Epilogue — Tess
Three Years Later
The bay doors are open. I can see the gleam of the engines inside, hear the low murmur of voices from the common room.
The station looks exactly the way it did three years ago when I walked through those doors for an assessment and left with my entire life changed.
Except now it's not just James's station.
It's mine too.
I grab my bag and head inside, and Declan sees me first. He's at the kitchen counter with what looks like the beginnings of dinner prep, and he grins when I walk in.
"Hey, Tess. Cap's in his office. Fair warning, he's been checking the parking lot every ten minutes for the past hour."
"Has he."
"Like clockwork." Declan's grin widens. "Man's still got it bad."
I laugh and shake my head, but warmth spreads through my chest anyway. Three years, and James still watches for me like he's afraid I might not show up.
Three years, and I still get butterflies when I know I'm about to see him.
Anthony appears from the bay, wiping his hands on a rag. "Investigator Holt. Here to inspect our operations?"
"Just visiting my fiancé, thanks."
The word still feels new in my mouth. Good, but new. We've been engaged for two months, and I'm still getting used to saying it out loud.
Anthony grins. "He's gonna be in such a good mood now. We might actually get out of equipment maintenance early."
I head down the hall toward James's office, and through the glass wall I can see him at his desk, focused on something on his computer. His hair has more silver in it now than it did three years ago, more lines at his eyes, but he's still the most attractive man I've ever seen.
Still the only man I've ever wanted like this.
I knock lightly on the doorframe, and his head snaps up. The expression that crosses his face when he sees me makes my stomach flip.
Relief. Want. Home.
"Hey," he says, already standing, already moving toward me.
"Hey yourself."
He reaches me in three strides and pulls me into a kiss that's deeper than appropriate for the middle of the station, but I don't care. I kiss him back and feel the particular rightness of this, of him, of us.
When we break apart, he keeps his hands on my waist.
"Missed you," he says.
"I saw you this morning."
"Still missed you."
I smile and kiss him again, softer this time. "Long day?"
"Long enough. Yours?"
"Scene investigation out past the county line. Took longer than expected." I pull back enough to see his face properly. "I'm exhausted and I smell like smoke and I need a shower."
"You smell fine."
"Liar."
His mouth lifts at the corner. "Come upstairs with me. I want to show you something."
"What kind of something?"
"The kind that requires the roof."
I raise an eyebrow. The roof is the station's worst-kept secret—the unofficial retreat space that everyone knows about and no one officially acknowledges. I've been up there exactly twice in three years, both times with James, both times for conversations that mattered.
"Is this a captain's orders situation?" I ask.
"This is a fiancé politely requesting situation."
The word still does things to me. Fiancé. Like he's mine in ways that are recognized and permanent and real.
"Okay," I say. "Lead the way."
We head through the station and up the back stairs. The ladder to the roof is narrow and slightly precarious, and James goes first, then reaches down to help me up even though I don't need it.
The roof is exactly how I remember—flat and industrial, with a view that stretches across Bloomfield's buildings toward the open country beyond.
There's a folding chair that's been up here long enough to be structural, a satellite dish, and the particular golden light of late evening that makes everything feel softer.
James doesn't sit. He stands near the edge, looking out at the town, and I move to stand beside him.
"What are we doing up here?" I ask.
"Remembering."
"Remembering what?"
He turns to look at me, and there's something in his expression that makes my chest tight.
"Three years ago, you walked into my station and I spent two days trying to convince myself that wanting you was a bad idea. That the timing was still wrong. That I should let you leave."
"And then you showed up at my hotel room and told me you'd been in love with me for fourteen years."
"Best decision I've ever made."
I lean into him, and he wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me close. We stand there in the warm evening air, looking out at Bloomfield, and I can feel the weight of everything we've built in three years.
The fire marshal position that came through six weeks after I left. The move to Bloomfield that happened so fast it made my head spin. The first time I stayed overnight at his house and woke up to find him watching me like he couldn't believe I was real.
The integration into his life, into this town, into a version of myself I didn't know existed until I stopped running from what I wanted.
"I love it here," I say quietly. "I know I tell you that, but I need you to know I mean it. This town, this life, you—it's everything I didn't know I was looking for."
His arm tightens around me. "You're everything I stopped letting myself look for."
I turn in his arms so I can see his face properly. "Are you getting sentimental on me, Captain Callahan?"
"Maybe. You bring it out in me."
"Good."
He kisses me, and it starts gentle but shifts quickly into something deeper. His hands slide down to my hips, gripping, and I make a sound against his mouth that's probably too loud for being on the roof of his station.
