Proud of you. Always.
I never thought I’d come back here. I never thought I could forgive this town, my parents, or myself.
But I did.
Because sometimes the most complex stories to write are the ones we’re still living.
And this messy, beautiful, ordinary life I’ve built here is the best story I’ve ever told.
Epilogue
Blair
One Year Later
Finishing the second book was more complicated than the first.
The first poured out like a confession. Raw. Urgent. Every word scraped from my ribs. But the second… the second was a choice. It came not from survival, but from peace. Finally, understanding that joy is worth writing about, too.
I sat barefoot at the old kitchen table, wrapped in one of Greyson’s flannels. The sun had barely started to rise, casting golden stripes across the floorboards. Outside, frost clung to the windows. Inside, the only sound was the scratch of my pen as I wrote the final line:
“Sometimes coming home isn’t a return. It’s a rebirth.”
I stared at the words for a long time.
Then I closed the notebook and let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding since I started the second novel.
Finished.
Truly, fully finished.
I walked to the sink, made a cup of cider, and leaned against the counter while it steeped. A breeze rattled the porch swing outside, and from the back of the house, I heard Greyson shuffling around, probably trying to find his socks.
When he padded into the kitchen, hair a mess, still half-asleep, he froze in the doorway.
“You finished,” he said.
“How do you always know?”
“You get this look. Like you’ve seen something holy.”
I smiled. “Maybe I have.”
He walked over, wrapped his arms around me from behind, and rested his chin on my shoulder. “I’m so damn proud of you, honey bee.”
“I know.”
We stood like that for a long time, the kind of quiet only love can fill.
A few hours later, Greyson said he had errands to run and kissed my forehead before disappearing in his truck. I didn’t think much of it until Madison showed up ten minutes later with Olive and a suspicious smile.
“We’re going on a little walk,” she said, loading the baby into her stroller.
“Why do I feel like this is a setup?”
“Because it is.”
She led me down a winding trail near the orchard, the same one where Greyson kissed me after all those years. The leaves had all fallen, carpeting the ground in gold and rust. The air smelled like woodsmoke and something else I couldn’t name, something soft and nostalgic.
