Epilogue
CIARA
Three months since we left Declan’s house, and I’m standing in front of a mirror that used to belong to nobody. The dress is one I picked out myself. No one else’s opinion attached to it. I still can’t quite believe how quiet my own mind feels right now.
No shame. No bracing for what comes next. Just me, in white, waiting.
“You look ridiculous, you know,” says the woman behind me, adjusting the last pin in my hair. “Ridiculously happy. It’s annoying.”
I laugh, and it comes out easy, unguarded, the way almost everything does now. “I’ll take annoying.”
My mother’s the only family here today besides a small handful of people who actually matter, Cillian’s oldest friend, and the two staff members who stayed loyal after we left.
Even that took some getting used to. She cried the first time she saw the old building, walking through the half-finished rooms with dust sheets still hanging over the furniture.
She ran her hand along the stone walls and said it felt like a beginning.
Not anything grand. Just the start of something new.
She didn’t ask many questions about why we left Declan’s roof so suddenly.
I think some part of her already knew more than she let on.
And some part of her was relieved to finally be free of that house too, even if it cost her a marriage she’d only just started building.
Cillian’s rebuilt more of this place in three months than I thought possible.
There’s a new roof over the east wing. Windows that actually open.
A kitchen that works. The old barrels sit polished and gleaming in what used to be storage, waiting for him to start distilling something that’s his and not his father’s.
We could have waited for the rest of it to be finished. Neither of us wanted to wait one more day than we already had.
So today we’re using the main room exactly as it is.
Half restored, half still showing the scars of decades of neglect.
Sunlight pours through windows that used to be boarded over.
It feels right this way. Nothing about us has ever been finished or perfect.
I don’t see why our wedding should pretend otherwise.
The ceremony itself takes fifteen minutes.
I stand across from Cillian in the middle of that half-restored room.
My mother is on one side. His oldest friend from university is on the other.
A small officiant who drove out from town stands between us, the kind of person who doesn’t ask too many questions about why the groom’s father isn’t here.
Cillian wears a simple dark suit, no tie, sleeves that keep threatening to unroll the way they always do.
He looks at me the entire time like nothing else in the room exists.
When it’s his turn, his voice stays steady, but I can feel how much he means every word.
“Before you, I don’t think I really knew what my life was for.
I had a name, a company, a future everyone else had already written for me.
None of it ever felt like mine. Then you walked into that driveway and somehow, in the middle of all that noise, everything finally made sense.
” He brushes his thumb over my knuckles, slow and steady.
“People will always have something to say about us. Let them. I don’t care.
I only know what’s true, and the truth is you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
I’m not letting you go today, and I won’t let you go tomorrow, or any day after that, for as long as I’m lucky enough to have you. ”
I don’t remember exactly what I say back. I only know it’s true. His hands stay steady when he slides the ring properly onto my finger, the same one he gave me weeks ago in this room. The officiant says the words “husband and wife,” and my chest goes warm and tight all at once.
He kisses me like we’re the only two people who exist. Soft. Brief. Certain. My mother cries again, quietly this time, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief she brought for exactly this moment.
It’s not a big wedding. It’s not the kind of thing that would ever make it into the society pages Declan used to care so much about.
It’s just us, and the people who actually showed up when it mattered.
The room is quiet and full of sunlight. For the first time in a long while, everything feels calm. Peaceful. Exactly right.
And that’s more than enough.
The small reception happens in the garden behind the distillery, a handful of chairs, a table with more flowers than food, my mother already three glasses of wine deep and telling Cillian’s friend a story about my childhood that I definitely don’t remember happening the way she’s describing it.
I pull Cillian aside before anyone notices we’re gone, tugging him around the side of the building where the old stone wall blocks the wind coming off the water.
“I have one more thing to give you today,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow, amused, curious. “More than the wedding?”
“More than the wedding.” My hands are shaking slightly, and I press them flat against his chest to steady myself as much as him. “I’m pregnant, Cillian.”
He goes completely still.
For a second I think I’ve broken something, the words landing somewhere he wasn’t prepared to catch them, and then his face cracks open into something I’ve never seen on him before, not even in the barrel room, not even the night he proposed.
He picks me straight up off my feet and spins me once, laughing, actually laughing, loud and unguarded in a way I don’t think this family has ever allowed itself.
“You’re serious.” He sets me down slow, both hands immediately finding my stomach like he’s trying to feel proof of it already. “You’re really serious.”
“I found out last week. I wanted today to be the day I told you.” I laugh, wiping at my eyes before the tears can properly start. “I didn’t want it to be an accident you found out about. I wanted to give it to you.”
“A family.” He says the word like he’s testing how it feels in his mouth, like he’s never actually let himself imagine having one before now. “Ciara, a family.”
“Our family.” I correct him gently. “Yours, mine, this one, whoever else comes after.”
He kisses me again, slower this time, both hands cradling my face like I’m something impossibly fragile all of a sudden, though nothing about me has actually changed since yesterday.
“I love you.” He says it against my mouth, against my cheek, against my temple, like he needs to say it in every possible place to make sure it actually lands. “I love you, and I love this, whatever this turns into. Whoever they turn into.”
“You don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl yet.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He presses his forehead to mine, both of us breathing the same air, the sea somewhere beyond the garden wall doing exactly what it’s always done, steady and endless and completely indifferent to how much has changed for us in the last three months.
“I already love them. However they come.”
That night, after the guests have gone and my mother’s finally stopped crying long enough to leave for her hotel, we lie together in the room we’ve been sharing since the day we walked away from Declan’s house.
The window looks out over the same dark water I used to watch from a stranger’s house not so long ago.
Cillian traces slow circles against my stomach. He’s quiet for a long time. The kind of quiet that used to make me nervous, back when I didn’t understand what it meant when he went still like this.
“Remember the first night I made you that tea?” he asks eventually, voice low in the dark. “You were doubled over on the stairs. I didn’t even know what it would do to you yet. I just wanted you to feel better.”
“I remember.” I trace my fingers along his jaw. He leans into the touch the way he always does now. No hesitation left in him at all. “I had no idea it would turn into this. Us. All of it.”
“Same.” His hand keeps moving slow against my stomach. “One cup of tea. And somehow here we are.”
“It was never really about the tea, though.” I press closer.
His hand stays warm over the place where our child is barely more than a maybe yet, already loved anyway.
“It was you. The way you looked at me like there was nothing to be ashamed of. Like the milk, the mess, all the stuff I used to hide… it was just part of loving me.”
“It was.” He kisses my hair. “Still is. Always will be.” He’s quiet a moment, thumb moving slow against my stomach. “No more hiding, though. Not anymore. No more locked doors. No more listening for footsteps before I touch you.”
“No more sneaking around.” I tilt my face up to look at him.
“Now it’s just us.” He finds my mouth in the dark, slow, no rush left in either of us. “Nobody to hide from. Nobody to sneak past. Just this.”
“Just ours.”
“Just ours,” he agrees, and kisses me again like he means to keep proving it.
Outside, the water moves against the cliffs the same way it always has. But in here everything feels still. Safe. Ours in a way nothing else has ever been.
I fall asleep with his hand still resting against my stomach. The ring on my finger catches the last bit of moonlight before my eyes finally close. And for the first time in so long, I don’t brace for what the morning might bring. I just let myself be here. Home. Chosen. Loved exactly as I am.