54. Epilogue
EPILOGUE
DELLA
When my alarm blares this morning, I lie in bed for an extra beat to reflect. I’ve been in Amberheart a year to the day, and never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined falling into a place like this.
Becoming the resident painter has been a dream, and, as it turns out, my services are very much in demand.
Not only did I spend last summer creating beautiful custom landscape portraits for weddings, but I also expanded it to other guests, and people ate it up.
In the off-season, I paint what I want to, and have a permanent corner in the upstairs gallery of Painted Heart.
A job that never existed in my mind fills my life in ways I never knew I was missing.
Since so much has changed for everyone over the past twelve months, Beth decided to host the First Annual Amberheart Sunrise Breakfast. Even Quinn is coming out for it.
About a month ago, she mentioned she was jealous that I was getting to see the Amberheart sunrise again.
One thing led to another, and the conversation ended with a plan for her to come out.
I can’t wait until she gets to not only see Jax again, but also meet his whole family.
About a month after he and I got back together, we went to Custer to return her car, while he followed me out in his truck.
The plan was to drive back together, and we even detoured to the Big Horn Mountains to watch the sunrise.
It was extraordinary in its own right, but made even more special because, as the alpenglow lit up the peaks, he turned to tell me he loved me.
There wasn’t the usual Jaxon flair; it was almost as if he couldn’t wait to say it.
But he had nothing to be nervous about because I’m pretty sure I’ve loved the man longer.
The memory has me reaching for him, but he’s already up and out of bed. I follow, and by the time we arrive at his parents’ house, the entire family is here. It’s bustling, which is wild because it’s still stupid o’clock in the morning.
In true Beth Wills style, there is a full continental breakfast with anything you could possibly imagine laid out. I wonder if she slept last night. There’s no way.
Everyone is bundled up, but the chill doesn’t stop anyone from laughing and enjoying the time together. It’s my favorite part about being here. How much these people truly love each other. Even when things get strained, it always comes back to base.
Though it’s still mostly dark, the first purple-gray starts to dust the scene. Over the last year, Jax and I have seen a lot of sunrises, and that remains one of my favorite moments: first light, because you know what’s coming.
I sit on a chair on the porch, and we all watch the sky turn all sorts of different colors. By my estimation, we have about seven minutes until it peeks through.
“Shit, Del. I forgot something at home. We have to go get it,” Jaxon turns to me, panicked.
I extended my lease on Millstone for another three months after my initial one was up.
Thankfully, they let me do it that way, but when it was over, I officially moved into Jaxon’s house on the Wills compound.
“What is it? What’d you forget?” I ask.
“It was something for the sunrise. I have to get it. Damnit. Come with me. I don’t want the sun to rise without you in my arms. Last year I had to keep my hands off, and that’s never happening again.”
I look at the cliffs and back at him, smiling at the sweetness of his wanting to experience it together.
“Can’t this wait?” I ask.
“No, I need it. Please. Come on. We’ll be quick, and we can get back here before it happens,” he assures me.
I sigh, but follow him because I know he’d do the same for me in a heartbeat.
He speeds to our house in the golf cart, and we get there as the sky lights up with fire. There’s no way we’re making it back to the group before the sun spills over, and don’t want to miss that special moment.
He pulls me out and stands close, with his hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll just have to watch it here. I’m sorry, baby.”
Oh well. He’s the most important anyway.
He hugs me from behind before releasing me. What happened to all that watching in his arms speech? I pivot around to give him a hard time, baffled he let go in the first place, but my breath catches when I see him on one knee holding a ring box out and open. My mouth immediately drops in disbelief.
What is he doing?
“I love you, Della, and have for longer than I’ll ever admit to,” he winks at me.
“Every beautiful thing this past year is tied to you and the color you’ve brought to my existence.
I had no idea how wonderful life could be.
” Jaxon chokes up a little at his words, and I melt, still unable to take my hand away from my mouth.
“Marry me, Della Tatroe, and chase sunrises with me forever. And with every new day we witness, I’ll thank my lucky stars that somehow, I ended up with you by my side for another one.”
Dropping to my knees to kiss him, I nod my head and whisper back, as if talking loudly is going to ruin the moment. “Yes. I want to chase a million more sunrises with you. For the rest of my life, Jaxon Wills. I love you so much.”
He kisses me back while my hands go into his hair, and I flex those strands between my fingers.
He tastes like forever, and I lose myself in our moment as the punch of the sun falls on my face.
When he pulls back, he slides the most beautiful ring over my finger, and looks at me with the warm, intense eyes I’ve been drawn to since I met him.
“Della, one day I’ll be old and gray, and this is where I’ll go in my dreams. To this moment.
Because I’m memorizing the way you’re looking at me right now.
The way the golden sun lights up your hair, the blue of your eyes that always get bluer when you cry,” he puts his forehead to mine.
“And that smile with your lip tucked into your teeth that makes your dimple pop out. God, I just know we’re going to have the best fucking life.
You are my sunrise, Del. I love you,” he says as he strokes my cheek with his thumb, trailing right into the dimple he just spoke about.
Wrapping my arms around him, I bury into his shoulder.
