Epilogue
Lance
Six months later
I find Mom, Dad, and her nurse sitting at the small table near the window between the ceremony and the first course.
She’s wearing a deep navy dress with her signature pearls, hair pinned exactly the way she’s worn it my entire life.
Despite looking tired in that worn-down way that’s wrought by fighting cancer, she still retains that poise, grace, and elegance so characteristically hers.
She gives me that soft smile I’ve learned to read as I’m managing, darling.
I sit beside her. At once, she reaches over and adjusts my pocket square, which absolutely didn’t need adjusting.
I’m in a warm ivory suit, crisp and fitted, with a white shirt open at the collar, and no tie.
Somehow her rare touches do what they always do—makes me feel like her son first before everything else I’ve become.
“You should be circulating,” she chides.
“I’ll get there,” I reply, beaming. “Right now, I’m prioritizing the most important guest.”
She casts her eyes across the room, past the stone walls, warm lights, and long tables, until her gaze lands on George talking to Trevor’s aunts. There’s a touch of formality about him, but he’s genuinely engaged, doing that typical George thing where he listens more than he speaks.
“He’s a good man, son,” she says fondly.
“He is.” A helpless smile spreads across my face. “I hit the jackpot with this one.”
She squeezes my hand. “He’s the same with you too.”
Mom won’t, can’t, shouldn’t stay much longer. The plan was always Irish exit, before the dancing gets too loud. I’m just grateful she made it at all. This afternoon she sat in the front row and watched me exchange vows with George. That alone was more than I deserve in this lifetime.
When Cynthia leans in and they start to gather themselves, I stand with her. She takes my face in both hands—a very rare, very cherished gesture—and regards me with quiet affection.
“Go, my son,” she says. “Enjoy every minute of this.”
By the time we reach the door, George is already sprinting across the room, weaving through guests to join my mother and me.
There he is. Tailored navy suit, white shirt, sleeves rolled up, hair perfectly tousled—my husband. Suddenly, my brain just gloriously quits on me. A ridiculous smile takes over my face and I can’t tear my eyes away. That’s my husband.
George draws my mom into a warm hug. “Thank you so much for being here.”
Her face glows with happiness. “No, I thank you. When he came home, I knew things weren’t right between you two. But it still brought my boy back to me. Never in the world would I miss this.”
That catches George and me, and we fall silent. That’s already more open gratitude than my mother usually doles out in an entire year.
George’s hand settles low on my back automatically. He clears his throat, visibly taken aback with the weight of her words, but he meets her eyes anyway.
“You raised a good man, Eleanor,” he tells her, with a little dip of his head. “I’m the one who got lucky.”
One of her rare, genuine laughs breaks through. She reaches out and squeezes his arm.
My father gives me a semi-hug and a pat in the back. He shakes George's hand. “There's a members' round at the club Thursday,” he tells him. “You golf?”
“Can’t say I have,” George says respectfully.
“You will,” Dad says, nodding at him. Of course. Nothing says I accept you into this family quite like conscripting you into a sport that requires a blazer with brass buttons.
We watch them step out into the evening before George zeros in on me.
“Hey,” he murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear, that small smile tugging at his lips. I return it like an idiot, and he leans in for a quick, electric kiss that still manages to fry my brain, no matter how many times he gives it.
The estate is old stone and timber, a vineyard property George picked because he nerded out over the roof joinery and original ironwork. The hall is long and warm, string lights draped over the tables, and the courtyard where we said our vows is still in view through the open doors.
The whole reception has turned into this nineties fever dream, with half the playlist tonight pulled straight from the stuff George and I used to blast on road trips.
Adrian is currently on the dance floor with Holloway, swaying around to “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer like they’re the ones who just got married.
Marcus, my best man, is over by the side talking to some distant cousins on Dad’s side.
Constance, Hearthside’s board chair, made the trip up too—she’d been the one to push the board to formally nominate me as the Clinical Director when I made my transfer official.
She brings it up every chance she gets, acting as if she single-handedly built my entire career from scratch. I find it endearing.
George’s family, mainly the Macklins and a few from his mom’s side, turn up not long after. Trevor appears, pulls me into a crushing hug, and claps me hard on the back.
