She considers it. “Can Waffles sleep in my room?”
“He's the head of your security detail. Of course.”
“Then okay.” She shrugs, deal closed, seven years old and better at negotiating than most parts suppliers I know. Then she pulls the napkin from her pocket, with some leftover bacon and holds it up, looking for my approval.
I put my hand on Waffles' big head. “New rule. Waffles eats when you say so, Rosie.”
Her whole face lights up. She looks at the dog and he looks back at her, ears up. “Waffles. Here’s your bacon.”
The bacon's gone in an instant and the four of us go inside for dinner.
Sunday morning, Marvin's is packed, and we walk in together. Marvin comes out from the pass himself, wiping his hands, looks the three of us over, and jerks his chin at the best corner booth, the one with the view of the mountains.
“Family table,” he grunts, and dares anybody to comment.
Taryn's got pancakes coming before we've sat down. Rosie sneaks Waffles bacon. And I sit in the booth with my arm along the back of Lila's chair, her shoulder warm against my hand, as she laughs at something Taryn hollered from the kitchen.
It feels like home.
EPILOGUE - LILA
A year later
Taryn gets married in a mountain meadow with the whole town watching. She’s wearing a cut I helped to make over her dress that saysPROPERTY OF HAWK, and Hawk has tears in his eyes when he sees her.
My daughter takes her flower girl duties as seriously as she does most things. She walks the aisle in her yellow dress scattering petals with the precision of a farmer seeding a field, one handful per step, and Waffles walks beside her in a flower crown. Half the town is sniffling before the bride even appears.
I cry through the vows, of course. Wrench's arm is around me the whole time, solid, his thumb moving slow on my shoulder, and when Hawk's voice breaks on the word wife, my big silent man clears his throat twice.
The reception spreads out under string lights as the sun drops behind the ridge. Somebody's hauled the jukebox up from the Saloon on a flatbed, which I'm told is now a club tradition. Bethany, eight months along and magnificent, directs the cake table from her lawn chair throne while Striker hovers. June and Viv have started a card game in the corner that appears to have a buy-in. Marvin walks around telling everyone he’s going to be next to get married, if anyone wants him. Doc's been deep inconversation with the deputy for an hour, and Prez stands at the edge of it all, arms crossed, face calm and impossible to read.
My dresses are in Viv's boutique regularly now, with the little cards that say made in High Vale, by Lila. The cherry-print sold the first week. I made Taryn's going-away dress as a wedding gift. Viv is excited about my spring collection, which is a sentence I still can't say without laughing. My designs, in a store, in a town I love and where I'm staying.
The porch step remains unfixed. I think Wrench is superstitious about it. I accused him of stretching the work so I stayed forever. He looked back at me with his eyes twinkling. “Shit. You worked it out.”
We're slow dancing, my cheek on his chest, when he bends to my ear.
“Something you should know,” he says. “There's a ring in my sock drawer.”
My feet stop. His don't; he just carries me through the turn.
“Wrench.”
“It's not going anywhere. Neither am I.” His hand spreads warm over my spine. “And I know you don’t like surprises. So it stays in the drawer until you say so, dulzura. Tonight, next year, ten years. You decide.”
“You're a very strange man,” I tell him, “and I can’t wait to marry you.”
“If you say so.”
I laugh into his chest, and we keep dancing.
Later, Taryn throws her bouquet backward over her head with tournament form, and it arcs high over a crowd of shrieking women. Savage rises out of the middle of them and takes it clean out of the air, one-handed, to a chorus of boos and at least two marriage proposals from the knitting circle.
Lucky's phone rings after he’s come back from flying Hawk and Taryn to their mountain cabin.
Wrench and I are standing near enough to catch it: his easy grin as he answers, and then the grin going. He turns away from the lights, shoulders coming up, a finger in his other ear.
“Slow down. Where? That's not... nobody flies that ridge at night, it's…” His broad shoulders are tense. “How'd you even get this number?”
