Epilogue Eight Months Later
It’s almost time.
Everything is red: the thick curtains serving as a backdrop on the iconic New York City stage; more than six thousand sold-out seats waiting to be filled; RADIO CITY spelled out in neon on the famous marquee, our names in white just below.
And everything gleams —the brass railings throughout the building; the arched ceiling, brilliantly lit to resemble the golden rays of the sun as it sinks beneath the horizon.
Sebastian is dressed in a bespoke navy suit, looking stunning—a far cry from his usual preferences thanks to our publicist, who talked him into a more polished look for our book launch event. A gigantic poster of his book cover— our book cover—looms behind him, as if anyone needs reminding that it exists. It only just came out, but we’ve known for months that it would be an instant bestseller all over the world due to its record-breaking presales.
I watch from the wings as Sebastian steps forward to test the mic. He’s a pro surrounded by pros, so it only takes a few minutes to get the levels right.
“I’m good,” he says, turning to the man behind him onstage. “You want a check?”
Tyler’s hunched over his guitar, making sure it’s in tune—a posture I’ve seen more times than I can count at this point.
“Sure,” he says, stepping up to the mic. “Thanks, man.”
It’s been eight months since our lives turned upside down that day in Vermont. There have been moments where it’s been a roller coaster—close your eyes and ride it out until it’s over—but never, not once, have I regretted the days leading up to this new life.
Leading up to today .
“One, two?” Tyler’s voice reverberates through the room. His guitar gleams under the spotlight; his face is bright and beaming and radiant. “One, two, three—yeah, that’s good, Jack, thanks. How’s my guitar in the house?”
If he’s nervous, he doesn’t let it show.
Someone joins me in the wings, but I can’t tear my eyes from Tyler, who looks like he’s never been more comfortable on a stage. He looks happy up there in the spotlight, just him and his guitar and a mic.
“You ready?”
I glance over to see that it’s Maribel Tovar who’s joined me, looking every bit the editorial powerhouse in her black tailored dress and stilettos.
“I think I will be once we get started,” I say quietly. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Maribel gives me a comforting smile, her eyes twinkling even in the relative darkness of this backstage lighting. She’s calmed me down more times than I can count over the past several months.
“You’ll be perfect,” she says. “Just remember, everyone who’ll be here wants to celebrate the book with you and Sebastian.”
It helps.
The stage is set with two wingback chairs where Sebastian and I will be in conversation about his book, along with a rug and a low coffee table to make it feel even cozier. Behind that whole setup is the aforementioned fifteen-foot poster of our book cover. After my talk with Sebastian, Maribel will introduce Tyler as our special surprise guest: he’s been working on some music over the last six months or so, and tonight he’s going to announce his upcoming solo album—and perform an acoustic rendition of its first single.
All of this, shockingly, was Sebastian’s idea.
He and Tyler have been working through their differences in the months since everything went down at the lodge. Once the shock wore off, they had an intense heart-to-heart (in Fiji, because Sebastian is incapable of staying in the same hemisphere for longer than a few weeks at a time). Turns out they have even more in common than either of them realized and actually do enjoy each other’s company now that no one’s manipulating them into a rivalry at every turn.
This will be the first time since before True North broke up that they’ve shared a spotlight—and the first time ever that they’ve shared one willingly .
Maribel and our publicist thought the idea to include Tyler was genius, no doubt because there’s a second enormous book cover waiting in the wings, ready to be revealed—tonight’s audience is about to be absolutely swimming in surprises.
One night a few months ago, when I was at Tyler’s place for dinner, he pulled out a stack of paper.
“What’s this?” I said, eyeing the familiar logo at the top, thinking surely it couldn’t be what it looked like.
But it was.
“I’ve been talking with Maribel,” Tyler told me. “She asked if I might want to do a book like Sebastian’s—and I told her yes this morning. I’m thinking I’ll make a companion album to go with it.”
Finally, finally , Tyler would get a chance to tell his story to the world.
Sure, the whole world knew the basics by that point—that he’d made himself disappear, only to resurface at the lodge eight years later. And Sebastian’s book goes into slightly more detail, but mostly as it relates to Sebastian, not Tyler.
To have the opportunity to tell the why behind everything that happened, not just the what—it’s something Tyler wants to do, he told me. Something he needs to do.
