Page 54 of Kissing the Beach Town Fire Chief
I kiss her—slow and honest and relieved. The ocean roars. The town hums behind us like a benediction.
On the walk back we hear the familiar rattle of the ATV and, right on cue, Jake rolls by, one hand on the wheel, the other lifting in a lazy salute. “Evening, boss,” he calls. “City girl.”
“Resident,” Ami corrects, proud as a banner.
Jake grins. “Heard you two were back to fixing that swing. Careful—don’t letMeow-Manhere get distracted. Cats are staging revolts in oaks all over the county.”
I groan. “You rescued one cat,Nine Lives Jake, and now you think you’re a legend.”
He winks. “Chief Meow-sterhere promoted me.” The ATV rattles away. Ami is laughing so hard she hiccups, and I decide that sound is my favorite thing in the world.
Dusk lays itself over the street like a soft blanket. We reach home just as the porch light flicks on—Aunt Maggie again, or maybe the timer she set years ago. Either way, it feels like a blessing. Ami stops on the top step and turns, the light catching her face. “I have one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
She fishes for a second key from her pocket—brass, worn smooth. “This is the deadbolt key,” she says, serious now. “It’s not just for coffee or for when the pipes bang in January. It’s for everything. For whenever ‘come in’ is too slow and you need somewhere to land. For whenever I forget to be brave and you remind me.”
I hold the keys she’s given me in my fist, metal warm from her hand. “Then take mine,” I say, pulling the spare from my wallet. “Same terms. Especially the part about reminding me.” We trade. It feels like a ceremony no one else needs to see.
“I’m not asking you with a ring tonight,” I tell her. “I want to do this right—slow, on purpose, with a porch I didn’t staple together after two cups of bad coffee. But I am asking for something.”
“What?”
“A vow,” I say. “That we’ll build this together. That when we argue about cabinet colors or where to keep the weird mugs, we’ll still be us. That when the station calls me out at midnight and the house creaks and you’re scared, you’ll call me anyway. That you’ll let Seabrook keep remaking you into the person you love being.” I take a breath. “And that you’ll let me be your home.”
Ami’s eyes fill and overflow. She doesn’t wipe the tears away; she just lets them be. “Yes,” she says. “To all of it. And I vow this too: when the city whispers to me that I’m missing out, I’ll remember what I found here. I’ll choose us. I’ll choose this house. I’ll choose the small, a hundred times, and never apologize for how big it feels.”
We stand under the porch light and swear love without witnesses, without a script, without anything but everything we’ve learned since last summer: that belonging is something you practice.
“Tomorrow,” she says, smiling through it, “we hang the swing.”
“And after that,” I say, “we turn the front room into your studio.”
“And after that,” she says, “maybe we start looking. Not buying—just looking. For a little weathered cottage we can rescuetogethersomeday. Something with bones and bad wallpaper. A place that isn’t mine or yours yet—just a dream we make real when we’re ready.”
“Roots and wings,” I say.
“Roots and wings,” she echoes.
The porch light hums. The tide pulls and returns and pulls again. Somewhere next door, Aunt Maggie’s radio plays low, and we can almost hear Mrs. O’Hara tell the mailman that she absolutely knew this would happen and has the dates written in her ledger to prove it.
Ami slips her hand into mine. “Come inside,” she says.
We cross the threshold together, and the house settles around us—not a museum, not a question, but an answer we choose again and again.
Not the end of summer.
The beginning of forever.
Epilogue
Eight Years Later Dual POVs
Ami
Saturday mornings at the beach cottage taste like cinnamon toast and sea air.
We call it our “wing”—the little weathered place we rescued together after we made the family house our roots. The porch faces the tide like it’s been listening for our laughter all week, and the swing we rebuilt creaks the same happy rhythm every time Ethan gives it a nudge.
