re not the same thing. Being needed is what I did for twenty-three years. Being loved is what Elias taught me—not by needing me but by choosing me. Every morning. Every day. Over and over again until I believed it.
“We should pick up Ollie,” I say, even though I don’t want to move.
“We’ve got time.” His arm tightens around me. “Stay.”
I smile against his chest. The same word he said to me the first night in the cabin, standing between my knees in his kitchen with his forehead against mine.
Stay. It meant something different then.
Something fragile, uncertain. A man who’d never asked anyone to stay testing the word out like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to use it.
Now it just means I love you. And I’m not going anywhere.
“Okay,” I say. The same thing I said then too.
I stay.
Things are heating up in Wildwood.