Epilogue #2
“Pau hana Friday, ladies.” He grinned at the both of us. “Water’s flat as a lake out there and the light’s perfect. Swim, Kat?”
“You read my mind.” I was already untying my postal apron. After a day on my feet sorting other people’s lives into little brass boxes, nothing in this world reset me like a swim in Ohia Bay. “Pua, you want to come?”
“No thank you.” But she smiled when she said it. “Go. I’ll close the rest. Bring me back some of that peace of mind you’re always finding out there.”
I changed in the K the foot’s good as new. She’s got her own life now. She doesn’t need you minding her anymore.” His arms tightened. “And I’m done pretending I don’t want to wake up next to you every morning. Come home to our place, Kat.”
I gazed at Elle laughing on Pali’s shoulders. At the seal asleep on the rocks. At the sacred green valley behind us. And at the man holding me in the deep blue, a man who’d never let go or let me down—if he could help it.
For thirty years I’d believed belonging to people was dangerous, because they could leave. I still knew that heartache was possible, but I’d counted the cost.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll move in.”
His face lit up. “You’re ready?”
“Yup.” I kissed him, there in the water, with the sun waning and our friends splashing nearby, and a sleeping seal keeping watch over the bay. “It’s time.”
Behind us on the dry sand, Tiki yowled as if summoning us to return—and the four of us laughed.
The seal slept on below the church’s vacant lot: silver and sleek, holding a future none of us could know . . . but that’s a story for another day.
Read on with CHICKEN SKIN, book 8!