After dinner,when the candles had burned low and Lily had fallen asleep with her cheek pressed to June’s shoulder, I stayed behind with Sawyer.
We didn’t say much. Just swayed on the porch swing, his arm around my shoulders, my hand resting against his chest like it belonged there.
“I never thought I’d stay anywhere,” I said quietly.
“You didn’t have to,” he replied. “You just had to stop running from the places that already felt like home.”
I looked at him.
“I’m ready to stay,” I said.
He didn’t smile.
He just leaned in and kissed me, soft and certain.
Like he already knew.
19
HARPER
The morning after Willa told us she was staying, I stood in the backyard with a mug of coffee and a feeling I couldn’t name.
Not joy, exactly. Not relief. Something closer to stillness. The kind that only comes when you stop trying to outrun the question and start listening for the answer.
June was already up, reading on the porch swing with a blanket around her shoulders. Willa was barefoot in the kitchen, humming to herself while she made scones like a woman who’d decided she deserved the sweetness too.
And I opened my laptop and deleted the last spreadsheet I’d made before I left Boston.
It didn’t feel like letting go.
It felt likeletting in.
Later,I met Nate by the dock.
He had paint on his shirt, a smudge across his jaw, and the kind of look that made me think maybe permanence wasn’t a trap. It was a promise.
“You’re glowing,” he said.
“I’m sweating.”
He grinned. “That too.”
We walked in step along the edge of the harbor, not speaking at first. Just breathing the same air. Sharing the same view.
Then, softly: “I turned down the offer for good.”
He stopped walking. Looked at me.
“And you feel okay about that?”
“I feelhere.”
That was all I needed to say.
He nodded. “So… what now?”
I smiled. “I have no idea.”
