Epilogue
Sierra
Six months later
“Sierra, I swear to God, if you don't stop trying to peek—”
“I'm not peeking!”
“Your hand is literally on the doorknob.”
I snatch my hand back like the brass just burned me. “I was... checking the temperature. Of the door. For historical purposes.”
Everett crosses his arms and leans against the wall, blocking my path to the great room with the full width of his shoulders. Which is considerable. And distracting. And he knows it, the smug bastard.
“Historical purposes,” he repeats flatly.
“I'm a preservation specialist. I preserve things. Including doors.”
“You're a terrible liar.”
“I'm an excellent liar. You just know me too well.”
His mouth twitches. “Six weeks, baby. Six weeks of keeping you out of that room. You can survive six more minutes.”
“Six WEEKS, Everett. Six weeks of mysterious construction noises. Six weeks of Roman coming and going at all hours. Six weeks of you and my brother whispering and shutting up every time I walk into a room.” I jab a finger at his chest. “You promised me you wouldn't touch that window seat.”
“I didn't touch the window seat.”
“Then why is the great room under construction?”
“Because the temporary wall needed to come down eventually.”
“That wall's been up for six months!”
“The repair was more involved than we thought.” He says it with a straight face, but his eyes are dancing. “Structural issues. Very complicated. Roman can explain the engineering if you want.”
“Roman's been dodging my calls for a week.”
“Has he?” Everett's tone is innocent. His expression is not. “Weird.”
I narrow my eyes. “Morgan.”
“Barrett.” He grins. “Soon to be Morgan.”
That shuts me up. Just for a second. Just long enough for the ring on my finger to catch the light and remind me that this impossible man is actually, legally, about to be my husband.
The wedding's in three weeks. Small ceremony. Just family and the Banger Sisters and a few lodge staff who've become family over the years. We're doing it in the great room.
Which I haven't been allowed to enter since April.
“If you ruined my wedding venue with some harebrained modernization scheme—”
“I didn't ruin anything.” He pushes off the wall and cups my face in his hands. The way he always does. The way that still makes my breath catch every single time. “I made it better.”
“You can't make the great room better. It's already perfect.”
“It was missing something.”
“What could it possibly be missing?”
He kisses my forehead. “You'll see.”
Then he pulls a literal blindfold out of his back pocket.
“Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“Everett—”
“Sierra.” His voice drops, goes soft and serious. “Trust me.”
And damn him, I do. I've trusted him since I was fourteen years old and too young to know what that meant. I've trusted him through eleven years of silence and six months of chaos and every terrifying, wonderful moment in between.
So I close my eyes and let him tie the fabric around my head.
His hands find my shoulders, guiding me forward. I hear the creak of the great room doors opening. Smell sawdust and lemon oil and something floral—fresh flowers, maybe.
“Steps,” he murmurs. “Three of them.”
I navigate blind, his palms steady on my waist. The floor changes beneath my feet—from the hallway runner to the worn hardwood of the great room. My great room. The room where Grammie Bea taught me about light and shadow. The room where I fell in love. The room where I finally stopped running.
“Okay.” His voice is rough. Nervous, almost. I've never heard Everett nervous. “Ready?”
“I've been ready for six weeks.”
He laughs softly. Then his fingers find the knot at the back of my head, and the blindfold falls away.
I blink.
And I forget how to breathe.
The window seat is still there. The same curved alcove, the same view of the mountain through glass that's seen a hundred years of snowfall.
But everything else—
“Everett.”
“Just... look.”
The log.
The log is what I see first. Dark with age, weathered by time, instantly recognizable. It frames the entire alcove now, arching up and over the window seat like it was always meant to be there. Like the room was built around it.
And in the center—right at the apex of the arch, where the two ends of the beam meet—
The initials.
J.M. and E.S.
Together.
Finally, impossibly, together.
