“It worked.”
We laugh into each other’s mouths until the sound dissolves into a kiss that tastes like a promise we’ll re-say in front of everyone who needs to hear it. When we break, my breath fogs the glass; I writeV + Nwith a fingertip because I’m allowed to be ridiculous at dawn in my own lighthouse.
He watches me like a man keeping a miracle in his pocket. “We go from here and win the room,” he says. “Trust vote. Press. Then Tuscany again for the circus. Then?—”
“Then home,” I finish. “And life. The kind that lasts longer than a season.”
He nods. “Together.”
“Together,” I echo, and the word settles in my mouth like a vow that finally learned its place.
The beam slides on. The island inhales. We stand there a minute longer, letting the wind and the light draw the edges of us, then we turn toward the stairs and the day that wants what we just promised it.
On the landing, he stops me with a tug on my hand. “One more thing,” he says, mouth dangerous again. “After we win?—”
“Yes?”
“I’m taking you back up here at midnight,” he murmurs, voice sinful as velvet, “and reminding the sea who you scream for.”
I roll my eyes because bravado is our second language. “Make it quick. We have a lot to build.”
His grin could start a war and end it. “We will. And then we’ll come back down and keep building.”
“Together,” I say for the hundredth time, because if you’re going to choose a word for your life, you should practice it till it fits without chafing.
He kisses my knuckles and we go down into our morning, the lighthouse turning its steady circles over a world that, for once, feels exactly like the place we were meant to arrive.
EPILOGUE
Vasso
Dillinger Island, three months later
The light turnshoney at the edges, a benediction poured over lawn and lighthouse alike. A string quartet threads the seaside air with something elegant and aching; petals strew a white aisle like a soft map back to the life we chose.
The press pens sit a polite distance away, invited to witness, but not to intrude.
Beyond them, the lighthouse glints, keeper of all our second chances.
I stand at the top of the aisle with the wind at my back and the future in my chest. I used to buy what I feared. Today, I keep what I cherish.
Naomi steps into the light.
The dress we chose in Milan is moon-pale and bias-cut, the silk skimming her as if it remembers the heat of my hands. The neckline is a clean plunge, the back a whisper, the train abreath of sea-foam caught and stitched. Around her throat are diamonds, a waterfall of stars I fastened myself.
My wife has learned this about me—I love diamonds.
Especially when I put them on her and insist she wear nothing else beneath the silk. The stones catch the sun and scatter it; the lighthouse returns the favor.
Theodore walks her down the aisle, steady and proud, a king restored.
His arm isn’t as strong as it used to be, but his smile is, and when they pause halfway he looks up at the lantern room and nods like an old friend acknowledging a fellow survivor. When they reach me, he places her hand in mine and covers both with his own.
“Less secrets,” he says softly, eyes bright. “More confession. Love always.”
“Yes, sir,” I answer, because some blessings you answer like vows.
My parents sit together in the front row. My mother’s eyes shine; my father, thinner and spare from years paid for in silence, sits upright beside her and—God bless him—squeezes her hand.
