EPILOGUE
THREE WEEKS LATER
Felix
I sit in my darkroom, looking at the engagement photos.
There’s one, in particular, I can’t stop looking at.
It shows Faye and me on the bridge, overlooking the city as if our whole future is ahead of us…and it is.
I’m whispering something in her ear, and she’s got her head thrown back in a laugh. I can’t remember what I said, not at that moment, but I don’t have to.
Just looking is enough.
Standing, I take the photo down and study it as I walk to the other side of the room. Faye’s got her hair down for this photo, wavy and luxurious, with her smile unlike any I saw during our early days before Lola knew.
This is a new smile, a the-world-can’t-hurt-me smile.
We have each other, and with Lola’s blessing, there’s nothing holding us back from living our dream.
From making our dream a reality. Together.
I pause on the other end of the darkroom, looking at Faye’s photos. We returned to the waterfall, focusing on our task this time…well, mostly.
The cabin is right there, after all.
A love-filled smile twitches my lips when I think about what she said last night.
“I used to think I loved photography because it made everything stand still. You can pause time. Nothing that happened after that photo matters, not when you’re looking at it. But now I see…it’s about imagining something better, more beautiful, more perfect than the regular eye can capture. And that’s us, Felix, that’s our lives.”
She started to cry with pure happiness, but a thought occurred to me, one I had yesterday and the day before.
How early is too early for pregnancy hormones?
Faye pushes the door open, interrupting my thoughts.
I turn to find her silhouetted from the light of the hallway, her curvy shape outlined. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts, the fabric falling down just to her thighs, making my mouth water and waking the animal in me.
She’s often wearing my T-shirts, driving me to possessive fantasies, especially since we moved in together the day after my proposal.
But then she steps forward, clutching the pregnancy test, and, for now, everything else drifts away.
I stumble toward her, hardly able to walk, so much love flowing through me that I’m certain I will burst with it.
“Is it…?”
She nods, tears glistening in her eyes as she walks right up to me and smiles, wide and bright and flooded with the joy of our future, our family.
And now my eyes are glistening, just a little, as I lean down and sweep her into my arms.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispers. “I’m going to be a mother.”
“The best mother,” I tell her, hugging her tightly. “I can’t wait.”
“Me neither.” She clutches me tightly. “I love you so freaking much.”