Epilogue
Danny
One Year Later
* * *
“All the knowledge I possess
everyone else can acquire,
but my heart is all my own.”
-Goethe
* * *
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and for a long time, I thought that was true.
Forced to be away from Sam so much while we were growing up, I loved her more every time our separation ended and I could finally hold her in my arms again.
But after a year of marriage and constant togetherness—working and playing and healing together—I know it wasn’t absence making my heart grow fonder, it was just Sam. It’s how things are when something is meant to be. I still love her more every day, treasuring the fact that I get to go to bed with her every night and wake up to her every morning.
And today, I got to marry her all over again, on a cliff beside the Croatian sea, with our family and friends all here to help us celebrate. They don’t know this was our second wedding or that we eloped in Thailand a year ago, but we thought it was best to keep that our secret.
They wouldn’t have understood the two of us making such a major decision after Sam had spent a year in seclusion. They wouldn’t have understood that a love like ours doesn’t need long to fix the things that are broken, or that we needed to be married, just in case we were ever asked to testify against each other in court.
We haven’t told a soul what we did, and even when the news came out about Todd’s murder, no one asked if we were in Costa Rica at the same time as the SBE brothers. Not the authorities and not our family though I would bet my hands that Caitlin and Gabe know. The way my sister hugged me, the day Sam and I showed up on her front porch with everything we owned in the bags at our feet, made it clear how worried she’d been.
And how happy she was to have us both home safe.
“That was so beautiful,” Caitlin says now, dabbing at her face with a tissue as she wraps her free arm around my waist. “You guys just about broke my heart with the vows.”
“We’ve had a long time to plan them,” I say, looking over my sister’s head to where Sam is talking to her parents by the railing at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean.
In a white, flapper style dress, with her chin-length brown curls wild around her face and flowers in her hair, she is stunning. But it isn’t just the dress or the flowers; it’s the way she smiles when she looks over to see me watching and starts toward me across the grass.
It’s her Sam the Shark smile, the one so big and wide one of her meaner friends used to make fun of her for it. I’ve always loved that smile, but I love it even more now because it means she’s whole again.
There are scars on her heart that will never heal, and both of us lost what little innocence we had left last summer. But scars remind us to be grateful for beautiful days without any pain in them and innocence is overrated.
Our younger, innocent selves loved purely, but not as fiercely or selflessly as we do now. Now we know that there is nothing more precious than this. We were stripped bare, brought low, and met each other in the darkness where there was nothing but our love to lead us back to the light.
And it was enough.
More than enough.
Now, there is nothing left to be afraid of.
Let the world bring its worst. We’re ready because there is no end to a love like this. Whatever comes after this life, I will be with Sam and she will be with me. We’re not two trees with a fused trunk anymore, we are one heart, for now and always.
“No more crying,” Sam says, pulling Caitlin in for a hug. “If you don’t stop, I’ll start again and I wasn’t smart enough to wear waterproof mascara.”
Caitlin laughs as she pulls away to wipe her eyes. “Okay. I’ll stop. I’m just so happy for you both. No two people have ever deserved happiness more.”
I reach for Sam, but she’s already wrapping her arms around my waist, sensing what I need before I have the chance to ask, the way she does.
“I don’t know about that,” she says, “but we’re certainly grateful for it.”
“We are.” I hug her closer. “And I’m going to be even more grateful after we have cake.”
Caitlin rolls her eyes. “You and Juliet. She’s been trying to get her little arms elbows deep in that cake since she laid eyes on it.” She turns, scanning the crowd for her daughter, laughing when she sees the two-year-old dashing across the grass toward the cake with her daddy not far behind. “I’d better go give Gabe a break before she runs him ragged.”