“Okay, I guess I’m moving in,” I laugh and just as I finish Rookie pulls me against him.
He kisses my forehead, wraps his arms around me and holds on.
I press my cheek against his chest, listen to his heartbeat, and think about the girl I used to be.
A girl who changed her name, sat in the back row of her class, checked her locks religiously, and pretended she was fine.
She wasn't fine. She wassurviving.
The difference between surviving and living are the little things, like a man with a flamingo pen, a table full of people who won't let you eat alone, and a mother laughing in a kitchen she never expected to find.
The inheritance of fear didn't disappear. It won't ever disappear. But tonight, standing in a hallway that smells like cornbread, my life feels changed.
EPILOGUE
Rookie
June in Morgantown smells like cut grass, warm asphalt, and the chaos that happens when Ellie lets Maddox near the grill.
The Backroads parking lot is full.
Not winter time full, where four trucks and a row of Harleys counted as a crowd.
Summer-full. Every space taken, bikes lined along the fence, a banner strung across the front of the building that Tildie painted in blue and gold because those are WVU's colors and she takes these things seriously.
CONGRATULATIONS CALEB & SAYLOR!!!! CLASS OF 2026!!!!
Saylor made Tildie add both names. I would have been fine with a beer and a handshake, but the women in this club don't do anything at half volume.
The bar is open.
Music pouring through the propped doors, loud enough to hear from the parking lot.
That’s where I'm standing with a cold bottle in my grip and the sun on my face and the weight of a tassel-less graduation cap that's been passed around the party so many times Maddox wore it while flipping burgers and nobody stopped him.
Four years of lectures, exams, probability distributions and cybersecurity labs.
All done.
A degree in a frame that Saylor's mom insisted on buying, wrapped in tissue paper, sitting in the back seat of a truck that's seen things no truck should see in a campus parking lot.
Saylor’s inside, behind the bar, because even at her own graduation party she can't stop pouring drinks.
Ellie tried to pull her out from behind the counter five times now.
Saylor smiled and poured another round and Ellie gave up because some battles aren't worth fighting.
Tildie is beside her, wearing a tiara she found in the party supply aisle at the Dollar Tree.
She put one on Saylor too.
Saylor fought it for about thirty seconds before Tildie threatened to staple it to her head, and now the two of them are pouring drinks in matching plastic crowns and the image is so ridiculous I had to look away before I laughed hard enough to drop my beer.
Wrenleigh and Sadie Jo are running between the bar and the parking lot, carrying plates of food for brothers who won't leave their spot by the grill.
Coin watches them from his booth with the expression of a man whose entire heart walks around on two sets of legs, and every time one of them passes his table he reaches out and squeezes a shoulder, an arm, the top of a head.
Leah is beside him. Their fingers are laced under the table in a way they probably think nobody can see.