Epilogue
“Okay, so full disclosure,” I said to the camera, “I almost turned the car around three times.”
I held the phone steady and let myself laugh. The fire was popping behind me. The overlook stretched out past the edge of the frame, the valley dark below, the ridgeline just barely visible against the last stripe of light on the horizon.
It was a good shot. I knew it was a good shot because I’d been doing this long enough to know without checking.
“Catalina cried when I handed her to Spencer’s mom.
Full meltdown. Arms out. Mama, mama, mama.
And Madelyn—Madelyn didn’t cry, which was almost worse, because she just looked at me with those big eyes and I thought, okay, I’m a monster, I’m leaving my six-month-old overnight. What kind of mother does this?”
I paused. Let the beat land. I’d learned by now that the pause was where the audience leaned in.
“But here’s what I want to say to you. And I mean this.
If you’re a mom and you are watching this from your couch with a baby on your chest and a toddler who’s been screaming since four p.m. and you haven’t been alone with your partner in—I don’t even know—weeks, months—listen to me.
Go. Leave the kids with someone you trust and go.
Go camping. Go to a hotel. Go sit in a parking lot together and eat drive-through tacos. I don’t care where. Just go.”
I could hear Spencer behind me. Boots on gravel, the soft clink of him setting up the camp stove, the zip of the tent flap.
He’d driven us up to the Mountain Road Overlook after dropping the girls at his mom’s place, and he’d set up camp while I finished this video because he knew I needed to wrap it and he’d never once in five years made me feel bad about the phone in my hand.
That was the thing nobody understood about my marriage, and the thing my 1.
2 million followers loved most about it.
Spencer didn’t compete with the content.
He never had. He’d understood from the first night—from the blackberry seltzer and the face-down phone and the fire at Laurel Creek—that the work was real, even when nobody saw it.
He just helped me carry it, and I loved him for it.
“Anyway,” I said. “Spencer is finishing camp behind me and I can hear him being very patient about the fact that I’m filming instead of helping, so I’m going to go be a wife now. I’ll post the morning video tomorrow. Love you guys. Go leave your kids with someone. I’m serious.”
I hit stop.
I watched it back. It was good. It was warm, it was honest, it was the kind of content that had built my platform from a stalling outdoor apparel page into something real—a community of women who were trying to figure out how to love the outdoors and love their kids and love their partners all at the same time without losing their minds.
The brand deals came to me now. I didn’t chase them. I hadn’t chased them in four years.
I set the phone on the tailgate of Spencer’s truck, screen-down.
He was crouched by the camp stove with the coffee pot on it. He looked up at me over his shoulder.
“Done?”
“Done.”
“Come here.”
I walked over to him. He stood up and pulled me in by the waist and kissed the top of my head. He smelled like campfire and the soap he’d used since before I met him.
“The girls are fine,” he said. “Mom sent a picture. Catalina’s already asleep. Madelyn’s working on it.”
“Show me.”
He pulled his phone out and showed me. Catalina was sprawled across the guest bed at his mom’s house, mouth open, one arm flung over her head. Madelyn was in her grandmother’s arms in the rocker, eyes half-closed, a fist curled around the collar of her shirt.
My chest went warm.
I handed his phone back.
“I want to climb,” I said.
“Climb what?”
I pointed. There was a boulder at the edge of the overlook—a big one, maybe twelve feet, sloped on one side, flat on top. I’d seen it every time we’d come up here. I’d never climbed it.
“Joy.”
“I want to go up.”
He looked at the boulder. He looked at me. He looked at my hiking boots and my shorts and the flannel I was wearing that was technically his.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll spot you.”
I climbed.
The rock was warm from the day’s sun, still holding heat even after dark. I found handholds. I found footholds. Spencer was below me with one hand on my calf and then my thigh and then I was up, pulling myself onto the flat top, and the whole valley opened up beneath me.
Spencer came up behind me. He’d always been a better climber. He was up in three moves, easily, and then he was standing on the flat top next to me with the sky wide open above us and the valley dark below and not another person for miles.
I turned to him. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
I didn’t have time to say anything else before Spencer’s mouth was on mine, slow and deep and sure.
It was the kind of kiss that still made my knees weak after five years.
But now, instead of the shy uncertainty I used to feel, I kissed him back with the confidence of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and trusted her husband to give it to her.
His hands slid down my sides and pulled my hips against him. I could already feel him hard through his shorts. The knowledge sent a warm rush through me—still so wanted, still so craved by the man I’d chosen.
Spencer broke the kiss and turned me in his arms so my back was against his chest, both of us facing out over the dark valley.
One of his big hands splayed across my stomach while the other slipped down the front of my shorts.
His fingers found me already wet, and he let out a low, appreciative sound against my ear.
“Always so ready for me,” he murmured, voice rough.
