Chapter 37 Epilogue #2
It was the wrong kind of silence. Summer realized it half a beat too late.
Emme’s eyebrows lifted. Annie’s eyes sharpened. Brynn sat forward despite Jerrick’s immediate hand hovering near her elbow. Rayann smiled slowly, which had historically preceded several family catastrophes and one incident involving a rented gondola.
I took a sip of sparkling water and decided, magnanimously, not to save her.
Nick looked at me from beside the grill, his expression unchanged except for the silent question in his eyes. This is how it starts?
I gave him the smallest shrug. Welcome to the interior, babe.
His mouth almost moved.
Max turned a row of skewers with perfect calm. “I’m deploying dinner before this becomes a tribunal.”
Rayann looked offended. “Max Harrington, did you just use meat to shut me up?”
“I prefer the term de-escalation.”
“That is both manipulative and arousing.”
“Eat.”
Sofia blinked.
Nick closed his eyes for exactly one second.
I looked away before I laughed, because I loved him enough not to make him endure that publicly.
Dinner moved the way all Wilder dinners moved, with too many conversations, overlapping questions, sudden laughter, and at least three attempts by Summer to impose strategy on joy.
The table stretched across the patio beneath strings of warm lights. We passed plates down the table while glasses sweated onto linen napkins and the fans pushed the heavy air around without cooling it. The smell of charred citrus, grilled fish, buttered corn, and basil drifted through the dusk.
Sofia sat between Daisy and Nick, directly across from me.
That had not been my decision. I'd deliberately left the seating unassigned, an act of personal bravery that would go unrecognized by history. Sofia had chosen the chair herself after Daisy informed her that sitting between Rayann and Brynn without a signed waiver was “bold but not recommended.”
Nick noticed. Of course he had. Nothing involving Sofia escaped him: the level of water in her glass, the food left on her plate, the moment the noise began pressing too close, and the delicate difference between offering rescue and making her feel handled.
But he didn't hover.
That was the part that undid me.
There was a tactical discipline to the way he gave her space, the same way he might once have held a perimeter.
He paid attention without crowding her, stepping back to let her answer questions or pull faces at Daisy.
When she told Brynn that no, she hadn’t yet been taught how to put someone in a chokehold, he didn't intervene—he simply watched as Brynn immediately offered up Jerrick’s services.
“No,” Nick said.
Brynn turned to him. “I didn’t ask you.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to ask Sofia.”
“No.”
Sofia looked down at her plate, but not before I saw her smile.
Jerrick leaned back in his chair, one arm behind Brynn’s seat. “For the record, I teach fundamentals before submissions.”
Nick’s brows lifted by a lethal millimeter.
Jerrick looked back and smirked.
Two controlled men, two different kinds of dangerous, and one table full of women who would absolutely make this worse if given the chance.
Brynn sighed. “Fine. We’ll start with stance.”
Wyatt made a tiny sleeping grunt against her chest, as if registering a formal objection.
“Sofia is here for summer,” Nick said. “Not combat readiness.”
Daisy lifted one finger. “In this family, those overlap.”
“She’s not wrong,” Max said.
Rayann pointed at him with her fork. “Traitor.”
“I married into this with my eyes open.”
“You married into this because I wore the red dress.”
Max’s expression changed by a fraction.
Rayann grinned. “There it is.”
Sofia leaned slightly toward me. “Is everyone here married?”
“No.”
Her eyes moved to Summer’s facedown phone.
I followed the glance. “Careful. Evidence-gathering is how this family says hello.”
“I’m observing.”
“That is how it starts.”
She considered that, then looked back at Nick. “My dad does that too.”
“Yes, he does.”
“He thinks people don’t notice.”
“He is often wrong.”
Nick’s eyes came to mine.
Caught.
Beside the hibiscus, Luc bent his head toward Emme and murmured something in French that made her cheeks go pink and her hand tighten around her fork.
Sofia choked on her water.
Nick’s attention snapped to her. “All right?”
She nodded too quickly. “Fine.”
Emme’s eyes widened. “Sofia, do you understand French?”
Sofia wiped her mouth with her napkin, her face composed except for the tips of her ears. “Since sixth grade.”
