Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 48039 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48039 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“Of you? Always.”
She crosses the room and climbs into my lap. Her knees bracket my hips. Her hands frame my jaw. “Congratulations,” she whispers.
“For what?”
“For winning Couple of the Year,” she says, teasing again to save us both from drowning. “And also for being mine.”
I grin then—the big, unguarded one the crew mocks and Savannah claims—and she kisses me like she intends to keep me laughing for the rest of my life.
The snow keeps falling. The ring keeps gleaming. The fire keeps flickering. And my heart keeps doing the simplest, most reckless thing it’s ever done.
It stays.
With her.
Epilogue
Savannah–one month later
Twilight slides down Devil’s Peak like a silk scarf, and the air smells like pine and snow and candle wax. The valley holds its breath with me. The world is blue and gold and our little overlook is threaded with strings of warm lights that look like captured constellations. Mason jars glow along the aisle. The river whispers beyond the trees.
“Ready?” Briar, the Captain’s wife, breathes, her fingers quick at the tiny buttons on the back of my dress.
“No,” I say honestly, then laugh at myself. “Yes. God, yes.”
She steps back, eyes shining. “You look lethal.”
“Good.”
“Make him suffer.”
“Plan to,” I murmur. The dress is simple—clean lines, deep V, bare back, long sleeves to my wrists where the ring glows like a brand. My hair is pinned up, wisps already escaping. I tuck a loose strand, then drop my hand and let it be—some things are better wild.
Behind us, the small crowd hums. Low laughter, the chime of a glass, a kid’s half-suppressed giggle. The firehouse has shown up in full dress uniform, crisp lines and polished shoes, caps tucked under arms, the whole mess of them trying to look solemn and failing miserably. Flames burn inside lanterns hung on iron hooks, light stroking brass buttons and silver nameplates. The banner someone made says: Two Fires, One Home in block letters, and underneath, in smaller scrawl, no one tell Levi I cried while painting this.
On the far side of the aisle, I catch Holly fidgeting with her flower basket, solemn as a tiny judge in white tights and a blush dress, curls bouncing and a gap-toothed grin. Beside her, Ash nudges her shoulder and points to the petals like he’s giving tactical advice for a mission. She nods gravely, then dumps a handful on his boot just to watch him sigh.
My chest squeezes. Family. How it grows in directions you never plan.
“Stop,” Briar orders, blotting the corner of my eye with a tissue. “You’ll ruin your eye makeup. He’s going to lose his mind when he sees you.”
“He always loses his mind,” I say, fearless for once. “So do I.”
She hands me the bouquet—simple winter greens, white hellebore, baby’s breath that glints like frost, and mountain honeysuckle. The stems are wrapped in blue satin that once belonged to my mother; it feels like a hand at the small of my back, steadying. I look up, past candles and light and faces I love, and the clearing blurs into something holy: the officiant waiting with an open book; the arch Axel built out of reclaimed wood we salvaged from my family’s old foundation; the narrow aisle cut with boots this afternoon; the flare of quote cards pinned to the trees with clothespins—lines from letters he wrote and never sent, fluttering like prayer flags.
Movement near the arch flicks like heat in my peripheral vision. He steps out from the trees and my breath stops.
Oh.
Axel in that dress uniform is unfair. Dark blue tailored over broad shoulders, white shirt, black tie, polished badge catching pinpricks of fire. His cap sits wrong because his hair refuses to be tamed and I want to kiss the stubborn out of him. Wind brushes his jaw; the muscle there flexes. When he finds me he stops walking—just stops—like he’s the one who got the wind knocked out of his chest.
The world tilts.
A hand slides into mine. “I’ll take you to him,” a warm voice says, and I look into Briar’s determined face.
“You’re the maid of honor and the escort?” I whisper.
“I’m also the ring security,” she informs me severely. “And the petal captain.”
“Big job.”
“Uh-huh.” She tucks her hand tighter in mine. “Are you nervous?”
“Only in the good ways.”
Music lifts—strings and a low drum roll someone snuck into the playlist. Lantern light trembles. Petals hit the aisle. Too many petals hit the aisle, because Holly takes one look at me and starts flinging them like confetti from a parade float, and the crowd laughs, and the cold bites my cheeks, and Axel smiles—slow, helpless, wrecked—like he’d burn for me a thousand times just to see me walk toward him once.
Each step settles something that’s been loose in me since sixteen. Not a fairy tale. Not a fix. A vow. The kind you build with splinters in your palms, shoulders aching, eyes open. I reach the front and Holly deposits the final fistful of petals directly on my shoes with a satisfied, handled face, then trots to Ash’s side.