Epilogue
AURORA
The weird thing about belonging is that I always thought I’d know when it happened.
Like there’d be music swelling somewhere, or I’d suddenly glow from within like a woman in a yogurt commercial, or a bluebird would land on my shoulder and be like, Congratulations, babe. You live here now.
Instead, it happens quietly.
It happens while I’m carrying a crate of napkins through The Hollow and realize I know exactly which floorboard is going to complain before I step on it.
It happens when Arlo grunts “morning” at me like a man being physically forced to participate in human warmth, and I know that means he already made coffee because he saw me coming down the stairs.
It happens when Lani texts me a picture of a seasonal drink disaster with the caption be honest, does this look haunted?
It happens when I look up in a crowded room and instinctively know where all three of them are.
Which is… a lot.
A lot in a nice way.
Coyote Glen feels like mine now; it feels like I belong to it, and, somehow, it belongs to me too.
Which is rude, honestly. Because I came here for a quick visit.
My original plan was to scatter ashes, read a letter, cry a normal amount, leave town with emotional closure, and maybe a slightly improved relationship with my own future.
Instead, I got kidnapped, adopted by a mountain town, and fell in love with three terrifyingly devoted men.
So… life comes at you fast.
The Hollow hums around me in that messy, golden way I’ve come to love.
It’s busier now, but not in a frantic way. More like it’s settled into itself. Like the building finally exhaled and decided to trust us back.
There are sign-up sheets pinned on the community board that I made myself.
Open mic schedules. Trivia night flyers.
A monthly supper club idea I was halfway convinced people would hate until it sold out in two days, and Bill Granger muttered something about “overachieving hospitality witches” when I told him.
There’s warmth here now.
The Hollow still has its edges. Still has that low-lit, dangerous undercurrent that rolls off the men who own it and the history built into the wood.
You can feel it when Ryder walks through a room, and conversations shift without him saying a word.
You can feel it when Zane quietly fixes something before anyone notices it’s broken.
You can feel it when Finn smiles at someone a little too brightly, and they suddenly remember how to behave.
I didn’t soften any of that.
I just… lit candles around it, emotionally speaking, and somehow it works. Turns out danger and comfort can coexist, which feels very on brand for my life now.
“Hey, boss.”
I glance up from the event binder in my hands and find Finn leaning against the bar, grin already loaded and ready to misbehave.
“I hate when you call me that,” I tell him.
He looks offended. “That is deeply untrue. You tolerate it with visible affection.”
“I tolerate it with recurring irritation.”
“Which, for you, is basically a sonnet.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
He beams.
Honestly, he should be illegal.
My gaze drops to the counter and catches on his phone.
Face up.
Just sitting there.
Not flipped over. Not hidden. Not treated like it might explode if someone loves him too directly.
It still hits me sometimes, the little things.
He sees where I’m looking and gives one easy shrug, like it’s no big deal. Like this is casual. Like the sky is casual, and breathing is casual, and Finn Reilly leaving his phone face up is casual.
“Some of us are emotionally evolved,” he says.
“Some of us are showing off.”
“That too.”
I smile because I can’t help it.
He’s different now in the quietest ways. He doesn’t disappear. He doesn’t make himself slippery when things get too real. He stays for the boring parts. The dishes. The morning coffee. The silences that used to make him itch.
He’s reachable.
Not just by phone.
By us.
By me.
Which is maybe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen him do.
“Also,” he adds, pointing at my binder, “I think your Friday jazz and whiskey concept is sexy and inspired.”
“That is because you think the word whiskey is foreplay.”
He puts a hand over his heart. “It’s nice to be known.”
Yeah.
It is.
I find Zane in the back room, which is not surprising because if something exists near a wall, a shelf, or a tool, Zane will eventually materialize beside it like a very handsome maintenance spirit.
He’s changing out a hinge that was only mildly squeaky, which in Zane language means it was obviously a threat to civilization.
“Hi,” I say, leaning against the doorframe.
He glances up, and that soft brown-eyed thing he does to me happens immediately. The one where it feels like he sees every moving part under my skin and likes me anyway.
“Hey.”
“That hinge offend you personally?”
“It knew what it did.”
I laugh, because of course I do.
Then he straightens, wipes his hands on a rag, and I catch a glimpse of it once more. The tattoo. The dark pane, almost solid, with fractures running through it—veins of gold, bright and stubborn and impossible to ignore.
I can’t help it,
I reach out carefully, my fingertips brushing over the lines, tracing the gold where it threads through the cracks.