Luc looked at her, then raised his glass with solemn approval. “Excellent. Do not reveal the full extent of your talents. This family cannot be trusted with classified information.”
Rayann leaned forward. “Oh, good. She’s tiny, judgmental, and bilingual. I want one.”
“She’s not available for adoption,” Nick said.
Daisy slid Sofia’s badge higher on her chest. “Custody denied. Internship approved.”
The evening deepened around us. The sky turned violet over the palms, and the first stars appeared in the thin slice of open sky beyond the roofline.
Someone put music on inside, low enough to blend with conversation.
The pool lights glowed blue. The candles burned lower.
Brynn finally stopped threatening people with carbohydrates and let Jerrick bring her a second plate.
Emme and Luc were leaving for Patagonia again in two weeks, a fact Rayann had already mourned loudly because “Rome had better espresso, but Patagonia had better gossip potential.” Luc received this with a look of grave offense, then accepted the citation Sofia handed him for “excessive atmospheric contempt.”
“Accurate,” Emme said.
“Betrayal,” Luc said.
Daisy leaned over Sofia’s shoulder. “Add repeat offender.”
From beside the bar, Summer glanced up from her phone. “That is not how citations work.”
Sofia wrote something down. “Attempted meeting agenda,” she said.
Rayann gasped. “Oh, I love her.”
A year ago, I might have felt crowded by all of it: my house full of people, my sisters in every corner, their lives expanding and shifting and attaching themselves to new people, other countries, and other futures.
My company was changing shape. Annie was leaving the CFO role for a doctoral program she should have pursued years ago.
Summer was carrying a secret she was not ready to share.
Emme was building bridges between Patagonia and Maris Key.
Rayann was splitting her time between Rome and wherever Max’s work pulled him.
Brynn had become someone’s mother while still threatening assault with pickles.
And Nick.
He was no longer standing at the edge of my life with one eye on the road. He sat at my table with his daughter beside him, inside the noise, inside the light, inside the future neither of us had been foolish enough to call simple.
His knee brushed mine beneath the table.
Once.
No one else would have noticed. I kept my eyes on Sofia, who was reading the citation Daisy had handed her and trying very hard not to laugh.
Beneath the table, Nick’s hand shifted until his fingers found mine. The contact was steady, certain, and far too intimate for something no one else could see.
Sofia’s gaze dropped for half a second.
Then she looked away, and my throat tightened.
I hated that sort of thing. Feelings that arrived without warning and expected to be accommodated. Terribly inefficient.
Nick’s thumb moved once over the side of my hand, because of course he knew.
After dinner, the family loosened into smaller clusters around the patio, though none of them stayed separate for long.
Theo followed Annie toward the pool, listening with the focused devotion of a man who considered every footnote foreplay, until Brynn called out, “If this is about seal aggression, I’m emotionally unavailable. ”
“Spatial pressure,” Annie said without turning around.
“That is what I said.”
“It is absolutely not,” Theo said.
Summer disappeared inside to take a call she insisted was professional, fooling absolutely no one, while Jerrick stood beside Brynn’s chair and watched the bowl of mango sorbet balanced far too close to Wyatt’s sleeping head.
“It’s fine,” Brynn said. “He has no upper-body control. He can’t reach it.”
Sofia wandered toward the lawn with Daisy, badge still around her neck.
Nick watched her go.
I stood beside him near the patio steps, the heat of his body close enough to register along my arm. The night smelled of salt, cut limes, and smoke from the grill cooling behind us.
“She’s doing well,” I said.
His gaze stayed on Sofia. “She’s adapting.”
“That wasn't an answer.”
“It was accurate.”
I looked up at him. “Mercer.”
His jaw shifted once, and there he was.
“She checked her room this morning,” he said.
My chest tightened before I could stop it. “At your place?”
“Yes.”
“Checked it how?”
His gaze stayed on Sofia. “Opened the closet. Looked at the shelf. Counted the books.”
Sofia laughed at something Daisy said, then immediately composed her face as if joy were a clerical error.
“She wanted to know if anything had moved since March,” he said.
I understood then. She hadn't been checking a closet. She'd been checking permanence.
