And for the first time in years, standing right where I was, I didn’t feel torn between worlds.
I felt like I’d finally stepped into one that fit.
Epilogue
Seven months later
The front door opened with a blast of cold so sharp it stole the air from the room.
“I forgot,” Tristan said, stomping snow from his boots, “how absolutely unforgiving these winters are.”
I laughed from the kitchen.“That’s because you blocked it out.We all do.It’s a survival tactic.”
He shrugged out of his jacket, thick and dusted with snow, and hung it on the hook by the door right beside mine, where it had started living sometime in November without either of us ever naming it.He rolled his shoulders like he was shaking the cold from his bones.
“End of January,” he muttered.“It’s not cold.It’s personal.”
Josh snorted from the couch.“That’s Athabasca for you.That what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.It builds character.”
“And resentment,” Tristan added easily.
The house hummed around us.Beef barley soup bubbled on the stove.Music played low from the speaker on the counter.The windows fogged enough to blur the streetlights outside.It felt good in the way only lived-in warmth ever did.
Allie leaned against the island, scrolling on her phone, one socked foot hooked around the other.“You should’ve seen him come in,” she said to me.“He looked personally offended by the weather.”
“I was,” Tristan said.“Still am.”
Josh’s girlfriend, Claudia, sat at the table with a mug cupped in her hands, watching everything with a soft smile.She’d been around long enough now to feel comfortable, but not so long that she’d stopped noticing.
“You get used to it,” she offered kindly.
Tristan gave her a skeptical look.“I’m not convinced that’s true.”
Without asking, I handed him his very serious black coffee.He took it with a quiet smile meant for me.
Seven months hadn’t dulled that look.If anything, it had softened into something steadier.Something that stayed.
