Page 327 of Let Me In

“I don’t deserve you,” she whispers.

My arms tighten around her instantly, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other spreading wide at her lower back like a shield.

“Stop that,” I murmur, voice thick with something deeper than reprimand. “You deserve everything, baby. Every last bit of gentleness. Every piece of peace. And I’m going to spend forever making sure you feel it—not just with words, but with every touch, every moment, every breath we share. All of it.”

I press a kiss to the top of her head, let it linger. Let her feel the promise sink into her skin, low and warm, like the weight of an oath whispered against her pulse. Let it wrap around thequiet parts of her, where doubt used to live. Let it live there instead.

She shudders into me. Breath catching.

And then, so softly I almost miss it:

“I’d like that.”

EPILOGUE

EMMY

It startswith the smell of sawdust.

Soft. Earthy. Sharp in the way pine and cedar are when they’ve just been cut, like the trees haven’t quite forgotten the wind yet. It drifts in through the open windows, curling through the house like something alive.

The sound comes next—Cal’s voice, low and steady, rising beneath the hum of his tools. He’s talking to himself again, murmuring measurements, soft affirmations, that quiet concentration that wraps around his work like a prayer. Measure twice, cut once. I hear the blade, then the pause. The breath before the next cut. It’s a rhythm I know now. A kind of heartbeat.

The bedroom looks different.

It’s not just the sawdust. Or the way the far wall is half-framed, open to the soft press of sun and breeze.

It’s something deeper. Something becoming.

Where there used to be only drywall and insulation and air, there’s now the outline of a room.

My room.

Not tucked away.

Not hidden.

Not separate.

Built right onto the house. Onto us.

Sunlight spills across the floorboards, catching on the floating motes like dust spun into gold. The scent of cedar and lavender curls through the air—my bundles drying on the porch rail, the breeze carrying them in. It smells like safety. Like warmth. Like the beginning of something good.

I stand at the screen door with a mug in my hand, bare feet tucked against the cool of the kitchen tile. Cleo is curled in a long beam of light behind me, her tiny frame barely rising and falling. Luca stretches once, then thumps his tail near the table before sighing back into sleep.

And out there—Cal.

Boots off.

Just in jeans, a sleeveless shirt faded soft with time.

His curls damp from the heat.

Skin flushed from the sun.

His back bowed over a long plank of pine, steady as the horizon.

His hands—strong, capable—are covered in sawdust and sap. One grips the wood, the other guides the sander. The muscles in his arms shift and flex with each pass, and there’s something quiet in his focus. Something so sure it makes my chest ache.

---