I leaned my head back against his shoulder and moaned softly as his middle finger slid between my folds and circled my clit with perfect, practiced pressure.
Five years had taught him exactly how I liked it—how to tease, how to build, how to make me shake.
I was more confident now, more vocal. I didn’t hold back the sounds that rose in my throat as he worked me.
“Spencer…” I breathed, pushing my hips into his hand.
He answered by sliding one thick finger inside me, then two, curling them just right while his palm pressed against my clit.
The stretch felt so good, so familiar, yet still electric.
I reached back and gripped his neck, holding on as my legs started to tremble.
He held me up with his other arm around my waist, steady and strong, never letting me fall.
I came hard, gasping his name into the cool night air, my body pulsing around his fingers as pleasure crashed through me. He kept stroking me through it, drawing it out until I was whimpering and boneless against him.
Before I could fully catch my breath, Spencer pulled his hand free, turned me around, and kissed me again—deeper this time, almost greedy.
Then he was tugging my shorts and panties down my legs.
I stepped out of them while he shoved his own shorts and boxers down just enough.
The cool air kissed my bare skin, making me shiver.
He guided me down onto the flat top of the boulder on all fours.
The rock was still holding heat under me, smooth and solid against my palms and knees.
I arched my back deeply, pushing my hips back toward him, feeling deliciously exposed and confident.
After nearly five years of marriage, I knew exactly how much he loved me like this, and I reveled in it.
Spencer knelt behind me, his strong hands gripping my hips firmly.
I felt the blunt, heated head of his cock nudge against my slick entrance, teasing for just a moment before he slowly pushed inside.
The stretch was exquisite—thick and deep.
A long, throaty moan escaped me as he filled me completely, every inch sending sparks of pleasure radiating through my core.
“Oh God, Spencer…” I gasped, my voice husky.
He held still for a second, buried to the hilt, letting me adjust to the fullness.
Then he started moving, slow, powerful thrusts that dragged against that perfect spot inside me with every stroke.
The angle was incredible from behind. Each time he drove forward, a sharp jolt of pleasure shot through me, making my arms tremble.
I could hear everything so clearly in the quiet night. The wet sound of his cock sliding in and out of me, the rhythmic slap of his hips meeting my ass, and my own breathless moans growing louder and more desperate. I didn’t hold back. I couldn’t.
He picked up the pace, thrusting harder.
One of his hands slid up my back and gripped my shoulder for leverage while the other stayed anchored on my hip, fingers digging into my skin.
The pressure inside me kept building—tight, hot, and insistent.
My breathing turned ragged as that delicious tension coiled tighter and tighter in my belly.
“Spencer—yes—right there,” I whimpered, pushing back to meet every thrust, chasing the rising wave. My moans grew higher, needier, echoing softly into the dark valley.
He leaned over me slightly, his chest brushing my back, and growled low in my ear, “Come for me, baby.”
That was all it took. The orgasm crashed over me hard, starting deep in my core and exploding outward.
My walls clenched rhythmically around his thick length as intense pleasure surged through me.
I cried out loudly—half moan, half sob—my fingers scraping against the stone as my whole body shook with the force of it.
The sound of my own broken cries mixed with the wet slap of our bodies and Spencer’s heavy breathing.
He groaned deeply, almost animalistic, and kept driving into me through my climax. A few thrusts later, he buried himself as deep as he could go and came with a low, guttural moan, pulsing hot inside me as his hips jerked against my ass.
Afterward, we sprawled out together. The rock held the day’s heat beneath my back.
Spencer was beside me with one arm behind his head and I was curled against his side with my cheek on his chest, and the stars were the kind of dense, deep-sky stars you only got above a valley with no light pollution.
His hand was moving slowly through my hair.
“Spencer?”
“Hmm?”
“I almost didn’t come into The Soda Jerk that night.”
His hand paused. “What?”
“The first night. I sat in my car for ten minutes. The neon was flickering and the building looked like it hadn’t been painted since the seventies and I almost drove back to my campsite and made ramen on my camp stove.”
“You never told me that.”
“I know.”
His hand started moving through my hair again. “What made you go in?”
I thought about it. I’d thought about it a lot over five years. The real answer was that I’d been hungry and tired and too stubborn to cook after setting up camp for four hours, and there was nothing romantic about it. The real answer was that I’d almost missed him entirely.
“I was hungry,” I said.
He laughed. I felt it in his chest under my cheek. “You were hungry.”
“Yeah.”
“So I owe the rest of my life to the fact that you didn’t feel like making ramen.”
“Pretty much.”
He pulled me tighter against his side. I pressed my face into his shoulder. The creek—some creek, every creek—was running somewhere far below us. Catalina and Madelyn were asleep at his mom’s house four miles down the mountain.
My phone was on the tailgate of the truck, screen-down.
I didn’t need it.