Olivia hugs her next, gentler but just as sure.
“Welcome home,” she whispers.
Sloane hugs her and fully sobs into Delaney’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I can’t stop,” she wails.
Delaney laughs again through tears.
“It’s okay,” she manages. “It’s kind of… perfect.”
Roman steps forward with a guitar, mic in hand, grin easy.
“Alright, Coyote Glen,” he says, voice carrying. “We heard we’re welcoming someone important.”
The crowd cheers.
Delaney freezes. “Oh my goodness, you let Wild Reverie loose?”
All I can do is laugh and offer her a one-shouldered shrug. “Seems like it.”
As the band starts playing, I’m overcome with a sense that this isn’t just the party starting, but in a way, my life as well.
Epilogue
DELANEY
Someone is screaming.
“Tag! You’re it!”
Sadie rockets past me at full speed, pink dress flashing, sparkly sneakers barely touching the ground. Her paper crown is crooked, her ponytail halfway escaped, and she’s laughing so hard she trips over absolutely nothing and keeps running anyway.
Micah is hot on her heels, shrieking with laughter, and, somehow, Eli is right there too, arms pumping, face flushed, yelling, “No fair, you cut across the bounce house!”
“I did not,” Sadie yells back. “Dad moved it!”
“I did not move it,” Boone calls from the porch, deadpan, holding a stack of paper plates as evidence. “It was always there.”
Silas leans over the railing beside him. “That’s a lie. I watched you reposition it two inches to assert dominance.”
Boone doesn’t look at him. “Get off my porch.”
The yard is madness.
Perfect, sunlit insanity.
Music drifts from the speakers near the barn where Wild Reverie is halfway through an acoustic set, Roman’s voicewarm and familiar, the melody threading through laughter and shouting and the squeak of the bounce house. Balloons bob against fence posts. Streamers flutter in the breeze. The smell of cake and grilled food hangs thick.
I stand near the picnic tables with a tray of cupcakes, frosting already smudged on my wrist, trying to pretend I’m not getting misty over a seven-year-old’s birthday party.
Sadie loops back around and skids to a stop in front of me, hands on her knees, breathless.
“Delaney,” she gasps, eyes shining. “This is the best birthday ever.”
I crouch down so we’re eye level. “I’m really glad.”
She grins, then leans in like she’s sharing state secrets. “Micah and Eli aren’t fighting. And Eli is being nice to me.”
