Epilogue Sierra
FIVE YEARS LATER
The kitchen at Stone Hawke Ranch used to be bare, clinical, the kind of place where you worried about leaving a single crumb on the counter. Not anymore. I’ve spent the last five years sneaking in comfort one detail at a time.
Reagan, my four-year-old daughter, sits perched on a barstool, feet swinging a good foot off the ground, tongue caught between her lips as she attacks a yellow sticky note with a purple crayon.
She’s got her dad’s eyes, clear and impossibly blue with that intensity that makes you want to confess your deepest secrets.
And my curls. Her hair is usually at war with itself by breakfast time.
Right now, it’s escaping the confines of her pink crown hair clips, spilling around her face.
She finishes her masterpiece with a dramatic flourish and slaps it onto the fridge with a cow magnet. All I see is a big brown blob surrounded by a bigger red circle with yellow streaks running through it.
“Mommy, look.” She points. “It’s what I want for dinner.”
I stare at it, trying to come up with what it could be. “What is it, baby?”
She jabs the sticky note for emphasis. “Spaghetti with meatballs, but only if Daddy makes the balls. Your meatballs are bumpy. Daddy’s balls are round.”
Ouch. My pride should be wounded, but after four years, I’ve built up the motherly equivalent of tough skin. “That’s fair. Daddy does make much better meatballs.” I cough, then pray she never repeats any of this conversation out of context at preschool.
“I’m already making baked chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner tonight, but maybe Daddy will make spaghetti and meatballs tomorrow night.”
She nods, satisfied with that option. “Can we show him my note when he gets home? So he doesn’t forget.”
I bite back a smile. “We’ll leave it right here for him.” I nudge the sticky note a little higher on the fridge, next to a cartoon horse Rogan drew last week that actually looks more like a brown blob with big googly eyes.
I’m fixing a salad when the back door opens and Rogan strolls in. My heart does the same little dance it’s been doing every day for the last five years at the sight of him in his plaid work shirt and old jeans. His hair now has more silver at the temples, but he’s never been more handsome.
He spots us and, instantly, all the grit and grump from his day just… melts. Like he’s been waiting all damn day for this exact sight.
Reagan catches his arrival and launches off her barstool like a missile. “Daddy! Look! I made you a note!”
He grins down at her before leaning over to scoop her up in one arm and spin her around. “Let me see this note.” He tickles her side, and she shrieks with laughter. He makes a big show of examining her Post-it note, forehead wrinkled, then announces, “Are those my meatballs?”
“Your balls are rounder than Mommy’s,” Reagan tells him. “Can you make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tomorrow?”
“Anything for you, princess.” He sets her on her feet and turns to me.
“It looks like I’ll be cooking tomorrow.” He laughs and hugs me close to his muscular body.
“Your balls are rounder.” I barely hold in my laughter as I melt against him.
Rogan winks down at me. “And don’t you forget it.” His voice is extra deep, but his eyes are pure mischief.
Jesus. Five years and his touch still sends electricity shooting straight up my spine.
“You know I love you, right?” He says it low, only for me, lips grazing the sensitive spot right under my ear.
“I love you, too, boss man.” I settle back against him. He wraps his arms around me, all muscle and heat, and buries his face in my curls. I’m not exaggerating when I say every inch of me turns to goo.
Sometimes I flash back to that first day, pulling up to the ranch with my entire life shoved into a cracked laundry basket, thinking my best-case scenario was six months of steady income and a roof over my head. Never in a million years did I think my future would turn out this sweet.
If you’d asked me five years ago where I thought I’d end up, “here” wouldn’t have even made the top twenty.
But here I am, standing in a kitchen that smells like vanilla and cinnamon.
A kitchen that blooms with sticky notes on every flat surface.
A fridge plastered in crayon masterpieces and glue-crusted crafts that make me weirdly emotional every time I see them.
And then there’s the four-year-old, champion of my whole heart, currently demanding spaghetti and round meatballs with the conviction of a tiny dictator.
I wouldn’t change a single thing. Not one.
I never believed in happily-ever-after until Rogan. Now? I live it every freaking day.
There’s absolutely nothing in the universe that could top this. Life doesn’t get any better than this.
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