Epilogue
Paige
Ihave forty-three minutes until I marry Aiden Slade, and I am spending them exactly as I requested: alone with a book.
The private-library door is closed and locked.
Beyond it, chairs scrape across the porch while our small wedding means every chair gets rearranged at least twice.
Hudson has offered three opinions about their placement.
Deven has rejected all three. Adrienne is probably preventing her father from creating a seating chart no one asked for.
No one has knocked.
I sit in the window seat in my robe, one bare foot tucked beneath me, and finish the chapter I started this morning.
The mountains stretch beyond the glass, green and bright beneath the June sun.
My dress hangs from the back of the door.
My bouquet waits in a jar on the desk beside the marriage license, a tube of lipstick, and the cabin key I still carry.
Most nights, I sleep in the foreman’s house now. My books have spread into Aiden’s bedroom, the living room, and every other place Aiden once believed did not need a bookshelf. The cabin remains mine. The key stays on my ring. Some Fridays we go there, and sometimes I go alone.
I still work at the library. The new summer-reading flyers stacked beside my desk say PAIGE WHITAKER, CHILDREN’S LIbrARIAN. They will say the same thing next month and next year.
Aiden has never asked me to change it.
We spent months talking about marriage before he asked, including my name, my work, the cabin, our money, Josie, and how many nights a week one man can reasonably expect me to share a bathroom with him.
Then he asked on a Friday night at my cabin, after dinner and before I beat him at Scrabble.
He had a ring, a question, and enough restraint to wait while I stared at him until he looked genuinely nervous.
I said yes because I wanted the marriage, the mornings, the hard conversations, the filthy promises, and every ordinary Friday that came with him.
The last page ends with a declaration, a kiss, and a sentence about forever. Efficient. Real forever apparently requires a license, two dozen chairs, emergency safety pins, and Hudson being told to stop moving the flowers.
I close the book, smiling, and place it on the cushion.
The robe slips from my shoulders. I step into the ivory dress and pull up the hidden zipper at my side, careful of the row of small buttons down the back. My hair is already pinned loosely at my nape, and the lipstick takes less than a minute.
When I face the mirror beside the shelves, I recognize the woman looking back.
Marriage feels like another part of the life I selected. I chose the dress. I chose Friday. I chose the porch, the small guest list, and the man waiting outside without checking whether I am ready yet.
Through the window, I catch Aiden crossing the porch in the dark suit he refused to let me see. He looks toward the locked door but does not approach it. He returns to his place near the railing, one hand in his pocket, and waits because I asked him to.
My pulse jumps anyway.
I slide my feet into my shoes, take one last look at the shelves, and unlock the door.
Josie stands on the porch in a pale pink dress, holding a small silver locket in both hands. A tiny photograph of Krista rests inside it.
Josie’s fingers close protectively around the locket.
“Grandma helped me put the picture inside.” She holds the open locket out for me to see. “It’s Mom when she was younger.”
Krista is smiling at the camera, her head tipped slightly and sunlight catching in her hair. Josie has her eyes. I see it in Josie every day, but the resemblance is sharper in this tiny photograph.
“That’s a beautiful way to make sure she’s here.”
“I’m going to wear it.” She lifts the chain. “So Mom gets to be here too.”
“Of course she does.”
Josie turns around and gathers her hair with both hands. I fasten the clasp at the back of her neck, then straighten the locket against her dress. She presses her palm over it and smiles.
“Dad said I could walk with you.”
“I would like that.”
“He said I had to ask.”
A year ago, Aiden would have arranged the entire walk and informed both of us afterward.
“He’s learning.”
“He practices a lot.”
Josie takes my hand, and we step onto the porch together.
The chairs have finally stopped moving. My parents sit in the front row with my sister beside them.
Hudson and Deven are across the aisle, followed by Axel and Sadie, Adrienne and Scotty, and the few people we chose because neither of us wanted our wedding to become a Slade family reunion with vows squeezed into the middle.
Aiden waits near the edge of the porch with the mountains behind him.
The dark suit fits him unfairly well. His hair is combed, his shoulders are broad beneath the jacket, and the expression on his face is so open that my next breath catches.
He looks at Josie first. His gaze drops to the locket, and memory, sharp and sudden, moves through his features before he smiles at her.
Then his eyes find mine.
His eyes travel slowly over my dress, and the heat in them promises that marrying him has done nothing to improve his manners.
Josie tugs my hand. “You have to keep walking.”
“Right.”
Aiden’s mouth curves.
We cross the porch. When I reach him, he holds out his hand without taking mine. I place my palm against his because I am ready.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, for my ears only.
“You were told to save your comments for the ceremony.”
“That wasn’t one of the rules.”
“You read the fine print.”
“I married a librarian. I came prepared.”
The ceremony begins before I can remind him that he has not married anyone yet.
Josie stands between Deven and Hudson, touching the locket whenever she smiles. Aiden keeps his hand around mine. His thumb moves across my knuckles once, slow and familiar, while we listen to the brief words we approved together.
It is his turn.
