Callum reaches up and cups my face, turning me to face him, and he drops his forehead against mine.
"You won, Sophie," he whispers, the words full of reverence.
He's right. I did.
I won this battle against cancer. I won against the heartbreaking betrayal of Paul cheating on me. I won against my own insecurities telling me I wasn't enough.
I fucking won.
I lean in, and our lips meet in a kiss that feels like home. Our lips move against each other in a slow, steady rhythm. We kiss and kiss and kiss until the entire world fades away.
There will be more battles, more appointments, more scans, more bloodwork. There will be nights when the fear creeps in unbidden, when I wonder if the cancer will return, or if Callum and I will one day be able to hold a baby of our own.
But I will worry about them when the time comes, because none of those worries can touch me right now.
At this moment, I choose joy. I choose hope. I choose to be loved so completely and to love in return.
I choose Callum.
EPILOGUE
Paul
November
Six Years Later
This town hasn’t changed much.
Still the same stores, the same people, the same Harvest decorations lining the Main Street. An almost overwhelming feeling of nostalgia washed over me yesterday when I drove in, my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel as I pulled into my parents’ neighborhood.
Six years.
Six years since I left this place in a haze of heartbreak and shame for Connecticut, with no idea what the future held.
When I went away to college, I was eighteen, young and dumb, just wanting to get out, just as all my friends did. Typical teenage/young-adult rebellious feelings. And I did well. But I always had that cushion of being able to return home to Starling Cove. My hometown, where I lived easily and was deeply loved, would welcome me back with open arms.
Until I fucked up. Monumentally.
My therapist tells me that acknowledging my past actions without drowning in them is the only way I’ll move forward.
“Recognizing your mistakes is a form of responsibility,” she says. “Punishing yourself for them endlessly is not.”
Sometimes I can’t help it. Some days, I wake up sweating, remembering the look on her face when I confessed. I have nightmares about it, which my therapist said is sometimes a good sign of healing, processing instead of suppressing. You’re not scared to think about it, really think, and sit in your actionsand feelings. It’s painful, but growth doesn’t usually come without discomfort.
One day, hopefully, the nightmares will subside.
Maybe in another six years.
I’m back in town for Thanksgiving. For the last six years, my parents have either come to my condo in Maybrook, Connecticut—the place that offered me a fresh start. Or they went down to Florida to visit our extended snowbird family. My parents understood that I wanted to build something on my own first before stepping back into the place where I had imploded my life.
And I think they wanted to see the new life I was building in Maybrook, to confirm that I was at least doing fine.
And I was. I am. I have been.
Not great. Not extraordinary. But I’m doing just fine.
After apologizing to Sophie, I came home and apologized to my parents, too. I owned it all, and thankfully, they forgave me, allowing us to move forward and build a better relationship than we had before. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, it seems, and my mom’s coldness melted away, leaving behind the warm maternal presence I had come to take for granted.