"We should not be doing this here," I say when we break apart.
"Probably not."
"Your crew is downstairs."
"They know better than to come up here."
I laugh and kiss him again, and his hands move to the small of my back, pressing me closer. I can feel that he's hard, can feel the want radiating off him, and it sends heat straight through me.
Three years, and he still wants me like this. Still looks at me like I'm the only thing in the room that matters.
The engagement ring on my left hand catches the light—simple, elegant, exactly what I would have chosen for myself. He proposed eight weeks ago in our kitchen, no grand gesture, just the two of us and the particular quiet of a Sunday morning and the question he said he'd been carrying for months.
I said yes before he finished asking.
"I can't believe we're getting married," I say against his mouth.
"Having second thoughts?"
"Not even a little. Just—" I pull back to look at him. "Sometimes I still can't believe this is real. That you're real. That we actually got this right."
"We got lucky. We got a second chance and we didn't waste it."
"I'm never going to waste it," I tell him. "I'm never going to take this for granted."
"Neither am I."
He kisses me again, slower this time, and I lose myself in it. In the feel of his mouth on mine, his hands on my body, the solid weight of him against me. In the particular safety of being wanted like this by someone who knows all of me and stays anyway.
When we finally break apart, the sun is lower, the light turning deep gold, and Bloomfield is spread out below us like something precious.
"We should probably go back down," I say, not moving.
"Probably."
Neither of us moves.
"They're going to know what we were doing up here," I point out.
"They already know. Declan's going to make a comment, Anthony's going to laugh, and Rhett's going to give me a look that says he's pleased I'm not spending my evening alone in my office anymore."
I smile, because he's right. The crew has adopted us as a unit, has made space for me in the station's rhythms in ways I never expected. I'm not an outsider here. I'm James's fiancée, and that means I belong.
"I love your crew," I say.
"They love you too. Travis told me last week that you're the best thing that's happened to this station in years."
"He did not."
"He did. And then he told me if I ever screwed it up, he'd personally make my life difficult."
I laugh, and James pulls me closer, his hands settling on my hips in that way that still makes my stomach flip.
"I have something for you," he says.
"Another something?"
"A small something."
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box. Not ring-sized—we already did that. Something else.
I take it and open it, and inside is a key.
"Is this—"
"A key to the station. Your own key." He's watching my face closely. "You're here enough that you should have one. And I want you to know that this place is yours too. Not just because you're with me, but because you're part of it."
The gesture hits me harder than it should. It's just a key. But it's also recognition. Belonging. Proof that I'm not a visitor in his life—I'm integrated into it.
"Thank you," I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intended.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I just—" I close my hand around the key. "Sometimes I still can't believe this is my life. That I get to have this. Have you."
He pulls me into his arms, and I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat.
"You know what I was thinking about earlier?" he asks.
"What?"
"That day you walked into my station for the assessment. How terrified I was that I'd mess it up again. How sure I was that you'd finish the job and leave and I'd spend another fourteen years regretting that I didn't fight for you."
"And instead?"
"Instead you're wearing my ring and you have a key to my station and you're moving through my life like you've always been there. Like you were always supposed to be there."
I tilt my head back to look at him. "I was always supposed to be here. We just needed the timing to be right."
"It's right now."
"Yeah. It is."
He kisses me again, and this time when we break apart the sun has dropped low enough that the whole sky is gold and pink and the air is starting to cool.
"We should really go back down," I say.
"In a minute."
He pulls me against him, and we stand there on the roof of Station 7 watching the sun set over Bloomfield, and I think about the girl I was at twenty. The woman I was at thirty-four. The person I am now at thirty-seven.
All of them loved James Callahan.
But only this version of me was brave enough to stay.
Only this version of me was ready to build something permanent with someone who sees all of me—the competence and the insecurity, the strength and the softness, the confidence and the doubt—and wants all of it.
"I love you," I say into the warm evening air.
"I love you too."
We stay on the roof until the light starts to fade, and then we climb back down to the station and the crew and the life we've built together.
And when we walk into the common room and Declan grins and Anthony laughs and Rhett gives James that look that says he's pleased, I feel it settle in my chest.
This is home.
Not just the town. Not just the station. Not just the house we share or the bed we sleep in or the kitchen where we have coffee every morning.
This. Us. The life we choose and keep choosing.
James's hand finds mine under the table during dinner, his thumb brushing over the engagement ring, and I squeeze back.
Three years ago, I walked into this station not knowing my life was about to change.
Now I can't imagine it any other way.
Thank you for reading!