Epilogue
One year later
“How was that?” Sadie asked. “Should I do one more?”
Merritt looked up from her monitor, meeting Sadie’s eyes on the other side of the glass, and pressed the button that sent her voice through Sadie’s headphones in the soundproof booth.
“Totally up to you,” she said. “But I thought that one was fucking great. Do you want to come in here and listen, or do you want to just knock out another while you’re still in the zone? ”
Sadie gnawed on her bottom lip, then took a sip of tea, humming to clear her throat. “Let’s do another one.”
Merritt nodded, then cued up the backing track, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes as Sadie sang.
When they’d returned from Greece, Merritt had informally contracted Niko for one last job: transforming the empty space downstairs into a custom-built recording studio.
They finished just in time, because as soon as Sadie’s album came out, “Something I Said” took off like a rocket.
Even though Merritt had braced herself for a new wave of attention from their collaboration, the intensity of it had overwhelmed her—but not, surprisingly, in a bad way.
She declined Sadie’s invitation to be her date to the Grammys but watched them for the first time in years, cuddled up with Niko on the couch.
Sadie lost Best New Artist (you don’t want that curse anyway, Merritt had texted immediately) but brought home Best Rock Song—which meant, as a credited writer, Merritt had won, too.
She’d sat stunned as Niko had whooped and clapped, unable to comprehend that this was her life again.
After that, the requests to record with her had started pouring in—helped by a strategically placed spread in a renowned architectural and interior design magazine, highlighting how she’d preserved and updated the house’s quirky charm, on top of the spectacular location.
She considered each one carefully, rejecting most; it was disruptive letting someone else work in your home, even if the studio was fairly self-contained, with a separate entrance.
But more months than not, she had someone in there, whether she was producing, cowriting, or simply renting out the space and making herself scarce.
None were as close as her collaboration with Sadie, though.
She’d been staying in their spare bedroom on and off for the past few months, a rotating array of musicians renting houses close by.
The two of them would sit on the floor of her living room, sorting through Merritt’s extensive record collection for inspiration and samples, or take long walks in the mountains together, humming hooks into their phones and tossing lyrics back and forth.
Even though they still had a long way to go on the album, Merritt was incredibly proud of what they’d done so far, waking up every morning energized and ready to get to work.
She’d been working on her own material, too, slowly, quietly, sneaking down to the studio while Niko slept whenever she’d wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. She didn’t even tell him she was working on anything until she was five songs in, out of superstition.
When she had a dozen semi-polished recordings, she played them for him before anyone else, the two of them sitting silently in the lounge area of the studio after dinner one night.
Eleven of them weren’t about him—after a decade-long break from writing, she had plenty of material.
But the twelfth she saved for last: a quiet, simple ballad called “Easy.” It had spilled out of her in fifteen minutes, perfectly formed—not counting the year and change it had been baking already.
He didn’t look at her while they listened, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. When it was done, he was quiet for a long time, his face still in shadow.
“I don’t have to release that one, if you’re not comfortable with it,” she said, suddenly self-conscious. “I know you’ve probably had enough of being a nonconsensual muse.”
When he finally met her eyes, the look on his face made her heart feel too big for her rib cage.
“Why wouldn’t I want the world to hear that?”
She crossed the room to the couch, easing onto his lap, kissing the tears off his eyelashes and the pink off his cheeks.
She decided to wait until another time to tell him she wanted to use the portrait he’d done at the pageant as the album cover.
As Merritt listened to Sadie, the aroma of roasted vegetables began to drift through the house, which meant Niko was back from his own studio.
After he was done building hers, he’d renovated the freestanding garage, adding windows and skylights until the light was good enough for him to paint in there.
That turned out to be his last construction project, since the momentum from the magazine profile—not to mention being prominently featured on certain celebrity social media platforms—made sure he had more painting and woodworking commissions than he knew what to do with.
His show at the local art gallery had sold out, and he was currently finishing up a set of paintings for a gallery in Miami that had reached out to him shortly after.
“I think the mic picked up my stomach growling,” Sadie said, as soon as the outro faded away.
“Let’s break for lunch, then,” Merritt said with a laugh, and the two of them headed upstairs just in time to find Niko pulling a vegetable casserole out of the oven, the rounds of potatoes, zucchini, red onions, and tomatoes arranged in a beautiful spiral that was art in itself.