“Paige, I promise to ask instead of assuming. I promise to listen to your answer, even when it ruins the plan I already made.” Axel’s laugh is the first one I hear, quickly joined by the others.
“I’ll show up for the loud days, the quiet Fridays, and every ordinary morning between them.
I’ll make room for the life you want and build ours with you.
I love the woman you are, and I will keep choosing you for the rest of my life. ”
My eyes burn, which is inconvenient because I spent several minutes applying mascara.
I curl my fingers tighter around his.
“Aiden, I promise to tell you what I want, even when disappearing into a book would be easier. I’ll make plans with you, change them with you, and remind you when color-coding has gone too far.
I promise to show up because I want this life, including the noise, the ranch, your alarming family, and the man who learned that a locked door doesn’t mean I’m leaving. I love you, and I choose you.”
Josie’s stage-whisper carries across the chairs. “You forgot Fridays.”
“They’re included,” I assure her.
“They’d better be.”
The rings slide into place. The final words are spoken, everyone rises, and Aiden waits until I nod before he cups my face and kisses me.
His mouth is warm and restrained for approximately two seconds. Then his arm tightens around my waist, and the applause is a distant hum, lost to the heat of his mouth.
I walk out of the library as Paige Whitaker, carrying every private piece of myself with me. I reach for my husband and kiss him back in front of everyone we love.
The witnesses hear the answer. The choice still belongs to me.
By the time the last car disappears down the ranch road, my feet ache, my lipstick is gone, and Aiden has stopped three relatives from taking the leftover cake.
“We can’t eat an entire wedding cake,” I tell him as he carries the final container into the kitchen.
“We absolutely can.”
“It’s enough cake for thirty people.”
“Then it should last us until Sunday.”
I lean against the counter and watch my husband rearrange the refrigerator until the cake is protected from whatever danger he believes threatens it.
His tie hangs loose around his neck, his sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and a flash of gold from his wedding band catches my eye every time he moves.
The word husband is strange. Wonderful, chosen, and slightly dangerous to my ability to behave around him, but strange.
Josie left with Hudson and Deven ten minutes ago, still wearing Krista’s locket and carrying the overnight bag she packed herself. The foreman’s house is quiet. Flower petals cover the porch. Half the dishes are clean, my bouquet is beside the sink, and someone left a shoe beneath the dining table.
Apparently forever begins with cleanup.
Aiden closes the refrigerator. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m evaluating your early performance.”
“As a husband?”
“You’ve been one for about two hours. There’s still time for improvement.”
His gaze drops to my dress. “I have several ideas.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“You’ll like them.”
“That confidence could cost you points.”
He braces his hands on the counter on either side of my hips, leaning in until I can feel the heat from his chest. “You married the confidence.”
“I married the man. The confidence came attached.”
“So did everything else.”
Heat curls low in my stomach.
I try to sound unimpressed. “That was terrible.”
“You liked it.”
I smooth the front of my dress. “Unfortunately.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, a slow, knowing smile that I recognize all too well. I slip beneath his arm before he can kiss me because if he does, the dishes will remain in the sink until tomorrow.
I carry my bouquet into the private library and set it on the desk. My discarded book still waits on the window seat. As I reach up to remove the first pin from my hair, I notice Aiden standing in the doorway.
His hand rests on the frame. He waits.
“Can I come in?”
The question still unravels me. I no longer need him to ask every time. I love that he understands the answer belongs to me.
“Yes.”
He crosses the room and picks up the book from the cushion. “I suppose this poor bastard lost permanently today.”
I remove another pin. “Marriage doesn’t end the competition.”
“I have vows now.”
“But he has excellent dialogue.”
“I made you cry.”
“So did he.”
Aiden sets the book back on the window seat. “He’s paper and ink, sweetheart.”
“He’s still good at endings.”
The teasing light in his eyes vanishes as he walks toward me. “You think tonight is the ending?”
“I think you’re supposed to impress me.”
“I already have plans for that.”
A year ago, plans would have meant certainty presented as a finished decision. Now his hands settle lightly on my waist, and he waits until I lift my face to his.
“Do I get to hear them?” I ask.
“You do.”
“And approve them?”
“Every filthy detail.”
“I’m listening.”
His mouth brushes my ear. “When we go upstairs, I’m going to take this dress off you one button at a time. Then I’m putting you on our bed, spreading your legs, and making my wife come with my mouth before I fuck her slowly enough that she remembers every promise I made today.”
My hand clenches on his tie, the silk a flimsy anchor.
“Approved.”
“Any revisions?”
“One.”
He lifts his head.
“You can start kissing me now.”
I pull him down by the tie. His mouth covers mine, a warm pressure that holds a promise, and his hands slide around my back. His wedding band presses against me as he draws me closer, a new detail inside a touch I know by heart.
I reach behind him and wrap my hand around the knob.
The library door closes with my husband inside.
The book on the window seat can keep its perfect ending. I have Aiden, a filthy promise against my mouth, and every Friday after this one to choose a life that is messier, hotter, and better than anything on the final page.