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I looked up at him, and he pushed my hair out of my eyes, studying me like I was the best thing he’d ever seen.

“I love you, Briar. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this before.”

My heart melted into a pile of goo, and I leaned up, pressing my lips to his for one long, perfect moment.

“I love you too, and I’d love for you to be my graveyard groupie… just don’t call it that.”

He smirked. “How about spooky squire, no, spooky sidekick.”

I snorted a laugh. “Your graveyard invitation can be revoked, you know?”

“Fine, I’ll behave.”

I glanced up. “No, you won’t.”

A smile spread over his lips. “No, I won’t, but you love me this way.”

“I do,” I said, hoping he’d see the honesty in my eyes. “Never change.”

His arms tightened around me, and my mind finally went quiet. There was no mystery left about what our future would look like. We both knew where we wanted to be.

Epilogue - 6 months later

Briar

Afew yellow buttercups poked through the fallen leaves along the path from the unofficial parking lot to the cemetery. A good sign that it was finally spring.

Snow had fallen early last year, so by the time we’d given Honor Smith her name back, it had been too late to do a proper cleanup and restoration of the cemetery. I spent the winter making content telling Honor’s story, but also the stories of other people who had been lost to time.

I may have also gone down a small rabbit hole with the whole vampire tuberculosis thing, but honestly, that was just fascinating.

Now Jonah and I were here for the finishing touch.

“You did good work,” he said, bumping his shoulder with mine. He was in one of his trademark flannels, a thinner one than when I’d met him. There was a flannel for every season. Just one of many things I’d learned from him.

He’d stood by his promise to be my spooky squire, yes that name had sadly stuck. Between the two of us we’d landscaped the place, cleaned layers of moss from the grave stones. When Jonah had been away for work I’d gone in and repainted the letters on each stone where they’d started to fade away.

There was only one thing left to do.

Jonah lifted the newly created gravestone from the back of his truck and carried it over to the nameless grave, Honor and her child’s grave. He placed the stone behind the existing stone with the chipped-away writing and sunk it into the dirt. We worked together, burying the bottom of the stone until it stood up on its own.

I’d gone back and forth about whether we should remove the existing stone before putting a new one in, but somehow that felt like a different side of the same coin. Like we were giving their name back but erasing their history.

So ultimately, there were two stones at the head of the grave.

As the sun started to set and golden hour was upon us, Jonah went back to the truck to put the tools away, and I pulled out my camera, taking shots of the new grave to share on my socials. I’d also be providing a copy of the shots to Mr. Smith, who had been brave enough to finally share a secret his family had kept for a long time.

Once I was happy with the pictures I had, I circled back to the truck, expecting to find Jonah half-asleep in the front seat. I swear that man could fall asleep anywhere so long as he wasn’t on duty.

Instead, I turned the corner to find him in the back of the truck, sitting with his back resting against the side of the bed.

As I approached, my eyes landed on a blanket he had spread out over the bottom of the truck, along with a cooler.

“What’s this?”

He patted the truck bed beside him, and I scrambled into the back. I took a seat opposite him, resting against the bed rail the same way he was. He opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured me a glass and handed it to me before pouring one for himself.

“A toast,” he said, holding out the glass. “To someone on social media actually having a conscience.”