My body tenses.
Ellie looks at me, eyes steady. “I kept thinking the ring was a shield.”
“It was,” I say.
She shakes her head. “It’s more than that now.”
I don’t speak. I can’t. Not without turning it into something clumsy.
Ellie takes my hand and slides the ring back onto my finger, slow and deliberate.
Then she leans in, lips brushing my ear, voice so quiet it feels like a promise only I get to hear.
“I didn’t answer an ad, Wyatt… I chose you.”
Second Epilogue
Ellie
five years later
Margie Warner doesn’t “babysit.”
Margie claims custody with a smile, a casserole dish, and the kind of authority only a woman who’s lived in Devil’s Peak for seventy years can pull off.
“Shoes,” she sings, crouching to our son’s level. “Where are your shoes, Beau?”
Beau—four years old and already stubborn enough to make Wyatt look like a beginner—plants his hands on his hips. “I don’t need shoes.”
Margie gasps like he’s insulted her bloodline. “Excuse me, young man? You’re coming to my house. My house requires shoes. Even if you’re handsome.”
Wyatt leans against the counter behind me, arms crossed, looking like he’s trying to keep a straight face. Jake sits at his feet, eyes flicking between me and my son.
Beau’s chin lifts. “I’m handsome?”
Margie nods solemnly. “Very. Unfortunately.”
Our daughter, Poppy, two and chaos in pigtails, decides this is the perfect time to sprint down the hall in socks, shrieking like a tiny siren.
“POP!” Beau yells. “WAIT!”
Poppy does not wait. Poppy is a runaway bride in toddler form.
Wyatt pushes off the counter, catching her mid-sprint with one hand around her middle and lifting her like she weighs nothing.
“Where do you think you’re going, trouble?” he murmurs into her neck.
Poppy giggles and grabs his beard with both hands. “Daddy!”
Wyatt’s eyes flick to me, warm and wicked. “She takes after you.”
I snort. “She absolutely does not.”
Wyatt’s mouth tilts. “You ran away to my cabin with a backpack and an attitude.”
I point a finger at him. “I ran away from a banker ex and into a survival plan.”
Wyatt’s eyes darken, slow. “You ran to me.”
