Epilogue
MARGOT
TEN MONTHS LATER
The cabin is finished.
My cabin. The one I bought sight unseen with half a divorce settlement, a bottle of grocery store Merlot, and the reckless optimism of a woman at two in the morning who didn't know her neighbor would be a six foot three Christmas tree farmer with a grudge problem and a talent for subflooring.
The porch is new. Solid. Wide enough for two chairs, a side table between them, and a Bernese mountain dog who takes up more square footage than the furniture.
Briggs built it with lumber from the farm, milled and planed and sanded until the grain was smooth enough to walk on barefoot.
Which I do. Every morning. Coffee in the mug from day one, feet on the boards, watching the tree line that used to separate my life from his.
That tree line is mostly symbolic now.
We live at his place. The farmhouse was always the bigger cabin, the one with the working woodstove and the water heater that doesn't require a pep talk.
My cabin became my office three months ago when Briggs suggested it casually over breakfast, then spent the next week building a desk along the south window before I could answer.
There's a bookshelf he made from reclaimed barn wood.
A reading lamp. The good Wi-Fi router from his cabin, relocated because my freelance editing requires more bandwidth than his tree shearing schedule.
Princess Buttercup has claimed the office's window seat. She sits there every day while I edit, watching the tree farm with the permanent disapproval of a cat who has accepted her circumstances without forgiving anyone for them.
Tinsel has learned not to enter the office.
This lesson cost him three scratches across the nose and a shattered ego.
He now waits outside the door, chin on paws, whimpering gently until I take a break.
At which point both animals pretend they don't know each other while occupying the same six square feet of porch.
It's July. The farm is quiet between seasons.
Shearing finished last month. The saplings from spring planting are holding.
Briggs spends mornings checking rows, afternoons doing equipment maintenance, evenings on the porch with me and a beer and the kind of silence that comes from two people who've stopped needing to fill every gap with words.
Holly Pearce at Sweet Peaks knows my coffee order. Donna texts me daily. Sheriff Parker waves when I walk to the general store. The woman at the post office calls me honey. I know who plows the access road in winter, where to buy propane, which day the hardware store closes early.
My editing business is thriving. Three regular clients now.
Two indie romance authors who send me manuscripts every month, plus a small press in San Francisco that keeps me busy between projects.
The office cabin is perfect. Quiet. My own space, twenty feet from the man I love, close enough to see him through the trees when I need a break.
We survived our first cut your own season together in November.
Families pouring in from Reno, Carson City, Sacramento.
Kids running between rows. Dads hauling trees to cars while moms drank hot cider in the wreath barn.
I worked the register. Donna ran the wreaths.
Briggs moved through the farm with that quiet competence, answering questions, helping families pick the right tree, carrying the heavy ones to the netting machine with one arm while holding some stranger's toddler with the other.
I watched him carry a tree for a single mother who was trying to manage it alone, and something in my chest locked permanently into place. This man. This life. This town. Mine.
This morning, I'm standing in the bathroom of the farmhouse, staring at two pink lines on a pregnancy test.
The first one came up immediately. The second took thirty seconds. Both are clear, unmistakable, glowing on the white stick with the confidence of test results that have no doubt about what they're communicating.
I do the math. Six weeks. Maybe seven. Which means the weekend he came home from the farm supply run in Reno and found me rearranging his closet in one of his flannels and nothing else. He didn't even get his boots off before he had me against the hallway wall.
That tracks.
Princess Buttercup is sitting on the bathroom counter, watching me hold the test. She tilts her head. Meows once.
"I know."
My hands aren't shaking. My chest isn't tight. The panic I expected to feel, the old pattern of oh God, my life is about to change and a man is involved, doesn't come. What comes instead is warmth. Deep. Spreading from my sternum outward.
Briggs is in the barn. Saturday morning, which means he's servicing the shearing equipment before the next round starts in August. I know his schedule better than my own.
Know where he'll be at every hour, what he'll need from town, when he'll come inside smelling like motor oil and ask what's for lunch.
The test goes into my cardigan pocket. Both tests, actually. I took two because the first one seemed too easy.
Through the kitchen, out the side door, across the yard. Tinsel falls into step beside me, tail going, convinced every walk is either an adventure or a feeding opportunity. The morning is warm. Blue sky. Mountains doing their mountain thing, enormous and indifferent and beautiful.
