Epilogue
ELSIE
Three months later
The final proof is open on my laptop, and I can’t stop staring at it, not because something is wrong, but because it’s done.
I came to Forge Creek with a dead manuscript and a hero named Callum who had the emotional depth of wet cardboard. I couldn’t write a convincing man because I’d stopped trusting my own judgement about what a good one looked like.
Now the book is finished, and everyone who reads it is going to know exactly who inspired him, even if Hugo keeps pretending otherwise.
Somehow, I did it. Barely, but still. It counts.
Now, three months later, the book is edited, polished, and ready for publication. The dedication is the only part I’ve kept messing with. I’ve written it, deleted it, rewritten it, and stared at it like it might magically sort itself out.
It hasn’t.
Rude, honestly.
The sticky notes on the wall around the monitor are three layers deep in some places.
His flannel is over the back of my chair, my cold coffee has been here since nine this morning, and it is now past one.
Outside the window, the ridge is starting to show green at the lower edge, the last of the snow retreating up toward the peaks.
My boots are by his front door, my books are on his shelves, and my mail comes here now. I don’t remember a time that I’ve ever felt so content, so happy, but with Hugo it’s effortless and beautiful.
I hear his truck in the driveway, followed by the sound of the door opening and closing.
"Elsie," he calls out.
"Office," I call back, with a smile on my face, something that’s a permanent fixture these days.
He comes to the office and stops, filling the doorframe; he’s in his work jacket. There’s mud on his boots, the radio clipped to his jacket, and his hard hat tucked under his arm. He looks at me and then immediately at the coffee cup, takes two steps toward the desk and he picks it up.
"This is cold."
"I’ve been busy."
"It's growing something."
He takes it and comes back two minutes later with a fresh one, sets it beside the laptop and doesn't say anything, just presses a kiss to my head.
“I finished the proof,” I say.
He looks at the screen, then at me and smiles. “Good.”
I roll my eyes at the tone. “You sound like I filed a bridge inspection.”
He shrugs. “It’s important.”
My brows furrow. “The bridge inspection?”
“The book,” he says simply.
Oh, that’s worse, somehow, because Hugo says it like it’s obvious, like my work matters to him because it matters to me.
Daniel used to ask how the writing was going the way people ask about weather.
As a filler conversation, Hugo has never once asked how the writing was going; he asks when it is due, whether I need quiet, whether the desk chair is the right height.
He fixed a drafty seal on the window because I mentioned once that cold air made it hard to concentrate.
I never had to explain what my work was worth, he just treated it like it was.
"Corey pre-ordered it," I say.
Hugo's expression does not change, but something behind his eyes does. "He did?"
"Doris has had a pre-order in since February, Marlene keeps asking me if the hero is based on a real person, and Darnell asked if the bridge documentation scenes were accurate."
"Darnell read it?"
"He read the preview chapters; he said the culvert details were solid."
A muscle moves in Hugo's jaw. "Corey is not reading that book."
"You can't fire a man for supporting local literature."
His lips purse as though he’s contemplating it but then nods. "Watch me."
I swivel the chair to face him properly and he’s looking at me the way he does sometimes, like he is still slightly surprised I’m here, which I find both unbearable and wonderful.
"Come here," he says.
"I have launch tasks."
"They can wait."
He reaches down and pulls me up from the chair and I go because I have never once not gone, and he kisses me slowly and takes his time, his hand at my jaw, and I feel as I have done since he told me he was falling for me, I feel wanted and loved.
He pulls back and looks at the laptop. "Is that the dedication?" he asks.
I forgot I had it open on that page. "Maybe," I say.
He reads it and his jaw tightens.
For the man who thinks fixing what's broken doesn't make him a hero. He's wrong.
"No," he says, that’s it, just one word.
"Yes," I reply trying to hide my smile.
“That’s not subtle,” he says. “I know it’s about me.”
“I’m done being subtle.”
He looks at me for a long moment, then he looks back at the screen, at the book that has his fingerprints all over it even though he never touched a single page.
Something settles in his face. “Alright,” he says.
And because it’s Hugo, I know that means he’s letting me have this, letting me call him what he is.
I kiss him again because I can’t help it.
Outside, a work truck rumbles past the house.
Forge Creek is in the middle of another busy day, people will be grabbing lunch at Kincaid’s, there’ll be boots tracking mud through doorways, along with radios crackling, and no doubt someone probably calling Hugo about a road before he’s even had the chance to eat.
And Corey, without a doubt, telling everyone he knows the man in my book.
I should be annoyed but I’m not.
I’m home.
I came to Forge Creek to hide from the woman Daniel made me think I was, instead I found the woman I had forgotten how to be.
Loved and wanted.
And when Hugo kisses me and tells me he loves me, I know one thing for sure, this is not the ending I came here to write.
It’s better.