I’m engaged.
To the person I love more than anything on this earth.
And I can’t get over how exactly a year ago, I was in such a different place.
If I only knew…
“You saved me, Jaxon,” I choke out.
“Nah. I gave you a cabin to stay in for seventy-two hours. Everything else you did yourself.”
It’s far from the truth, but my mind races with how all the people here contributed to making my life exponentially better than it was on the path to be.
“Wait!” I say, realizing all those people are at his parents’ house. “Does everyone know?”
His smile, which couldn’t get wider, does. “They do.”
“Even Quinn?”
“Even Quinn. It’s why she started talking about the sunrise last month. She was planting the seeds.”
My mouth drops open at his admission.
“Shut up! How long have you known you were going to do this?”
“That I was going to marry you? Back when I was groveling for you with paint colors. During those weeks, it was clear you had become my everything, and that I never wanted to be without you again. How long have I had this ring? A little over two months.”
“It’s beautiful, Jax,” I say, taking a closer look at the three-stone piece. It has a larger diamond in the middle, flanked by two slightly smaller ones on either side.
“You can thank your mom.” He drops the comment as if it means nothing, but my head snaps to him.
“What do you mean?”
“The side diamonds are hers,” he explains.
“I wanted to ask someone for your hand in marriage, so I called your aunt. She not only gave me an enthusiastic yes, but she also offered this pair of earrings to use how I saw fit. After your mom passed away, apparently, your aunt swiped these when she was helping your dad in the days after. I knew I wanted to incorporate some part of her into this, but the diamonds she actually wore on her ears are better than anything I could have cooked up.”
“You have to know this means everything to me,” I say, shifting my hand from side to side, admiring it.
The tears well in my eyes because I can see her in them, clear as day. Literally nothing else in this world could be better than this. “I know she sent you to me, Jax.”
“I love you, Della,” he says, putting his hand on my face, bringing me in for kiss that seems to be sealing the promise between us.
While his arm wraps around my waist and I tuck into him, I feel him harden against me.
Seeing as everyone at his parents’ house knows what’s happening right now, I pull away because we need to get back. He groans when our lips part.
“As much as I want to do this right now, we should probably go, right? What will they think?” Admittedly, I’m excited to show off my ring to the friends that have become my family in name… but now it will be official.
“They’ll know I’m fucking my fiancée,” he says before resuming the kiss.
“We can’t,” I insist.
“Really, really?” he tries a last-ditch ask, while rubbing himself on me. “We can be quick.”
“Yes, really,” I smile, putting space between us. “Wait, but what did you need here?”
“For you to say yes,” he laughs with a lopsided grin, pushing his erection down.
“What if it were cloudy?”
“I would have taken you to the bedroom and proposed in front of Love’s First Light,” he says, as if it’s no big deal. “Then, since we’d be next to the bed, I wouldn’t have given you a choice before we rejoined the crowd.”
My laugh escapes quickly. “Jaxon Wills, you are my favorite.”
“Dell Tatroe no longer from Chicago… YOU are my everything.”
With that, he picks me up in the air, spinning me around while the warmth of the sun glows all around us.
He’s mine. Forever.
Going back to Beth and Dale’s house hand in hand, we pull up to cheers from all the people who love us most, including my aunt, who is here to surprise me this perfect morning.
There are bottles of champagne on the table waiting to be popped in celebration, and everyone is buzzing about the extra-special sunrise event.
Hopping out, Quinn hands me a glass of bubbly and holds my other hand to examine the ring, while the rest of the family surrounds me.
When the immediate surge is over, she comes back to talk to me.
“Surprise!” she says with a beaming face. Squeezing my hand, she continues, “Looks like you’re riding off into the sunset after all, cowgirl.”
Returning the grin, I can’t be any higher than I am right now.
“Your smile, Della. I know I told you this when you came out to drop off the car, but it’s great to see it again.” She hugs me, and tears flood my eyes because I know everything she means when she says that. Quinn saw me at rock bottom, then helped me wade through hell to come out the other side.
“Tatroe, I was only away for a short time,” Jaxon jokes as he appears next to me.
Peeling away from Quinn, before I can even speak, he’s bringing me into his body.
I’m not supposed to be crying like this at my engagement sunrise, but I can’t help it.
The shock of the proposal has worn off, and now the overwhelming reality that I’m going to marry this man hits me in a way it didn’t thirty minutes ago. And the tears keep coming.
“You’d think you weren’t excited for this,” he laughs as he bends down and takes my lips wet with tears.
“I love you so much, Jaxon.”
It’s all I can say because there’s not enough time or breath to tell him everything he means to me. That he stole my heart right from my chest and protected it, cherishing it from the start.
That my soul bonded so instantly to his that it felt less like meeting and more like divine recognition?
Closing my eyes, I let myself feel the love settle in my heart. This family… this man… they didn’t just give me a place to land; they helped me rediscover myself, all while breathing life into a version too wonderful to know to dream about.
And from deep in my soul, I understand home was never a place at all. It was him. I was lucky enough to find what I never knew I was searching for, and somehow, someway, I arrived exactly where I was always meant to be.