In the barn, Briggs is underneath the shearing platform, doing something mechanical that involves a socket wrench and a level of concentration that furrows his brow in a way I find unreasonably attractive. His boots stick out from under the equipment. Sawdust and grease on his forearms.
"Hey."
The socket wrench pauses. "Hey."
"Can you come out for a second?"
He slides out. Sits up. Beanie slightly askew, beard needing a trim, blue eyes finding me with the immediate, attentive focus he gives everything that matters. Tinsel pushes his nose into Briggs's palm.
"What's up?"
I pull the test from my pocket. Hold it out.
He looks at it. At me. Back at the test.
"Margot."
"Mmhm."
"Is that..." His voice trails off. He already knows.
"Two lines. Both tests. About six or seven weeks."
His face does something I've never seen before.
Every careful wall this man has ever maintained, the measured patience, the quiet restraint, the fifteen years of carrying feelings without showing them, all of it dissolves in about two seconds.
His eyes go bright. His mouth opens, closes.
His hand comes up to take the test, then drops back to his knee, then comes up again.
"We're having a baby."
"We're having a baby."
He stands. One motion. Full height. The socket wrench clatters to the barn floor. His hands find my face. Rough, greasy, warm. He holds me steady, forehead against mine.
"I love you."
"I love you too. Also your hands are covered in motor oil, and it's now on my face."
"I don't care." He kisses me. Deep. Thorough.
Tasting like the coffee he had this morning and something underneath that's pure Briggs, familiar now in a way that steadies everything.
When he pulls back, his thumbs trace my cheekbones, smearing oil across my skin, and he's grinning. Full. Unguarded. Teeth and everything.
"We gotta tell my mom."
"Not yet."
"She's going to find out."
"It's been nine minutes, Briggs."
"She already knows. I guarantee it. My mother has a sixth sense for reproductive news. She probably felt a disturbance in the force the second that line turned pink."
As if the universe wants to prove him right, his phone buzzes in his back pocket. He pulls it out.
Mom:
Good morning sweetheart! Just checking in. No reason. Anything new? How's Margot feeling? She looked a little peaked at Sunday dinner. Just an observation!! xo
We stare at the screen.
"How." My voice is flat. "How does she do this."
"I stopped asking years ago." He texts back.
Me:
Everything's good, Mom. Margot's fine.
Mom:
Wonderful! I'll bring muffins Tuesday. The cinnamon ones. Extra folic acid in the batter. Just because!!!!
"She knows."
"She absolutely knows."
He laughs. Pulls me against his chest. My ear against his heartbeat, steady and solid, the same rhythm I fell asleep to last night and the night before and every night since I walked across that tree line in my pajamas.
We tell Donna in person that afternoon. She cries.
For twenty two minutes straight, according to Briggs, who times it on his phone because he claims it's a new personal record.
She also produces, from somewhere in the depths of her enormous purse, a pair of tiny knitted booties she made "on a hunch" three weeks ago.
"They're green," she says, holding them up. "Neutral. Because I didn't want to assume."
"You literally knitted baby shoes before we knew we were pregnant."
"Intuition, sweetheart. A mother always knows."
Briggs's dad claps him on the shoulder. Doesn't say much. Gets a little red around the eyes. Goes to the porch to "check on the weather," which is code for crying privately, a skill he passed directly to his son.
My own parents take the news with the measured enthusiasm of people who are still processing the fact that their daughter moved to a mountain town and fell in love with a lumberjack.
My mother cries on the phone. My father says "that's great, honey" in the exact same tone he uses when I tell him about a book I'm editing.
My brothers text within minutes of each other.
Jake:
Wait are you serious?? Congrats sis!! Is this the tree guy?
Connor:
Mom just called crying. Everything ok? You aren't dying right?
Jake:
Dude she's pregnant not dying
Connor:
HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW MOM CRIES FOR EVERYTHING
Layla calls from Portland. Screams. Actually screams. Into the phone. For so long that Princess Buttercup leaves the room.
"The villain got you pregnant," she says when she regains the ability to form sentences.
"He's not the villain. He was never the villain. He was a twenty one year old kid who tried to protect me from a guy who was cheating on me, and I spent fifteen years hating him for it."
