Page 139 of Vital Signs

Sierra nodded once, the gesture carrying the weight of an oath. "Thank you."

As they disappeared into the crowd, Hunter leaned close, his breath warm against my ear. "What do you think?"

Sierra and Rafe moved through the guests, shoulders tense, eyes alert. Their stance spoke of men accustomed to carrying weight without showing strain.

"I think they might actually pull it off," I said. "They have something we didn't."

"What's that?"

"A blueprint." I nodded toward the center, toward the family surrounding us. "We had to build ours from scratch."

Hunter's fingers laced with mine, his grip tight and certain. "Ready to go home?"

Home. A word that had once meant nothing to me had become everything.

We walked away from the center together, leaving behind the crowds and congratulations. In the parking lot, Hunter stopped beside my van, turning me to face him. The setting sun caught in his eyes, turning them to amber.

"That day in January, when I first met you at the funeral home, did you ever think we'd end up here?"

I thought of that morning, smiled, and shook my head. “Not at all.”

"I was at rock bottom when we met," Hunter admitted quietly. "I figured helping you was the one useful thing I could do."

"All I had was rage and pain," I replied. "I couldn't imagine existing without that fury to fuel me."

His thumb traced the wedding ring on my finger, a simple band that represented the most radical thing either of us had ever done. Choosing to build instead of destroy. Choosing to heal instead of hurt. Choosing each other over the darkness that had shaped us.

"Do you remember the night you overdosed?" I asked quietly.

"I remember waking up disappointed that I'd survived it."

"And now?"

"Now I'm glad you didn’t listen to me. Honestly, I’m just glad to be alive." He kissed my forehead. "I used to think survival was a punishment. Now I know I was being kept alive to find you."

I thought of Roche's studio, of the drugs that had made everything float away while he violated my trust and body. How I'd convinced myself that numbness was safety, that feeling nothing was better than feeling everything.

"I learned something too," I admitted. "That feeling everything, including the painful parts, was better than feeling nothing at all."

"Look what we built instead," Hunter whispered, gesturing toward the center, toward our family, toward the life we'd constructed from broken pieces.

We'd been wrong about everything. We weren't broken beyond repair. We weren't too damaged to deserve love. We weren't doomed to destroy everything we touched.

We'd just been waiting for each other.

"Tyler would be proud," I said, the words carrying more weight than any speech I'd given today.

"Tyler made this possible," Hunter corrected. "His death brought us together. His life gave us the blueprint for what we wanted to build."

Hunter’s kiss tasted of promise. Of peace hard-won and never taken for granted.

As we drove home, I glanced in the rearview mirror. The Tyler Graham Center stood silhouetted against the evening sky, lights glowing from every window.

It wasn’t an ending, but a beginning. Not just for Sierra and his boys in New Mexico, but for anyone who needed to find their way back from darkness.

"You're smiling," Hunter said, his hand resting on my thigh.

"I'm happy," I replied, the words still new and strange on my tongue.

Tyler Graham would never know what his death had set in motion. How his tragedy had forged something lasting. But we would carry that knowledge forward, his name now synonymous not just with loss, but with redemption.