She brought him home to us.
Ingrid pulls herself together enough to rush over and wrap Carol in a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she says, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Thank you for bringing my boy home.”
Carol smiles through her tears. “He fought hard to get back to you all,” she says. “The moment he remembered, nothing could have stopped him from coming home.”
As the chaos swirls around us, Hurricane pulls me close with one arm while keeping the other around Immy. The twins are on our laps, and we’re surrounded by brothers and family and love so fierce it feels like armor.
“I missed a year,” Hurricane says quietly, meant only for me. “A whole fuckin’ year of their lives. Of your life.”
“You’re here now,” I tell him fiercely. “That’s what matters. You’re here, you’re alive, and we have forever to make up for lost time.”
He looks at me with those eyes I thought I’d never see again outside of dreams and photographs, and slowly, carefully, he leans in and presses his lips to mine.
The kiss is different, his lips are scarred, the angle is unfamiliar, everything about him is changed, but underneath it all, it’s still him. Still Hurricane. Still the man I fell in love with, the man I married, the father of my children.
Stillmine.
When we finally pull apart, Bayou is standing over us with a grin that’s equal parts joy and mischief. “I know there’s a thousand questions and a million things to figure out,” he says. “But right now? Right now we’re gonna celebrate.”
“It’s the twins’ birthday,” Hurricane says in wonder, looking down at Lynx and Trina. “I came home on my children’s birthday.”
“You came home on the perfect day,” I tell him, pressing my forehead to his. “The absolute perfect day.”
City appears with a beer in each hand, passing them out. “To Hurricane,” he says, raising his bottle. “The stubborn son-of-a-bitch who wouldn’t stay dead.”
The room erupts in laughter and cheers, bottles raised high.
“To Hurricane,” they echo.
And as I sit here on the ground, surrounded by my family, with my husband’s arm around me and our children in our laps, I finally understand something I’ve been struggling with all year.
Love doesn’t end with death.
It doesn’t stop when someone is taken from us.
It lives on in the people left behind, in the children who carry their parent’s eyes, in the brothers who honor their president’s memory, in the family that refuses to forget.
And sometimes, if you’re impossibly lucky, love gets a second chance.
Hurricane is home.
Scarred and changed, yes.
But home.
And that’s all that matters.
That’s everything.
Epilogue
HURRICANE
One Month Later
The sheets on the bed anchor me to reality. After months trapped in amnesia, I’ll never take this for granted. Kaia’s body is curled against mine, her scent, the way she fits perfectly into my arm, it’s everything. My fingers trace lazy patterns across her bare shoulder while morning sun filters through our bedroom curtains, painting everything gold.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Kaia murmurs against my chest.
