Page 87 of Sawyer

“Then you should make dinner every night,” I half joke.

“And have it waiting at your place when you get home from work?” he asks. “My pleasure.”

“My furniture will come at some point. I’ll need help moving it in.”

“Yep. Yep. You got me, Joe, and Tanner on the job. My dad, too. And I’ll make Quinn come, if we need him. I don’t want you to lift a finger. You go get margaritas with McKenna and leave the rest to me.”

“I like this girlfriend gig,” I say, reaching for his mittened hand. “You know, it turns out I like small-town politics, too. At UAF, I concentrated on national politics, but it always feltfar away. Conceptual, not actual. I love it here. I love fixing the bulletin boards and reading the town statutes and calling someone out on not having the right permits. Heck, Sawyer…I might run for mayor someday!”

“Holy cow!” he says, grinning at me. “I’d be the first man of Skagway! I’d love to hold that over Tanner and Hunter’s heads!”

He makes me laugh. And I love him ten times more for supporting me instead of trying to control or use me. He’s the best man I’ve ever known, and he’s all mine.

“No matter what,” I say, “we’ll be together.”

Sawyer stops walking, making me face him.

“It was always you and me,” he says softly.

He’s right. It was.

“Forever.”

He kisses me before we continue our walk down Broadway, to my uncle’s house, to forever and beyond.

THE END

Epilogue

Parker

I lean against the bar at the Purple Parsnip, which is hosting a Christmas Eve party that’s doubling as a cast party for the folks who were inWuthering Heights.

Tanner sits with McKenna, Dad, Gran, and Paw-Paw at one of the many tables set up on the edge of the dance floor. I watch as McKenna says something that makes Tanner throw back his head and laugh.

Scanning the room, I find Sawyer pulling Ivy out the door. I heard she just signed a lease for an apartment in town, and I’m sure that’s where they’re headed. They can’t keep their hands off of each other now that they’re officially a couple.

Harper told me that she and Joe got Jenny Caswell to babysit for Wren tonight, so they’re swaying to “White Christmas” on the dance floor. The way they’re looking at each other, I have a feeling Wren’s going to have a little brother or sister sooner rather than later.

At the end of the bar, Reeve appears to be quarreling with Aaron Adams. I watch as Aaron throws up his hands and stalks out of the bar. With a deep frown on her face, Reeve watches him leave, then beelines for the bathroom. No doubt I’ll hear all aboutthatlater.

“So…Tanner has McKenna, Harper has Joe, Sawyer has Ivy, and I heard Hunter’s down in Seattle with Isabella. Hell, it even looks like Reeve’s tangling with someone.”

I look to my left and scowl at Quinn Morgan.

Oooo. Ihatehim. I truly do.

Oafish, huge and approximately the size of a grizzly at six foot four andat leasttwo hundred and fifty pounds, he’s got longdark hair that he wears in a scraggly ponytail and a beard that could use some serious grooming. And his fucking cologne.Pee-ew.He’s always worn way too much.

Quinn Morgan has been the fly in my ointment for as long as I can remember, and that’s pretty much forever.

“What’s your point?”

“Well…here’s Parker, all alone, holding up the bar.”

“And here’s you, standing next to me, with no other women in sight,” I parry back. I finish my beer and place the empty bottle on the bar. “Don’t you have anyone else to bother?”

“Aw. I like bothering you the best.”

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