Page 143 of The Last Call Home
Cass slumps against her chest, breathing heavy.
I hold her hips, panting into her shoulder.
She’s between us, glowing.Ruined.Beautiful.
We don’t untangle.We won’t.
Because there’s nothing left to untangle—we’re not three separate people anymore.
We’re this.
Cass kisses her neck, slow and reverent.
I press my lips to her spine.
She sighs—a soft, contented sound that cracks me open.
“Home,” she whispers like a prayer.
And I whisper it back, smiling against her skin.
“Yeah, baby.We’re already home.”
Malerick’s Epilogue
The new Honey Drop smells like fresh pine, varnish, and hope—clean lines, new paint, floors that haven’t been scuffed by a hundred rowdy boots or barstools that remember your name.But give it time.Lilah says places earn their ghosts, and this one’s already humming with the memory of the last.
We rebuilt it from the ground up.
New foundation.New frame.New roof.Nothing salvaged but the heart of it—and the sign.Burned at the corners, the gold lettering faded, but she insisted it hang right above the bar.She says it’s a reminder.Not of what burned.Of what survived.
Cassian calls it poetic.
We never argued about staying.
Not once.
After everything burned—literally and not—we were just ...here.In Birchwood Springs.CQS knows where we are, and they will contact us when we’re needed.
Cass and I tend the bar sometimes, help Delilah run the coffee shop and give Hopper a hand with their farm.We’re family, helping each other and settling into our sleepy town.
Cass and I take turns behind the rebuilt Honey Drop’s espresso machine, even though he still doesn’t understand how the milk wand works and I still think foam art is a conspiracy against me.Delilah runs the show—or at least tries to.She’s seven months pregnant and pretending that doesn’t mean anything.
She says she’s fine.
She’s always fine.
Except she’s also crying at puppy commercials and bossing us around like we’re her personal army.Yesterday, she told Cass he was folding croissant boxes with “resentful energy.”
Today, she waddles—glowing, gorgeous, furious—behind the bakery counter while we take care of the register and make lattes for college girls who keep asking if Cass is single.
(Spoiler: he is not.)
“Babe,” I call across the room.“You were supposed to sit down fifteen minutes ago.”
Lilah narrows her eyes.“I was sitting.Then your husband tried to make a heart in a cappuccino and scorched the milk into submission.”
Cass doesn't even glance up from the order he’s boxing.“It looked like a heart.A heart on fire.”
