My voice is steady.
“It is.”
Chapter forty
Epilogue: One Year Later - Cam
Sunlight spills across the bed, pale and lazy, catching on the small, ordinary things that make a place a home.
Our home.
I stretch, joints loose, body rested in a way that still surprises me sometimes.
I pad out of the bedroom barefoot.
She’s perched at the counter, one knee tucked up, pajama shorts and one of my old sweatshirts hanging off her shoulder. Hair in a messy bun that’s doing its best. A legal pad open in front of her, already half-full of lyrics. Coffee beside her, steam curling up into the air above it.
She looks up when she hears me.
Smiles.
Bright. Warm. The kind that hits me square in the chest and never really leaves.
“Morning, husband.”
That word used to scare the heck out of me.
Contracts. Expectations. Something I could screw up.
Now it steadies me. Like a hand on my back before a snap.
“Morning, superstar,” I say, leaning down to kiss her temple.
She smells like vanilla and coffee and sleep. Familiar and mine.
I linger a second longer than necessary. She hums, distracted, already half back in her head with the song.
I watch her breathe.
Easy. Even.
A quiet pride settles in my chest, heavy and good.
She hasn’t fainted in months.
Her doctor used the wordstabilized. Her team saidhealed.
I use a simpler one.
Safe.
She taps her pencil against the page, frowns at a line, then crosses it out with dramatic flair. I smile to myself.
This is the stuff no one puts on a highlight reel.
Sunlight. Coffee. A woman in my sweatshirt writing songs that don’t hurt her to sing.
Life, ordinary and precious.
