Page 44 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"Take me home," she says.

"Which one?"

"Yours.”

I take her hand and kiss her knuckles. “You mean… ours.”

Epilogue

OAKLEY

Sunbreak Harbor is wet air and bright water. Colt’s mother's house sits above it with a porch.

Billy has his hand on her waist. He's afraid the years might take her back. She lets him. She told me to call her Mama Hawthorne and then she hugged me hard enough to rearrange my ribs. I let her do that too.

I've wanted a table this loud my whole life. Crowded. Extra chairs dragged in from the porch. Somebody already spilled tea and nobody made it a crisis. Colt's fingers are hooked in my belt loop. He thinks I might bolt. I won't. I'm exactly where I meant to land.

"Oakley." Nash is first, because eldest is a job even at a cookout. He's big in the same way Colt is big, with a quieter storm system behind the eyes. The woman at his side is Delaney, auburn-haired and pregnant. She rubs her belly as she smiles at me.

"He told me you kept the files," Delaney says. "Thank you. For all of them."

"I kept a camera. The files were a side effect."

Nash almost smiles. "That's a Hawthorne answer. You'll do."

Crewe comes next with Riley tucked under his arm. Crewe is the one Colt trusts wholeheartedly, and I see why in the way he checks the exits even here, even happy. Riley kisses my cheek. We've already survived something together, by proxy.

"You can sit with us if the mountain man starts issuing decrees," Riley says.

"He already has. I ignore selected ones."

"Good girl," Crewe murmurs, and Colt makes a warning sound from behind me that isn’t very threatening.

Mack arrives in a shirt that costs more than my old apartment and still looks ready to fight a parking meter. Indigo is on his arm, tall and magazine pretty, and she’s also the first person who asks what lens I used on the dock shots. I like her immediately. Models who care about glass are my people.

Sin hangs back a half second longer than the others, then Rowan tugs him forward. She's small next to him and not even a little bit cowed. She takes one look at the fading marks on my wrists and her mouth flattens.

"If you need a quiet room," Rowan says, "say so. This family is a lot the first time."

"I want the lot," I tell her. "I've been waiting for the lot."

Banks introduces Anniston with the same precision he uses on files. Anniston has a sharp kindness. Jace has Sadie, sun in her hair, a laugh that makes the porch feel rented for joy. Anniston and Sadie stand close enough that I catch the sister thing before anyone says it. Same eyes. Same tilt when they look at their men.

"Sisters," Sadie confirms, catching me looking. "We come as a set. Sorry about the Hawthorne volume. We're the upgrade."

Anniston bumps her shoulder. "Speak for yourself. I like the volume."

Billy watches all of it with Mama Hawthorne under his arm. He looks older in the good way. Present. When he catches me looking he tips his chin, the same nod he gave me in a warehouse when I still had rope on my skin. I tip mine back.

Colt's mouth finds my temple. "You good?"

"I'm excellent. Don't start a check in front of your mother."

"It's always a check."

Food happens in waves. Somebody puts a plate in my hands. Rowe sent a tin of cranberry orange muffins that survived the drive from Woodbridge, and I almost cry into the first one, which Colt pretends not to see. Alden and Marin FaceTimed earlier and hung up before anyone could make it a briefing. The mountain is quiet without us in it. The harbor is not quiet at all.

Late light turns the water gold. Nash clears his throat in that eldest way that makes seven brothers go still by reflex. Delaney is holding a glass she forgets she has.