That night, I find her on the porch swing, her legs curled beneath her.
The sun has set behind the mountains, leaving the sky painted in shades of purple and gold. She looks up when I step outside, and there's something in her expression like she's been waiting for this moment.
"Hey," she says.
I sit beside her, the swing creaking under my weight, and pull her legs into my lap. Her skin is warm against my palms, soft and perfect and mine.
"Dylan knows," I say without preamble.
She sighs. "I know. I talked to him this morning. What did he say to you?"
I wrap an arm around her waist and tug her closer, until she's practically in my lap, her head fitting perfectly in the hollow of my shoulder.
"He said not to fuck it up."
Her smile is slow. "Smart man."
"I told him I love you."
The words hang between us, and I feel her go still against me. Her breath catches, and for a moment the only sound is the distant call of an owl and the soft whisper of wind through the pines.
"You do?" she whispers, voice small.
I nod, eyes never leaving hers. "Yeah, Cass. I do."
She blinks hard, and I can see tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, even though she's smiling.
Then she leans in and kisses me. When she pulls back, her voice cracks with emotion. "I love you too, Evan. So much it scares me."
I kiss her again, pouring everything I feel into the contact. All the fear and want and desperate hope I've been carrying around for weeks.
Because this isn't the end of something temporary.
This is the beginning of something real.
Epilogue: Cassidy
One Year Later
The irony isn't lost on me that exactly one year after my world turned upside down, I'm getting another upset to my life that could change everything. But this time, I'm not running from anything. This time, I'm exactly where I want to be.
I'm sitting on the front porch of the cabin, our cabin now, watching him work on the new deck addition. His shirt is offdespite the October chill, and there's sawdust in his hair and a pencil behind his ear.
When my phone rings, I almost don't answer, but the name flashing across the screen stops me cold.
Enid Henderson.
Editor-in-chief. My former boss. The woman I used to chase approval from like it was important to my self-worth.
I answer on instinct, phone pressed to my ear.
"Cass," she says, bright and brisk and exactly the same as she was a year ago. "You disappeared."
"I found something better," I say, surprising myself with how easily the words come. A year ago, I would have stammered, apologized, made excuses. Now I just state it like the fact it is. Surprisingly, I found I loved freelance writing for different magazines and only for articles that I wanted to do. I now longer bend to what has to be done, only what feels good to me.
I glance out toward the tree line, where the tress are turning gold and the mountains look softer in the morning light. Like everything's a little clearer and a little more real.
"Well," Enid says, and I can hear the slight edge in her voice that means she's not used to being dismissed, "consider this a second chance. I've got an offer. It's last minute, but it's exactly the kind of opportunity you used to dream about. A columnist just pulled out of a major European assignment. It's freelance but high-visibility, and the pay is triple what you were making here. You'd be based in Paris for six months, covering the current news beat."