“I still love this,” I say. “It looks like… like something that got hit and refused to stop being itself.”
His jaw shifts a little.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That was the point. I got it to represent you. It represented you before I even knew you were going to stay.”
“What?”
He nods. “It’s my tattoo for you.”
Cool.
Great.
I’m fine.
I’m just going to emotionally combust in this storage room and become one with the mop bucket.
I lift his wrist and press my lips right over the gold.
It feels instinctive. Sacred, almost. Like sealing something I don’t need words for because he already knows.
A vow without the performance.
When I look back up, his eyes are darker.
His thumb brushes once along my jaw.
“You okay?” he asks.
Which is such a Zane question. Here I am, nearly crying over symbolic ink, and this man is still checking whether I’m okay.
“Hopelessly,” I say.
That gets the smallest smile out of him.
Worth it.
Ryder is harder to sneak up on, mostly because he has the energy of a man who can hear a moral threat from three zip codes away.
I find him upstairs near the window, dusk folding itself over the town outside. The room is dim, all soft blue shadows, and the last light of evening slipping through the glass.
And the lamp is off.
That stops me.
Because when I first got here, Ryder slept with one lamp on low. Always. Like darkness was something to negotiate with, not trust.
Now the room is quiet. Gentle. Dark in a way that doesn’t feel dangerous.
He turns before I say anything, because of course he does.
His eyes find mine immediately. “You’re quiet.”
“You stole my line.”
His mouth shifts, almost smiling.
I step further in, glancing toward the lamp and then back at him. “It’s off.”
“Sometimes.”
Sometimes.
Which, translated from Ryder, probably means: this matters more than I know how to explain without having a stress response.
I move closer until I’m standing right in front of him.
“You sleep better now?” I ask softly.
His hand comes up, settling at my waist in that soothing way that still undoes me every time.
“Sometimes,” he says again. “But this wasn’t sleep. Just an afternoon nap.”
I raise an eyebrow.
He exhales through his nose, already irritated that I am successfully forcing emotional honesty out of him through eye contact alone.
“But I do sleep better when you’re here,” he says.
My chest does that stupid, achy thing again.
I slide my hands up his chest, feeling the solid warmth of him under my palms. “Good,” I tell him. “Because I’m here a lot.”
That finally gets a real reaction. A small one, but real. His thumb moves once at my waist. “I noticed.”
“Stalker.”
“Problematic choice of word.”
I laugh, and the sound softens the room even more.
Then I tip my face up and kiss him, because sometimes feelings are easier with mouths.
He kisses me back slowly.
Lamp off.
Window opened a crack.
My heart somewhere around my ankles.
Normal stuff…
Which is interrupted by a group chat text, which is definitely not normal.
Delaney is in labor!
Holy shit, everything is changing all over again. Nothing ever seems to stay still in Coyote Glen!
The next morning, once we’ve all had confirmation that all is good, healthy baby, loud lungs, and Delaney doing well, I realize there’s a place I need to go again, and now it’s the perfect time. A full circle moment.
The Lookout Trail… where this all began.
The air is cold in that crisp, pine-scrubbed way that makes you feel like your lungs are being reset by nature herself. It nips at my cheeks. The path curls upward, familiar now, and my boots know where to step without me thinking too hard about it.
The first time I climbed this trail, I was carrying my grandmother in an urn and trying not to come apart in public like some deeply repressed Victorian widow.
Now I carry coffee in a travel mug and a heart that feels… full.
Tender still, in places.
But full.
I reach the ridge and stop.
The mountains stretch out in front of me, all layered blue and green and gold where the morning light catches. The town below is quiet, still waking. It looks small from up here. Safe, somehow. Like I could cup it in both hands if I tried hard enough.
My hand settles over my heart.
There’s a beat there that feels steady.
Mine.
“Okay,” I whisper, because talking to Evie under my breath has apparently become a permanent feature of my personality, and honestly, I have no intention of correcting it now. “You were so annoying for being right.”
The wind stirs my hair like it agrees.
I smile.
Then I look out over Coyote Glen and let the truth of it settle all the way through me.
“I found it, Evie.”
My voice doesn’t shake.
Not this time.
“The place I can breathe.”
The place that let me arrive messy and grieving and uncertain and loved me anyway.
The place that gave me more than I came looking for.
The place that chose me back.
I stand there for another minute, hand over my heart, the morning pressing cool and clean against my skin.
Then I breathe in deep.
And stay.
The end.