And he’s writing every word himself.
“I love it,” I told him that night he broke the news. “I can’t wait until we can tell people about it.”
The waiting ends today.
Maribel and I listen as Tyler rehearses the song he’ll be playing this evening. It’s good— very good. He had nearly a decade’s worth of songs to choose from; he never stopped writing after leaving True North. This time around, he’ll get to release music on his own terms.
My phone vibrates in my pocket: it’s Chloe.
We’re here!!!!!!! Ohmygosh, Alix, your name is on the friggin MARQUEE!!! Do not let me leave without us getting a photo with it
Once my name became inextricably linked with Jett Beckett’s all over the internet, our publicity team thought it might actually be good to play up my part in creating the book. Hence: my name is on the marquee right under Sebastian’s.
YESSS , I write back. I’ll come around to make sure you get inside okay!
Security has been instructed to keep the doors closed—people have been lined up on the sidewalk since six a.m.—but Chloe, River, Julie, and Julie’s husband, Justin, are all on the VIP list along with Lauren and Ian and my parents.
We find each other in the grand foyer, a space that stretches four stories tall and is every bit as opulent as the rest of the theater. Chloe gives me the most enthusiastic hug on the planet; we haven’t seen each other in weeks.
Over Chloe’s shoulder, I see River, along with Julie and Justin—and Grace, the tiny baby girl in Julie’s arms.
“She’ll probably wake up right in the middle of your talk,” Julie says, a callback to a running joke we have about Grace always interrupting at the most inconvenient times, starting with Julie’s water breaking two minutes after we arrived at a restaurant to celebrate Tyler’s book deal.
I’ve gotten to know Justin and Julie well over the last year.
That fateful, chaotic day—the day our collective secrets exploded for the world to see—had blurred into an exhausted, emotionally electric night. In the aftermath of Tyler resurfacing and the subsequent viral social media posts, Tyler and I went back to his place for some much-needed alone time. Our room service delivery had just arrived when I got an email from my landlord: an eviction notice. The damage caused by Lauren’s coworker was the final blow after all the noise complaints.
The next morning, I found Julie outside my door. She wasn’t wearing her usual concierge uniform—just light-wash jeans, ripped at the thighs, and a Fair Isle sweater so big it swallowed her. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was already twelve weeks pregnant.
“Tyler told me about your apartment,” she said. “I’ve been thinking: long-distance relationships can be really hard—and it’s been so good to see Tyler finally let someone in.” Her smile was warm. “River and I talked things over. We won’t be hosting any more guests in this penthouse now that Tyler’s news is out in the open, so—if you’d like to stick around for a bit—we’d love for you to stay.”
So I did.
Over the last eight months, Tyler and I have spent countless late nights and early mornings—and every other part of the day—at either his penthouse or mine. River suggested we tear out some walls and transform our homes into a single living space, so that’s exactly what we’ll be doing as soon as the book tour ends. He and Tyler have grown closer than ever now that they’ve worked through years’ worth of things that had gone unsaid—a friendship tested by fire that’s only come out stronger.
“You can help pay for the renovation,” Tyler had told me one night, when he found me working out numbers on a spreadsheet, “but please know you don’t have to.”
I stood my ground until he showed me the numbers in his old bank accounts—the ones from his True North days, which would have gone dormant from inactivity years ago had he not continued to receive regular royalties from all the book and merch deals True North had accumulated at the height of their fame.
It was… an extraordinary amount of money. Like, astronomical.
It gave me a new appreciation for all he’d walked away from when he left the band—and for his discipline all these years, his commitment to keeping a low profile.
Chloe takes my hand and gives it a squeeze, pulling me out of my head.
“We’re so proud of you, Alix,” she says, and it means so much to hear her say it. It’s been hard on us both to not live in the same city—or even the same state —this past year. She practically lives in my guest bedroom on the weekends, though, and has become a pretty decent ice skater, so I think she’d say it’s working out just fine.
Behind me, someone clears his throat; when I turn around, tears well up in my eyes almost immediately. It’s my dad, dressed in a nicer suit than I’ve ever seen him in, four copies of The Grass Is Always Greener tucked under his arm. My mom and Ian and Lauren are all right there, too, looking like they’ve robbed a bookstore—they’re probably holding twenty hardcover copies between them.