“I’ve hung out with you two thousands of times,” Trevor says, shaking his head with a laugh. “Same rooms, same bloody trips. Never once did I think you’d end up shagging each other, let alone married. The crazy thing is, it makes perfect sense and no fucking sense at the same time.”
I let out a slow breath, lifting my glass and both eyebrows. “Oh, we’re still the same. We still want to destroy each other half the time, but now we just found significantly better uses for that energy.”
“You’ve always been a brother to me. But watching you finally pull your heads out of your arses and pick each other?” He shakes his head again, softer this time. “I’m just happy for you, mate.”
I almost run out of jokes to say with that, coming from Trevor. “Someone had to lock him down before he ran off and married his toolbox.”
Trevor barks out a laugh loud enough to turn heads nearby. He claps the side of my face. “Welcome to the family, mate. You two basically married for many years anyway, just without calling it that. This whole wedding thing is just making it official. About bloody time.”
The sincerity of it wrecks me a little. He gives me one last satisfied nod before disappearing back into the crowd.
I find Carter at the bar a while later. A couple of drinks in, I start feeling unreasonably generous toward the entire universe. I decide to go over.
“Congratulations,” Carter says when I get to him. He means it.
I thank him.
George joins us a second later, sliding into place beside me as if he’s been there the whole time.
He wasn’t sure about inviting Carter, given everything that had sat between them for so long.
He especially doesn’t want to make it worse after what he did to his friend, even after covering the moving costs when Carter relocated for the security job—done without fanfare, something Carter probably wasn’t even supposed to find out about but eventually did.
I told him Carter would probably want to be asked. He was there during George’s Navy years, when I wasn’t. Whatever that was, it was part of the man I married. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist.
We chat for a few minutes about the wedding, the drive up, and how Carter's been doing with security work in South Carolina.
How George landed a summer internship with Torque Dynamics, one of the few firms in the state actually retrofitting classic engines into hybrid builds.
We both find it hilarious that George, of all people, is now somebody's intern.
Then Carter gets that little look and chuckles like he’s been itching for this moment all night.
“By the way, pro tip for next time. When you do it, make sure the CCTV is off.”
“What’s that?” I ask, eyes darting between them.
George says nothing, but he’s clearly fighting a smirk.
“There’s a security camera in the shop, at the bay?” I exclaim, heat rising to my cheeks. I whip my head toward Carter. “Did you see it?”
“I’m not a creep,” Carter says, shooting both hands up, his face now a bright tomato. “I saw enough to know it was private. Deleted it right away.”
“You deleted it.” I echo him, my right eye twitching.
“Immediately,” he adds, like that marks him as some kind of hero.
I would have strangled him right then and there if I weren’t the groom, and because apparently choking a guest unconscious at your own wedding is frowned upon in most cultures, and not considered “part of the festivities.”
George shakes his head. “Lance.”
I ignore him completely and turn back to Carter with my sweetest, most unhinged smile. “Can you un-delete it? Asking for a friend.”
“The friend is you,” George says flatly.
“Can you though?” I press Carter, fully committed now.
“Nope,” Carter says, cracking up now.
I can’t help smiling. Here I am, laughing with the man who once carried something for George that I always thought I had to compete with. Now we’re casually talking about our security cam sex tape at my wedding reception.
With that, I know the evening has fully arrived at the place it needed to be.
Trevor appears and pulls George away to see more guests. He kisses me before he leaves, and I can feel Carter’s eyes on us for a second too long.
Now it’s just the two of us at the bar.
“He’s going to need a full reset after this,” I tell him, shaking my head, watching my husband smile at someone’s uncle like he’s auditioning for “Most Sociable Man Alive.” I know for a fact he’d rather dig up a hole and crawl into it.
Carter glances over. “Oh, without a doubt. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him talk to these many people outside the garage in such a short period of time.”
“He’s in his ‘I can be a normal human at my own wedding’ mode now. By tomorrow, he’ll be asking why people were allowed to look at him for that long.”
That gets a proper laugh out of Carter, then he grows silent for a moment, staring out at the room.
“Can I tell you something, Lance?” he asks.
I look at him and nod, raising my glass. “Of course.”
“I think you need to know that I knew,” he says. “Even before I really understood it myself.”