Those words used to make her sad. It meant nearly another twenty-four hours before she could talk to him again.
But not anymore. He reached over and pulled her wheeled chair toward him and kissed her.
Not desperate. Not urgent. Just real—his mouth finding hers in the blue glow of the monitors, his hand coming up to cup the back of her head, both of them breathing the other in.
Those words weren’t the end anymore.
They were the beginning.
Epilogue
One year later
Binary: Eagle's Nest Saturday?
Mercury: Is that even a question anymore? Won’t we be riding together?
Binary: Routine should still be confirmed. Variables change.
Mercury: Some variables don't. I'll be there.
Binary: I know. I just like asking.
Lincoln Bollinger was not a nervous person.
He processed variables. He calculated outcomes. He prepared contingencies. Nervousness was simply the body’s response to uncertainty, and uncertainty could be eliminated through sufficient preparation.
He had prepared for tonight. Extensively.
The ring had been designed by a jeweler in Jackson Hole—a sapphire the exact color of Wyoming sky, flanked by small diamonds arranged in a pattern that, if you looked closely enough, formed binary code. The message encodedin the setting was simple:OURS. The jeweler had thought he was insane. Lincoln had tipped him thirty percent anyway.
The napkin in his pocket contained a message in binary code—ones and zeros that translated to ASCII letters. Simple. Direct. Very them. The reservation for the quiet corner table had been made three weeks ago. The speech?—
He didn’t have a speech. Every version he’d drafted had sounded wrong. Too formal. Too stiff. Too much like a contract negotiation and not enough like a man asking the woman he loved to spend her life with him.
So he’d abandoned the speech and decided to trust that the right words would come.
This was the part that felt like uncertainty. This was the part making his hand drift to his pocket every forty-five seconds to confirm the ring box was still there.
“You’re up, Linc.”
Bear’s voice cut through his spiral. Lincoln blinked and found himself standing beside the pool table, cue in hand, with no memory of how he’d gotten there.
It felt like everyone from Oak Creek was in the Eagle’s Nest tonight, original and younger generation alike. Zac and Annie Mackay were over talking to Lincoln’s parents, Quinn and Baby at the bar. Finn and Charlie—Bear and Derek’s parents—were out on the dance floor. Hell, even Theo’s parents were here. Ray and Dorian didn’t come into town often, so everyone was glad to see them.
But why couldn’t it have been just a quiet night?
“Linc. You going to shoot?” Bear asked. “Some of us are aging over here.”
“Yeah. Shoot. Right.”
Lincoln lined up the cue ball. Took the shot. Missed the pocket by two inches—an error margin he hadn’t produced since he was fourteen years old.
Derek made a sound that was almost a laugh. “You feeling okay, cuz?”
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Derek exchanged a look with Bear that Lincoln pretended not to notice.
