Not spectacle. Not drama. Not survival.
Longevity.
I don’t feel like something is ending. I feel like something has finally settled into its proper shape.
For the first time in a very long time, I’m not bracing for impact.
I’m just here. With him.
Exactly where I’m supposed to be.
EPILOGUE
OLLIE
The thingabout moving in with someone you love—someone you’ve loved for most of your adult life—is that it’s both wildly emotional and deeply, absurdly practical.
Mostly, it’s cardboard.
Boxes. Tape. Sharpies. More boxes.
And right now, I’m surrounded by all of it.
I close the front door behind me and lean back against it for a second, letting the quiet settle around me. The late-afternoon light spills through the long glass windows at the back of the house, turning everything soft and gold. San Francisco in early summer feels like a different planet compared to Minnesota in March. The air is warmer, cleaner. The tension I carried in my shoulders for years has slowly loosened over the last couple of months, and sometimes the absence of it still surprises me.
I’m home.
The word doesn’t scare me anymore.
I drop my keys on the console table, toe off my shoes, and flex my shoulder experimentally. The physio session with Caden this morning was brutal in that way that means it’s working. He’s relentless. Also annoyingly cheerful.
“Retirement isn’t a vacation,” he’d told me while trying to break my arm with a stretch. “It’s a job.”
“I know,” I’d said.
He’d smirked. “You don’t. Yet.”
He’s probably right.
The house smells like garlic and something citrusy. Rafe’s cooking. The sound of a guitar drifts faintly from the living room, soft and unfinished, like he’s working through something without urgency. That still gets to me. For years, hearing him play meant distance—videos, recordings, echoes. Now it means he’s here.
I walk into the open-plan space and pause.
He’s on the couch, one leg tucked under him, guitar resting against his thigh. His hair’s a mess, his T-shirt is old and soft, and his bare feet are hooked under the edge of the coffee table like he’s anchoring himself to the room.
He looks up immediately. “Hey.”
That one word still hits me in the chest.
“Hey.”
He sets the guitar aside and studies my face. “How was Caden?”
“Sadistic.”
“He’s like you,” Rafe says. “You have that in common.”
“I’m not sadistic.”
