Epilogue

Hannah

One Year Later

My father took my hand and placed it on the crook of his arm. “Last chance,” he whispered.

I laughed through the butterflies trying to work their way up my throat. “I’m not running away. You don’t have to keep offering.”

My mother rolled her eyes from my other side. “You love Remington.”

He chuffed. “I do, but I’m not so sure about my daughter marrying him.”

My father looked down at me, warmth radiating from his very core. Dad wasn’t one to dress up often, but he was dapper today in a custom dove-gray suit with a bolo instead of a tie. His normally shaggy hair had been freshly cut and combed neatly away from his face. And his eyes, they shined on me, brimming with so much emotion, my own threatened to spill before I’d even walked down the aisle.

“Oh, Lachlan, yes you are,” my mother chided, her arm looped through mine.

Dad slowly smiled and reached for my face with his free hand, patting my cheek. “You picked a good man, Hannah. I have no doubt about that. But you’re still my little girl with a hundred bows in your hair. Give your old man a break. It’s not easy wrapping my head around you becoming a wife.”

I laid my head on his shoulder. “I still have a bow. It’s just fancier now.”

In lieu of a veil, Phoebe had taken the extra fabric from my ivory lace dress and turned it into an oversized bow secured on the back of my head. I wasn’t much of a dress girl, but I had always loved my bows, and I loved that my sister had found a way to incorporate that into my wedding day.

Hell, I would have married Remington in cutoffs and a tank if my mother wouldn’t have been mortified. But the truth was, now that I was standing in my pretty wedding dress, my hair curled and cascading down my back, awaiting my cue to walk down the aisle between my parents, I was glad I’d gone this route. Getting married to the love of my life wasn’t any ol’ occasion. This day deserved to be marked by getting gussied up in front of our friends and family.

“You’re beautiful,” my mother murmured. “Just glowing, my darling girl.”

I told them I loved them and promised I was more than ready to make this commitment. After all, Remi and I had survived a lot, including one of the harshest winters in memory, and we still smiled when we woke up to each other and fell asleep tangled like octopuses.

Before I knew it, the doors opened, revealing my future husband at the end of the aisle. By his side stood Caleb and Cormac, and on the other side, Phoebe and Camille. Their smiles registered, but that was it. My focus was locked on Remington.

I glided to him, barely feeling the chapel’s wood floor beneath my cowboy boots. Remi rocked on his heels, grinning, starbursts for days and days.

I laughed when I got to him, my father placing my hand in his.

Remi chuckled, his eyes darting over me like he couldn’t drink me in fast enough. “What’s so funny?”

“We’re doing this.” I lifted up on my toes. “I’ve never been so excited in my life.”

“That’s good, beautiful woman.” Remi stepped closer, enveloping both my hands in his. “Because this is for keeps.”

“No take backs.”

“Nope.” He grinned, bright and just as eager as I was. “Should we do this thing?”

“Never been more ready in my life.”

“Me either, sweetheart.”

Together, we turned to the chaplain, and on a lovely, clear afternoon inside the Sugar Brush River Ranch chapel with our family surrounding us—including Henry, who’d donned a suit for the occasion—we promised each other forever and became husband and wife.

We danced and celebrated into the night. My hair had gone up in a ponytail, and my dress had been switched out for a light, airy sundress. By midnight, Remi was down to his white undershirt and dress pants.

In the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by the most important people in our lives, we held on to each other. I tipped my head back, singing along to the music while Remi smiled down at me.

“My wife,” he mouthed.

“My husband,” I mouthed back, excited goose bumps blooming along my skin. “I’ve never, ever been happier.”

He leaned down, his forehead resting on mine. “I haven’t either, but I have confidence in us, sweetheart. We’ll top this a hundred times over through our lifetime together.”

My heart slammed and bounced inside my chest. “You…Rem…ahhh! This is why I married you—the things you say. You’re right, though. You and me and the beauty we’ll have.”

“Our little family,” he murmured, letting his hand drift down to my belly.

“Little bean.” A surprise but so very wanted. The secret we’d found out four weeks ago and were keeping just between us. Although, from my mother’s “glowing” comment earlier, I wondered if she had an inkling.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Yes, but I don’t want this night to end.”

“We’ll have so many more of these nights, Han.” Remi took my hand in his. “Right now, we’re going to say goodnight to our guests and I’m taking my wife to bed.”

I had no arguments in me, not when he said things like that. “I love when you call me your wife.”

“Feels right, doesn’t it?”

“So right.”

The morning after our wedding, I woke to find Remi sitting up in bed, working on his laptop. I lay there quietly, watching him type, listening to the distant sound of our three horses neighing.

Over the last year, Remi had worked on his book tirelessly, and his agent had quickly found it a home with a publishing house. He was now on his second round of edits, and though he claimed it to be grueling, the spark in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. He loved it and found creative fulfillment in the process. I had a feeling he had more books in him after this one, but he always said he was taking it one book at a time.

He liked having the freedom to work with Caleb at the ranch a couple days a week and the time to take photos. Over the last year, we’d traveled to the surrounding states together, Remington capturing the natural beauty, me cheering him on. Watching him work filled me to the brim with satisfaction. And god, did it turn me on. My husband was so damn competent. And not just with a camera. He was an incredible writer, but he could also repair a fence on the ranch like he’d been doing it all his life and had retiled our powder room all on his own.

I’d yet to find anything Remington Town wasn’t good at. So far, he was doing a bang-up job of being my husband, and in about seven months, he was going to excel at being a father. He’d had a brief moment of doubt, where he’d worried he’d screw up like Graham had, but we worked through it, just as we did every obstacle.

Our family motto was “no way out but through.” We’d repeated it to each other during Teller and Brady’s trial and sentencing, when we’d reached the one-year anniversary of Remi’s accident, and a month later, losing Graham. During nightmares and moments of fear, we held on to one another and whispered those words. We always made it to the other side. All we had to do was see it through.

As if my thoughts whirled around him, Remi’s gaze flicked down to mine.

“There you are.” He set his laptop aside, slipped down and lay beside me. “Come here, wife.”

I slid into his arms, tucking my head beneath his chin. “Good morning, husband.”

He found my stomach beneath the covers and splayed his hand there. “How’s our bean?”

“She’s hungry and demands wedding cake.”

He laughed as he kissed my forehead. “She does? You’re so certain it’s a girl?”

“I’m certain of nothing except cake.” I tipped my head back to kiss his chin. “And my husband, of course.”

“Well, if my wife wants cake, she’ll have cake.” His arms tightened around me. “Mind if I do this for another minute or two?”

I snuggled in closer, secure and at peace in his warm embrace. “I don’t mind. If you want to extend it to five or six minutes, I wouldn’t mind that either.”

He squeezed me, exhaling a rush of breath. “God, I love you, Hannah Town.”

“Oh.” A knot lodged in my throat, and it took me a minute to swallow it down. “You haven’t called me that before…”

“Like it?”

I let him see the tears pricking my eyes and the smile curving my lips. “It’s just…so wonderful. I really love you too, Remington Town.”

Bringing his lips to my forehead, he murmured, “Best morning of my life.”

“Agreed,” I sighed. “But…maybe cake would make it better.”

Remi shook with silent laughter while holding me, and after our allotted time passed, he took my hand in his, his thumb rubbing my wedding band, and led me downstairs.

We spent the first morning of the rest of our lives eating cake in our pajamas, laughing and kissing the frosting off each other’s lips.

And I knew, all the way down to my bones, this was only a preview of how wonderfully sweet our life together would be.

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