"I know. You've told me. Several times. Usually while crying. Usually naked. Usually right after he's done something disgustingly romantic."
"I'm not naked right now."
"Are you wearing his flannel?"
I look down. Briggs's flannel over my tank top. Sleeves rolled up. Unbuttoned enough to show the tank underneath. It's basically a second skin at this point.
"Irrelevant."
"He's the hero. The whole time. He was the hero."
"Yeah." My throat tightens. "He was."
That evening, after Donna's departure and the phone calls and the texts, Briggs and I sit on my porch. The one he built. Two chairs, table between them. Cold beers for him, cold water for me. The mountains turning gold at the edges as the sun drops behind the ridge.
Tinsel is asleep on the porch. Princess Buttercup is inside the office, visible through the window, judging us from her window seat.
"Hey." Briggs reaches over. Takes my hand. His thumb traces across my knuckles. "I need to ask you something."
"Okay."
He digs into his pocket with his free hand. Pulls out a small velvet box.
My heart stops. Literally. Full cardiac pause.
"I've had this for three months."
"Three months?"
"Bought it the week after you moved your stuff into my cabin. Knew then." He opens the box. A ring. Simple. A diamond on a thin gold band. Nothing flashy. Nothing oversized. Just right.
"My mom helped with the sizing. Your tortoiseshell ring from the nightstand. She traced it on a napkin when you were in the bathroom."
"Donna has been co-conspiring on this for three months?"
"She threatened to propose for me if I didn't do it by August."
My eyes are burning. "Ask me."
He shifts off the chair. One knee on the porch he built from his own trees. My hand still in his. Tinsel's ear lifts.
"Marry me, Margot."
The words are steady. His hand is steady.
Everything about this man is steady, has been since the day he pulled my leg out of a broken porch and told me the joists were gone.
He's never wavered. Through the grudge. Through the fight.
Through three days of silence with his porch light burning into the dark.
He planted himself and he waited, the same way he plants a sapling and waits a decade for it to grow.
"Yes."
"I had a speech."
"You can give the speech after. Yes. Obviously yes."
The ring slides on. Fits perfectly, because Donna Holloway’s napkin technique is apparently flawless. He stands, pulls me up, wraps both arms around me. My face against his chest. His mouth in my hair.
"I was gonna do this at the farm. During the cut your own season. Propose to you in the middle of the Noble firs I planted the year before you moved here."
"That's actually beautiful."
"Mom said the porch was better. Something about full circle."
"Your mother is always right and it's infuriating."
He laughs. Low, warm, the sound vibrating through both of us. Then he pulls back enough to look at my face. Thumbs wiping the tears I'm not even trying to hide.
"You came here to get your life back. That first day. Merlot in the cup holder, cat in the carrier, broken porch, and me standing in the trees being the last person you wanted to see."
"The absolute last."
"And now?"
"Now you're the first. Every morning. The first person I see. The first voice I hear. The first thing I reach for in the dark."
His forehead drops to mine. We stand there on the porch. The one I fell through. The one he rebuilt. The evening air cooling around us while the last light catches the ring on my finger and throws tiny sparks across his flannel.
My phone buzzes. I pull it out.
Donna:
DID HE PROPOSE TO YOU, DID YOU SAY YES???
WAIT DID HE DO IT ON THE PORCH??? I TOLD HIM THE PORCH.
Thomas Parker can officiate!! I'll call him!! December wedding? Christmas wedding! On the farm! brIGGS ISN'T ANSWERING HIS PHONE TELL HIM TO ANSWER HIS PHONE.
Briggs's phone is buzzing too. He ignores it. Kisses my forehead. Holds on.
"She's going to plan the whole thing," I say.
"She's been planning it since Tuesday."
"Which Tuesday?"
"The Tuesday you moved in. The first one."
Through the window of my office, Princess Buttercup stands on her window seat.
Presses one paw against the glass. Stares at us with the measured evaluation of a cat who has lived through two of my relationships, survived a midnight rescue on a mountain ridge, and has now decided, after extensive deliberation, that this one can stay.
She meows once. Then turns around, curls up, and goes to sleep.
I lean into Briggs. His arms tighten. The porch holds.
Oops.
Thank you so much for reading Oops I Fell For The Lumberjack Next Door.