Epilogue
Collins
I felt the blanket slip off my shoulders and squeezed my eyes tighter in response.
There was no way in hell it was time to wake up yet.
I tucked myself closer into Brady’s side and felt his arms instinctively tighten around me even though he wasn’t awake.
Before Brady, I never would’ve considered myself a cuddler, but now I found myself latched to this man every night—even if I fell asleep not touching him, I’d wake up in the middle of the night snuggled into his side—safe and protected no matter where we were.
We’d been on the road off and on for a few months. So far, we’d been to five towns that were on Sullivan Industries’ radar and a few more that Brady remembered from his time there.
I photographed all of them, and I had a feeling that the photos were going to be the best of my career. My heart was all over this project, and it beat stronger and stronger every place we went.
I couldn’t pinpoint a singular thing that helped me shift from not-okay to kind-of-all-right.
Maybe it was when I decided to fight for Toades or when I apologized to my sister.
Maybe it was when I walked down Sweetwater Peak in themoonlight or when I let Brady in.
Maybe it was all of it—or none of it. Maybe I just got lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you interpret a bunch of voices returning to someone’s head.
Ultimately, though, I learned to let myself exist on a spectrum. Some days were good and some days weren’t, but they were all part of my story—my journey back home and beyond.
Over the past few months, Brady and I got copies of contracts, photos of abandoned sites that Sullivan built, and testimonials from the people whose lives he’d ruined—or at least tried to.
Sullivan Industries didn’t seem to understand how resilient rural communities could be.
They’d never really been able to depend on outside help, but they always seemed to be able to depend on each other—that was at the center of each place we visited.
I knew it to be true of my hometown, too.
Once word got out about what my family was going through, Sweetwater Peak had shown up for the Cartwrights—donating supplies and their time to patch up Toades—especially Leith Wilkes, if my mom was telling me the truth.
In Stratlinberg, New Mexico, half of the population of two thousand pooled every monetary resource they had to be able to settle Sullivan’s lawsuit against them—with Cam’s help. Hopefully, they could all start fresh after that.
Other places had a rougher time—like two towns in Oklahoma and one in Iowa. But no matter what, the communities always seemed desperate to help one another bounce back.
Small towns cultivated resilience, and even though mine wasn’t perfect, this whole thing had made me proud to be from Sweetwater Peak, Wyoming.
“Collins,” said a singsong voice that was way too close to my head.
“Elda,” I groaned. “I am nearly one hundred percent positive it is still the middle of the night.” Once Brady and I left Sweetwater Peak—about a month after my parents filed for divorce—Elda started appearing again.
Only occasionally at first and then more frequently as time went on.
The more I felt like myself, the more my abilities rang clear.
And no matter if I was traveling or at home, I felt the most like myself with Brady.
“You should get on the road,” she whispered, like Brady could hear her even though he couldn’t. “Cam’s expecting you in Meadowlark at one, and it’s a six-hour drive.”
We were on our way back to Sweetwater Peak. Cam thought we had enough evidence to go after Sullivan, but we were meeting in person to make sure we had everything appropriately organized and ready to go—with no gaps.
I reluctantly turned away from Brady to check my phone on the nightstand. It was only six. The blanket moved down again—even though we had time. “We’ll be up and at ’em by seven,” I whispered. “Promise.”
“Tell her that I’m always on time,” Brady grumbled groggily.
“That’s why I like him,” Elda said. She then winked at me and wafted away until I couldn’t see her anymore. Brady pulled me back to his front and held me tight.
“I didn’t know being in love with you would come with a built-in ghost alarm,” he said.
“Regretting your decision?”
“Never, trouble,” he said, and kissed the back of my neck. My favorite part about going from place to place and back home was having Brady by my side. He approached everything with so much wonder. He looked at the world the same way he looked at me, and it made me feel like I could do anything.
Publishing the new photo story was percolating in the back of my mind.
Since we had been on the road, I hadn’t just been talking to the living; I also talked to the dead.