He was trailed by Baby, the elderly basset hound mix they’d adopted six months ago, who adored Niko almost as much as she adored snarfing up his food scraps as he cooked.
Sadie groaned appreciatively as soon as she saw the casserole. “Niko, why are you the most amazing man alive?”
“That’s what I keep asking him,” said Merritt, wrapping her arms around him from behind, “but he refuses to tell me.”
“Gotta keep some mystery in the relationship,” Niko said with a grin, as if he hadn’t barged into the bathroom the night before while she was bleaching her upper lip to ask if she thought the bump on his shoulder blade was a bug bite or a pimple.
She wouldn’t want it any other way, though.
After they were done eating, Sadie retreated to her room to nap, since they’d been up late working the night before.
She’d be heading back to LA in a few days, just as Merritt and Niko prepared to leave for Greece.
This time, not only would his mother be joining them, but his sisters, too—their first time meeting their grandparents.
“You have city council tomorrow, right?” Merritt asked, rinsing off their plates. He nodded.
“Yeah, in the morning.”
Merritt had had to talk him into running, but he’d been elected in a landslide, running on a platform of keeping Crested Peak affordable for all full-time residents and seasonal workers—and making sure the recent influx of tourist dollars from LA and New York would make that easier, not harder.
For her part, Merritt had structured her session fees so that 30 percent went directly to various community organizations.
Even though he often came back from the meetings frustrated, Merritt knew how rewarding he found it.
However, he still hadn’t taken her suggestion to show up in his Mr. Crested Peak sash for extra clout.
“Oh, okay,” she said. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me to get Dev and Olivia from the airport, but you should just meet us over there for lunch. I also offered to babysit, so they could get some rest.”
Dev and Olivia were currently in LA, visiting the set of the film adaptation of This Furious Earth, which Grey and Nora’s production company had optioned the previous fall.
Merritt and Niko had also been invited, but since Nora and her family had spent practically every weekend in Crested Peak that summer and several straight weeks in the winter, they knew they’d have plenty of other opportunities to see each other.
Merritt had offered for her and Niko to watch the twins, Chandra and Maya, but Dev had shrugged. “They’re basically still potatoes at this age. Just strap ’em on and forget about ’em.”
Still, Merritt was obsessed with those potatoes.
She’d been in the delivery room with Olivia, she and Dev each clutching one of her hands, all three of them weeping at the primal, sweaty miracle happening in front of them.
It had been enough for her to make tentative, if still distant, peace with her mother, so she could be over at the house as much as possible.
But as much as Merritt and Niko loved their nieces, they’d agreed after their first time babysitting solo that the only baby of their own they had room for right now was Baby.
“Works for me,” Niko said, wrapping up the leftovers and putting them in the fridge. “I have therapy at four-thirty, though.”
“That’s fine, I told them it would only be for a couple of hours. I need to be back by then anyway, it’s my turn to bring snacks for mahjong.”
Niko nodded. “Busy day.”
“Busy life,” Merritt countered with a laugh, and it was true—but in a way that felt more satisfying than she could’ve ever imagined.
He caught her hand, pulling her in for a kiss. “Well,” he murmured against her temple, “what are you doing right now?”
She smiled as she leaned into him. “Absolutely nothing.”
They headed outside to the hammock, hand in hand, Baby trotting behind them and settling into the beat-up dog bed they’d placed by the trunk of one of the trees.
Merritt had volume three of Of Darkness and Destiny under her arm, but she didn’t open it yet.
Instead, she rested her head on Niko’s chest, taking a deep inhale, the breeze moving softly over them.
She shifted her legs, adjusting to get more comfortable, and caught a glimpse of the tattoo on her ankle—her first since moving here, still only a few months old.
She’d asked Niko to draw his own interpretation of the Two of Cups tarot card, the card she’d pulled once again before going to find him in Greece.
“That one’s my favorite,” he murmured in her ear as he followed her gaze. She grinned.
“You say that every time.”
“It’s true every time.”
She tilted her head until their lips were a breath away. “It’s my favorite, too.”
They lay there all afternoon, laughing and reading and napping in the waning summer sunshine, Baby snoring beside them.
On days like this—most days, now—Merritt felt so overwhelmed with love and gratitude that she thought she might burst from it. For Niko, yes, but also for the life they’d built together. A life where she felt as sturdy and expansive as the trees holding up their hammock.
Deeply rooted, but still growing.