epilogue
Cora
a few weeks later…
"Close your eyes."
I give Oliver a look that I hope communicates the full depth of my skepticism.
We're sitting in his truck—the same white double cab, the same bench seat where everything started, except now there's a car seat base installed in the back and a half-eaten sleeve of saltines in the cupholder because pregnancy has made me a gremlin who eats every forty-five minutes.
"I don't close my eyes for surprises," I say. "Surprises and I have a complicated history."
Oliver's hand rests on my thigh, his thumb drawing an absent circle against the bare skin above my knee. It's one of those things he does now—touches me like it's nothing, like his hand just naturally migrates to wherever I am. Like I'm his true north and his compass is hardwired.
It ruins me every single time.
"Cora." He says my name the way he always does—low, unhurried, like it's a word he wants to keep in his mouth a little longer. "Close your eyes. Please."
"The 'please' is a nice touch."
"I've been practicing."
I narrow my eyes at him. He's wearing that almost-smile, the one I spent months trying to earn the full version of.
These days, I get the full version more often than not, but right now he's holding back, and that means he's nervous.
Oliver Blankenship doesn't get nervous. The man stares down twelve-hundred-pound bulls for a living and barely blinks.
But right now, his jaw is doing that thing. The flex. The tell.
"Fine," I say, and close my eyes.
The truck rolls forward. I can feel the road change beneath us—smooth pavement giving way to gravel, then to something rougher, packed dirt maybe, with the occasional dip that makes Oliver's hand tighten on my thigh.
"If you're taking me somewhere to murder me, I want you to know that Jules has my location shared at all times and she will burn this county to the ground."
"Noted."
"Also, I'm four months pregnant and I will absolutely use that as a weapon. I'll sit on you."
"I'd enjoy that. Especially if you sat on my face.”
"Oliver."
He chuckles—that low, warm sound that still sends heat pooling in my belly. "We're almost there."
The truck slows. Stops. The engine ticks into silence.
I hear him shift, feel the weight of his gaze on me. His hand comes up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear—gently, the way he touches everything now that involves me. Like I'm simultaneously the strongest and most precious thing he's ever held.
"Okay," he says quietly. "Open."
I open my eyes.
And my breath just—leaves.
We're parked at the end of a long gravel drive lined with young pecan trees, their branches just starting to fill out with late-summer leaves. The drive curves gently upward to a slight rise, and sitting on top of that rise, glowing warm and golden in the late-afternoon light, is a house.
Not just a house.
A farmhouse.
Two stories of white-painted wood and deep wrap-around porches, one on each story.
Dark shutters frame every window. A red front door—the kind of red that's cheerful without being loud, the kind that says come in, you're welcome here.
There's a porch swing hanging from chains on the left side, and flower beds that have been freshly turned, dark earth waiting for planting.
A big oak tree shades the east side of the house, and beyond it, I can see the land rolling out in every direction—pasture and sky and the kind of open space that makes your chest expand just looking at it.
The windows are glowing. Someone has turned on the lights inside.
I stare.
"Oliver," I say, and my voice comes out wrong. Thin. Like it's been squeezed through something too tight.
"It's twenty acres," he says. He's watching me, not the house.
I can feel it. "Twelve of it is pasture.
There's a creek along the east property line.
The barn needs some work—new roof, new stalls—but the bones are solid.
House was built in 1952 and renovated last year.
Three bedrooms upstairs, one down. Two and a half baths. "
I shake my head slowly. My vision is blurring and I blink hard because I am not going to cry. I am not.
"The kitchen's been redone," he continues, his voice careful and steady, the way he talks to spooked animals and overwhelmed women, apparently. "Big island. Gas stove. That window over the sink faces east, so you’ll get morning light while you—"
"Oliver."
He stops.
I turn to look at him. His not-quite-brown, not-quite-hazel eyes are fixed on my face with an intensity that I have never—not once in my entire life—been on the receiving end of from anyone but him.
He looks like a man who has placed every single bet he has on one number and is watching the wheel spin.
"What is this?" I whisper.
