Epilogue #2
I don't cry. I thought I would. I've imagined this moment in various embarrassing ways over the past six weeks, most of them involving ugly crying and mascara rivers and Brock looking alarmed.
But when it actually happens, when the words land and the ring catches the firelight and his gray eyes hold mine with that particular intensity that still makes my breath catch after all this time, I don't cry.
I smile. The real one. Not the bright deflecting smile I use to hide fear or the tough-journalist smile I use in interviews. The one that's just mine, the one that only comes out when something is so exactly right that my face can't help itself.
"Yes," I say. "Obviously yes. Did you really think there was a universe where I said no? I broke out of a shipping container for you. A shipping container, Brock. With a bobby pin. If that doesn't say 'forever' I don't know what does."
He slides the ring onto my finger. It fits. Of course it fits. He probably measured my hand while I was sleeping because that's exactly the kind of thing he would do and never tell me about.
I hold my hand up to the firelight and watch the cabin's foundation pine glow inside the resin, a small piece of our beginning captured in something permanent.
He kisses me. Long and slow and thorough, the kind of kiss that says everything his speech already said and a few things it didn't. When we pull apart I'm in his lap on the couch and his hand is in my hair and the fire is popping and the night outside is full of stars.
"I need to tell you something," I say, still close enough that our foreheads are touching.
"Yeah?"
"I finished the article tonight. The whole thing. Twenty-three pages. It's going to run as a three-part series in the Washington Post next month."
His eyes widen. Just a fraction. Just enough for me to see the pride move through them before he controls it. "The Post."
"They reached out to me two weeks after the arrests. I've been working with their investigations desk. It's the biggest placement of my career and I wanted to tell you on a night that felt right." I trace the edge of his jaw with my thumb. "Tonight feels right."
"That's because tonight is right." He pulls me closer. "I'm proud of you. Cal would be proud of you."
"I know." My eyes sting, just a little, and I blink it away. "I dedicated it to him."
We sit on the couch for a while after that, not talking, just holding the quiet between us like something we built together and want to keep.
The fire burns. The stars brighten. My ring catches light every time I shift my hand, and each time it does I feel the same small shock of disbelief that this is real, that this life is mine, that the woman who hit publish in a diner six weeks ago is engaged to a marshal on a mountain and it makes perfect sense.
My phone buzzes on the table. I reach for it without moving from Brock's chest.
A text from Megan: Just saw the news about the last arrests. All 14 safe. You did this, Hazel. All of you.
Below it, a text from Katya: The FBI found the southern location. Three more recovered. Call me when you can.
Three more. Seventeen total now.
I show Brock the screen. He reads both messages, then looks at me.
"The story keeps going," he says.
"It always does." I set the phone down. "But not tonight. Tonight is ours."
He stands, takes my hand, and leads me to the bed.
Not the couch where he spent those first restless nights counting pine trees and writing lists.
The bed. Our bed. Where we've slept side by side for six weeks and where I plan to sleep beside him for the next sixty years, give or take a few emergency extractions.
I crawl under the quilts and he lies beside me, pulling me close. The fire crackles. The wind moves through the pines outside. The ring on my finger presses cool against his chest where my hand rests.
"Brock."
"Yeah."
"Your list. Number six. 'Definitely not whipped cream.' Are we ever going to talk about that one?"
His chest shakes with a laugh he doesn't quite let out. "Goodnight, Hazel."
"That's not a no."
"Goodnight, Hazel."
I grin against his shirt and close my eyes. The last thing I hear before sleep takes me is his heartbeat, steady and sure, the same sound that anchored me on the first night and every night since.
Tomorrow I'll send the article to the Post. Tomorrow Ryker will drive up the mountain to ensure the feds are wrapping everything up perfectly.
Ryker volunteered for the assignment before anyone asked, which surprised everyone except me.
I've watched that man carry something heavy behind his easy smile for weeks now, and I think whatever's waiting for him up that mountain might be the thing that finally cracks it open.
But that's his story. Mine is right here.
A cabin in the Steel Mountains. A ring made from its foundation. A man who told me to get in his truck and then spent the rest of his life making sure I never wanted to leave.
I'm home.