“How did you—” My voice breaks. “The log was split. It was on opposite sides of the room. How did you—”
“Roman.” Everett's hands find my waist from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder. “He's been working on it for months. Had to source matching wood for the sections that were too damaged to salvage. Handcarved the joints. He wanted it to be seamless.”
Roman did this. My brother, who builds log cabins with his bare hands. Who felt like he'd failed me. Who's spent the last six months literally building the frame that holds this story together.
“But that's not—” I step closer, and something else catches my eye. Something in the window seat itself.
Not just a bench anymore.
A lift car.
The lift car.
Number 47.
The open cart where Everett kissed me for the first time, sixteen years old and terrified and so in love I couldn't see straight. The wooden bench seat where I learned what wanting someone actually felt like.
It's been retrofitted into the alcove. The old metal frame, the worn wooden slats, the number painted on the side in faded red—all of it preserved, integrated, home.
“You kept it.” I'm crying. I don't even try to stop. “You kept the lift car.”
“It's been in storage since they decommissioned that lift eight years ago. Dad wanted to scrap it. I wouldn't let him.” His arms tighten around me. “I didn't know why, at first. It was just... I couldn't let it go.”
“Because of us.”
“Because of us.”
I turn in his arms. His face blurs through my tears, but I can see enough. The emotion he's trying to hold back. The love he stopped hiding six months ago and hasn't bothered to mask since.
“You put our history into the bones of this lodge.”
“I put us into the bones of this lodge.” He brushes a tear from my cheek.
“The initials aren't just Jedediah and Eleanor anymore.
They're us too. Every couple who comes after us, who sits in that seat, who looks up at that beam—they'll see a love story that started out separated and ended up together.”
I can't speak. My throat is too tight, my heart too full.
“You told me that story,” he continues. “About Eleanor looking up every time she walked into this room. Trying to figure out how to fix it. She never did. She died with those initials still apart.”
“Everett—”
“But we fixed it.” His forehead presses against mine. “We took the sad ending and made it right. That's what you do, Sierra. You preserve things. You save them. You saved me.”
“You saved yourself.”
“I saved myself for you.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “Everything I've done—coming back, fighting for this place, surviving my father and Tara and every other disaster—it was all so I could be worthy of you. So I could build something you'd want to be part of.”
I think about the scared girl who broke his heart eleven years ago. The woman who walked back into this lodge with walls so high she could barely see over them. The person I'm still becoming, day by day, with him beside me.
“The initials,” I whisper. “J.M. and E.S.”
“Jedediah and Eleanor.”
“Or.” I trace a finger over the flannel covering his heart. “Everett and Sierra. E.S.”
His breath catches. “I didn't even—”
“I know you didn't.” I smile through my tears. “But it fits. It's always fit.”
He kisses me then. Slow and deep and unhurried, because we have time now. We have the rest of our lives in this lodge, in this room, in this story we're writing together.
When he finally pulls back, I glance over his shoulder at the window seat. At the lift car. At the initials that waited a hundred years to be reunited.
“We're getting married in here.”
“That's the plan.”
“Right there. In front of that beam. So everyone can see.”
“Whatever you want, baby.”
I look up at him—this man who fought for his family's legacy while falling in love with me. Who preserved the past and built a future in the same breath. Who understood that saving something doesn't mean keeping it frozen in time. It means giving it room to grow.
“I want you,” I say. “That's all I've ever wanted.”
His smile breaks open, unguarded and bright. “You have me. You've always had me.”
I take his hand and pull him toward the window seat. Toward the lift car that started everything. Toward the initials that finally found their way back to each other.
We sit together on the worn wooden bench, our shoulders touching, our fingers intertwined. The same way we sat fifteen years ago, before either of us understood what we were starting.
Outside, the mountain stands steady. The trees are thick with summer green. The lodge hums with the quiet energy of a place that knows it's loved.
And above us, carved into wood that's older than anyone alive, two sets of initials press together for the first time in a century.
Together.
Finally.
Home.