The common denominator between both populations was that they had all experienced something they thought would shake their towns and their lives forever, but at the end of the day, good won out.
Acts of Resilience was the working title.
I was trying to find parallels between the stories from the living and the dead and somehow place them in the same photo together.
I didn’t know if it would become anything, but so far, I was excited about how it was coming together in my head.
I hadn’t been excited about photos in a long time.
It was both terrifying and invigorating to feel their pull again.
Maybe I wasn’t all the way washed up after all.
“You sleep okay?” Brady murmured.
“Enough,” I said. My night owl tendencies were still alive and well, but with Brady, the sleep that I did get was restful.
“And we have some time before we have to leave?”
“An hour. Maybe a little more,” I said.
Brady’s hand moved from my hip, down my thigh, and back up again. I arched my back into him. “Did you need something?” I breathed—feeling the hard length of him against me.
“You. Always,” he said. I never really saw myself finding a love like Brady’s.
I didn’t know if I was built for it—the type of stability and security he gave me—but Brady’s steadiness was different.
It was like the trees that bent with the wind only so they wouldn’t break.
He kept us firmly planted—our roots deep in the earth—but our branches still had room to sway and move and stretch into the clouds.
Brady’s hand moved to my stomach and pushed me more firmly against him before it dipped in between my legs. I wasn’t wearing anything under the T-shirt of his I slept in. He groaned when his fingers came in contact with my skin.
“You know what this does to me, Collins.” His voice was low.
“Why do you think I keep doing it?” I breathed.
“Trouble.” He kissed the back of my neck, and I felt him move his way down my body until he grabbed my knee to open my legs and slide in between them.
My body went tight with anticipation as he lowered his mouth to my center, and I gasped when his tongue landed on my clit.
He went at a languid pace—like we had all the time in the world.
I put my hands in his hair, and my hips moved against his face involuntarily.
His stubble scratched at the inside of my thighs, and I reveled in every sensation.
“Brady,” I moaned. “Oh my god.” He sucked my clit between his teeth and then soothed it with his tongue. He was annoyingly good at this.
“We have to be quick,” I breathed—even though I never wanted it quick with him. I always wanted it long and drawn out and hot and heavy. “If we want to grab breakfast before wego.”
“Fuck breakfast,” he said against my skin as he slid a finger inside me. I gasped and my back arched.
Yeah, fuck breakfast.
—
When we got into Brady’s truck, I checked my phone. I had a couple of messages from Clarke—showing me pictures of a few things Brady and I had found and sent back to Toades and Coop’s—including a midcentury furniture set that Brady was hell-bent on restoring.
“The furniture set made it,” I said, and flipped the phone around to show Brady. I missed my sister. I couldn’t wait to see her soon.
“I can’t wait to get my hands on that,” he said as he merged onto the two-lane highway. We had the road to ourselves, and it was a near-straight shot from Montana to Meadowlark, Wyoming.
And then home.
“I can’t wait for you to get your hands back on me,” I said with a smile.
“Stop flirting with me while I’m driving,” Brady said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel just a little.
“Never,” I laughed. “You’re so cute when you’re flustered.”
Brady gave me a look. “You torture me,” he said.
“And you love it.”
“I love you, ” he said, and I took my seatbelt off to move to the middle seat of the bench and buckled myself in there, so I could lay my head on his shoulder as I went through the pictures Clarke sent.
I made sure we talked every day—not just about updates about our journey to save Toades but also just how she was doing.
I messed up last year when I didn’t prioritize talking to my sister about anything and everything. I didn’t want to do that again.
Luckily, we had a lot of practice forgiving each other for all types of things—big and small.
In one of the pictures, she was holding a stack of vintage Blue Sky Geographic magazines, and my eyes zeroed in on her left hand. I lifted my head from Brady’s shoulder, and my spine went straight.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Brady…” I said, pinching my phone screen to zoom in on Clarke’s hand, so I could show him what I was seeing. “Is that…is that an engagement ring?”