Her room.
She wanted proof it would stay hers, that the things she left behind would remain where she put them, and that her place in his life hadn't shifted because he'd moved closer to mine.
“She was checking the perimeter,” I said.
Nick looked down at me.
I smiled faintly. “I know a ranger.”
His eyes held mine in the low patio light, blue gone dark at the edges. “I told her nothing moves unless she moves it.”
“Then you gave her something solid.”
“She said that was dramatic.”
“She’s not wrong.”
His mouth almost curved. “No.”
I looked back toward the lawn. Daisy had handed Sofia another citation pad. This one appeared to have stickers. God help us all.
“I’m glad she’s here,” I said.
Nick was quiet for a moment. “She likes you.”
“That sounds premature.”
“It’s not.”
“She tolerates me with impressive discipline.”
“She respects you.”
“That is a much better foundation.”
His fingers brushed my wrist. “Yes.”
The small touch moved through me with ridiculous precision. Eight months, and my body still had the nerve to react to him as if he had walked into my life five minutes ago and ruined the entire structural integrity of my self-control.
He angled slightly closer, enough to lower his voice without making a show of it. “She texted me during dinner.”
“Did she?”
A second later, his phone rested in my palm. The screen glowed between us.
SOFIA: juliettes family is terrifying
SOFIA: daisy gave me credentials
SOFIA: juliette is still scary
SOFIA: i approve :)
I stared at the messages for a long second.
Something hot and inconvenient pressed behind my ribs.
“She capitalizes nothing,” I said.
Nick’s eyes stayed on my face. “I’m aware.”
“Punctuation is also inconsistent.”
“Yes.”
“That reflects poorly on you.”
“I’ll address it.”
I handed the phone back because if I kept looking at the words, I might do something embarrassing, like cry, or worse, speak honestly without adequate preparation.
Nick slid the phone into his pocket.
The patio noise swelled behind us. Rayann laughed, and Max murmured something near her ear that turned her next sentence into a smile. Brynn accused a gull of spoon theft. Jerrick produced another without looking, because apparently black belts came with utensil readiness.
Nick took in all of it without retreating. His thumb rested against my pulse, steady as the noise moved around us.
“I’m not asking for simple,” he said.
My breath slowed.
The words were too quiet for anyone else. Too controlled to be accidental.
“Good,” I said. “I don’t provide simple.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you asking for?”
His eyes moved across the patio, over my sisters and their partners, Daisy and Sofia on the lawn, the house lit behind us, and the table still cluttered with plates and glasses and evidence of everyone we loved refusing to exist neatly.
“All of it,” he said. “The flights. The calendars. Sofia. Your work. My work. The noise.”
“That last one may be permanent.”
“I know.”
“And possibly genetic.”
“I’ve assessed the risk.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
His thumb moved once along the inside of my wrist. “I’m asking for real.”
The word landed exactly where he aimed it. He was not asking for perfect, effortless, or simple. He was asking for the life we had built in pieces and finally stopped pretending not to want.
Real.
Us, with all the moving parts: Sofia’s room her own, my house full of women who considered boundaries a negotiable theory, D.C. weekends, Florida summers, and Nick learning that flip flops were not a moral failure.
Us, with the truth left where both of us could see it.
“That was dangerously close to a proposal, Mercer.”
His fingers tightened around my wrist with deliberate restraint, sending a slow warning through my pulse.
“Not yet.”
I looked at him.
His eyes came back to mine, steady and devastating, and his thumb dragged once over the inside of my wrist, slow enough to make my pulse confess before I could. “When I ask, you’ll know.”
My breath caught once, hard.
“Confident.”
“Prepared.”
“Terrible quality in a man.”
“You prefer improvisation?”
“Absolutely not.”
His mouth curved then, not much, but enough to make my entire backyard tilt slightly off its axis.
Behind us, Rayann started a sentence no civilized society should have allowed within fifty feet of a fourteen-year-old.
Max caught her by the waist and redirected her with military precision.
Sofia blinked.
Beside me, the guarded line of Nick’s mouth gave way to amusement, and that was its own kind of miracle.
God help me, I was going to marry that impossible man.