He reaches over and takes my hand. Folds it between both of his, rough palms and certain grip, the same hands that held me in this truck when I was just a stranger with a no-names rule and a reckless heart.
"It's ours," he says.
Ours. The word hits me somewhere behind my sternum. Somewhere deep and bruised and tender. A place I've spent my entire life protecting with layers of sarcasm and temporary plans and the firmly held belief that permanence was something that happened to other people.
"You bought a house," I say.
"I bought us a house."
"You bought us a house."
"You keep repeating it like the words are going to change."
"Because they don't make sense!" I press my free hand to my chest. My heart is hammering. The baby kicks—hard, right under my ribs—like they have an opinion about this too. "Oliver, you can't just—people don't just—"
"People don't just what?"
"Buy someone a house!"
"I didn't buy someone a house. I bought the woman I love a home." He says it like it's the simplest sentence in the English language. Like there's no distinction worth making between the two words, and maybe, for him, there isn't. "There's a difference."
The woman I love.
He's said it before. He says it every day now, in fact, in that quiet, matter-of-fact way of his, like loving me is just something he does—like breathing, like working, like putting on his boots in the morning.
But every single time, it catches me somewhere I'm not ready for it.
Every time, I feel the ground shift a little under my feet, the old foundation of don't count on anything cracking just a little more.
"Oliver, this is too much."
"It's not."
"It is. This is—do you know how much a house costs? With twenty acres? And a barn?"
"I'm aware." The corner of his mouth tips up. "I wrote the check."
"Oh my God."
"Cora." He tugs on my hand, pulling me closer across the center console. His other hand comes up to cup my face, thumb brushing along my cheekbone. I am absolutely crying now. So much for not crying. "Look at me."
I look at him.
"You spent your whole life moving," he says. "Sleeping in other people's beds. Living in other people's houses. You told me once that you'd never had a place that was really yours. Something no one could take away."
My throat closes. I remember saying that.
A late night on Mimz and Pops' porch, my feet in his lap, his hands on my ankles, when I'd let something slip that I normally kept locked down tight.
He'd just listened. He didn't try to fix it.
He just held my ankle a little tighter and looked at the stars and I'd thought, stupidly, recklessly, this man hears me.
"No one is taking this away from you," he says. "Not ever. This is yours. Your name is on the deed."
"What?"
"Your name. On the deed. Alongside mine."
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
"You put my name on a deed to a property," I say slowly. "A property with a house and a barn and twenty acres and a creek."
"And a porch swing. Don't forget the porch swing. That was non-negotiable."
A sob-laugh escapes me. It sounds ridiculous—wet and broken and happy, all at once.
I press my hand over my mouth and stare at him through tears and he just looks back at me with that steady, certain gaze.
The one that says I already decided. I decided a long time ago. And I don't make decisions lightly.
"I want to see inside," I manage.
His face—God, his face. The full smile. The one I spent all those weeks and months earning.
It breaks across his features like sunrise over the pasture, crinkling the corners of his eyes, transforming that too-serious jawline into something so warm and real and his that I have to kiss him or I'll die.
So I do.
I grab the front of his shirt and pull him to me and kiss him over the center console of his truck like I did all those months ago, except now I know his name and he knows mine and there's a baby between us who kicks in protest at being squished.
"I love you," I say against his mouth. "I love you so much it makes me stupid."
"Likewise, Mischief."
He helps me out of the truck. My boots hit the gravel and the evening air hits my face—warm and sweet, smelling like cut grass and honeysuckle and the particular golden-hour scent of a Texas evening that I have loved since I was a little girl sleeping in a bedroom that wasn't mine and looking out a window at a sky that was the only thing nobody could keep from me.
Oliver takes my hand and we walk up the drive.
The porch steps are solid beneath my feet. No creaking. The boards are new but painted to look old, a soft grey that complements the white. The porch swing sways slightly in the breeze.
He opens the red door.
I step inside.
And I know immediately—the way you know something in your bones before your brain catches up—that this is it. This is the place I'm going to bring my baby home to. This is the place where I'm going to learn how to stay.