“Congratulations, honey,” my mom says, leaning in for a hug. She smells like the cinnamon candles she’s put in our guest bathroom for as long as I’ve been alive.
Lauren hangs back, looking nervous but happy—she melts in my arms when I pull her into a hug. It’s a contrast to Ian’s greeting in every way; he and I are still warming up to each other after years of silence, but he gives me a deep nod of approval, like I’m one of his accounting clients who’s done a particularly good job of itemizing her expenses.
I’ll take it.
The stage manager, wearing a headset to match her all-black attire, pokes her head out of the auditorium.
“Alix Morgan?” she says. “You’re needed onstage.”
I’ve already done my sound check, and the doors open to the public in twenty minutes—I thought I was done until we entered with a full audience, but I guess not.
“You can come in if you want,” I tell Chloe and the others. “I’m sure this will only take a minute.”
They trail behind me as we head back inside from the foyer, and Chloe lets out a loud gasp. This place is truly breathtaking—never in a million years did I imagine doing an event here, let alone a sold-out one that I’m headlining along with two famous pop stars.
“This way,” the stage manager says, gesturing for me to follow her since there isn’t an easy way up to the stage from this part of the theater.
“Be right back,” I tell Chloe, but she’s preoccupied with taking a 360-degree video of this gorgeous place. My family and friends make their way down the aisle toward the row we’ve reserved for them, some of the best seats in the house.
I pass Sebastian and Maribel in the wings.
“Is this, like, another sound check?” I ask as I walk out onstage.
The view from here is overwhelming—I try not to think about how many faces will soon be staring back at me.
“Just take a seat in your chair,” the stage manager directs me. “We’re going to check the lighting.”
I do as I’m told.
Chloe’s filming me now, grinning from ear to ear. She tilts her head, and I follow her gaze to the far side of the stage—
And there’s Tyler, no longer in his sound check clothes. He’s now dressed in a trim suit that makes him look like a million bucks—we picked out the color together, a forest green so dark it could be mistaken for black, but this is the first time I’ve seen him wearing it. His wavy hair is parted in the middle, the tips of it grazing his shoulders, and he’s got a dark five-o’clock shadow like always.
He was already the most handsome man on the planet, but I’ve never seen him look quite this good.
Whoever’s working the lights has trained a spotlight on him, too, and it follows him as he makes his way across the stage, eyes locked on mine. I’ve been so preoccupied with getting ready for tonight’s event that I don’t suspect a thing until it happens: Tyler completely bypasses the other wingback chair and, instead, drops to one knee on the ornate rug, so close I can feel the heat radiating off him.
Oh.
Oh .
“Alix,” he says, no microphones in sight, for my ears only, “I don’t know what I thought life was before I met you, but if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last year, it’s that I had no idea what I was missing. Even before, in my days with the band, I never truly knew what it meant to let someone in—it’s why I didn’t hesitate to disappear. I only ever really confided in Riv and Jules, and as long as I didn’t have to lose them, I was okay with losing everything else.”
He takes a deep breath, pulls a box from his pocket.
“You helped me learn how to live again—and I don’t want to live another day of my life without you in it.”
Tyler opens the box, and inside is the most gorgeous engagement ring I’ve ever laid eyes on: a sparkling pear-shaped emerald surrounded by a dozen glittering diamonds, the design a stunning vintage art deco.
“Please, Alix—say you’ll marry me?”
I nod, too overwhelmed to speak. He slides the ring onto my finger, and I just manage to say yes before his lips find mine. Together, we find our way to our feet, and he kisses me under the spotlight like we’re the only ones in all of Radio City Music Hall. I’m vaguely aware that we’re not; Sebastian and Maribel are beaming from the wings, my family and friends are celebrating out in the audience, and Grace is still miraculously asleep (or at least not crying).
In this moment, no matter how many people are looking on, everything feels exactly as it should: the two of us, center stage, ready to take on the world—together.
After a few long, lingering minutes, the spotlight dims.
“Doors will open in five,” the stage manager informs us from the wings.
Tyler doesn’t move.
“You look beautiful, Alix,” he says as he tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Are you ready?”
Tonight might just be the biggest night of my life. With Tyler beside me, though, I feel more settled than ever. No trace of nerves, no second-guessing the road that led us here—only excitement for what’s ahead.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I think I am.”