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)
“Inferno to forever,” I answer, matching him, claiming it.
He dips me—slow, deliberate, his hand firm between my shoulders, the other a hot brand at my waist. The kiss he lays on me is a promise with teeth: reverent first, mouth opening, heat blooming steady until my pulse forgets how to do anything but answer. Somewhere someone whoops; somewhere someone else says about time. I barely hear them. The whole mountain could roar and it would be background to this.
He brings me up gradually, keeping me close, forehead to mine, breath ragged. “You okay?” he asks, the soft inventory he does with his hands when the sirens stop.
“Better than okay.”
“How much better?”
“Dangerously.”
He smiles, the private one. “My favorite way.”
We dance until my cheeks sting and my toes thaw and my throat hurts from laughing. We cut cake and pretend not to be competitive about feeding it to each other until I smear icing on his jaw and he promises revenge. We take too many photos. We let the town hug us. We kiss under the arch again, because it feels like the right place to do it, and because he makes a low growl when I tug his tie that I want to hear in other contexts soon.
Later, when lanterns burn lower and the kids’ energy collapses into blankets, someone whistles from the tree line. A white shape pulls into view: a horse-drawn sleigh, bells a gentle chime, breath fogging in the cold, wool blankets heaped high. It’s ridiculous and perfect. Axel feigns offense at the cliché and then helps me in like he planned it, because he did. He tucks the blankets around my legs, climbs in beside me, and knocks twice on the wood. The horse steps forward. The clearing cheers one more time, sparks trailing from sparklers, faces luminous.
We slide into the dark between trees, the sleigh runners whispering over snow, the river’s voice running parallel. The cold nips, sweet and sharp. I burrow into Axel and he pulls me closer, his coat half over my shoulders, his mouth finding my hair.
“Wife,” he says, tasting the word like whiskey.
“Husband.”
“You tired?”
“No.”
“Hungry?”
“For you,” I say, and feel his chest shake under my cheek.
“Greedy, Mrs. Ramirez,” he murmurs, bending to kiss the corner of my mouth.
“For once,” I answer, tugging his tie looser, “that’s a job requirement.”
His laugh turns into a groan when I nip his lower lip. He kisses me under the open mouth of the night, slow first, then not, the kind of deep that turns your bones to heat. The horse keeps a dignified pace. The bells keep time. The mountain keeps watch. And I finally let my whole weight settle against the man who built a home in the exact shape of my grief and joy, who learned my language and taught me his, who held a porch light for ten winters and never let it go dark.
Inferno to forever.
Second Epilogue
Axel–one year later
The river talks louder in winter, cracking and singing through the evergreens. Our chimney answers in low, steady breaths, the kind a home makes when it’s satisfied. One year exactly since I slid a ring onto Savannah’s finger in front of a mountain and a crew that pretended not to cry. Tonight the fire dances in the rebuilt hearth we framed together, and my wife stands on tiptoe at the mantel with a small brass screwdriver between her fingers and her tongue caught at the corner of her mouth in concentration.
“Careful,” I tell her, because I’m contractually obligated to be annoying about safety.
“Ramirez,” she says without looking down, “if you tell me to wear safety goggles to hang a shadowbox, I’m going to make you wear oven mitts the next time you take a shower.”
“You say that like I wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Her shoulders shake with a laugh. “Pervert.”
“At least I’m your pervert.”
“True,” she concedes, tightening the last screw. The box settles flush to the wood—salvaged planks from the old foundation that used to hold up her childhood kitchen, sanded and sealed and holy now. Inside the frame sits the stack of envelopes I kept like contraband for a decade—letters never sent, some still smudged with snow-melted ink from nights I couldn’t sleep and the firepit kept me honest.
Savannah steps back beside me and we look at it together in the firelight. The brass catches a glow. The glass throws the flames back. Neither of us speaks. The silence doesn’t sting the way it used to; it stretches, warm and easy, two people listening to the same thing.
“Looks right,” I say finally, voice low.
“It does,” she says. “It belongs here.”
She slides her fingers along my knuckles and laces our hands. Her wedding band is warm from the work and the fire. I turn her hand and kiss the inside of her wrist just to feel the flutter jump. “Ready?”