The Summer We Keep
The travel from The secured safehouse living room to Quinn’s family cabin, golden hour consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The morning of the wedding, Cassidy stood at the window of Quinn’s cabin and watched a deer pick its way along the treeline, its ears swiveling like twin radar dishes. Behind her, the bedroom smelled of lavender wax and fresh linen, and somewhere downstairs, Toby was arguing with Quinn about wshetsher she could eat the cake before the ceremony.
“It’s traditional to wait,” Quinn’s voice drifted up, patient but firm.
“But I’m the ring bearer,” Toby said, his logic immaculate. “That’s a job. Workers get breaks.”
Cassidy smiled and pressed her palm flat against the glass. The year had passed in a strange, accelerated blur—the kind of time that felt slow while you lived it but impossibly fast once it was gone. Sebastian had moved into her apartment three weeks after the safehouse, their lives colliding like two rivers converging into something broader and deeper. They’d found a rhythm. Toby to school, Sebastian to the new office downtown, Cassidy to her shifts at the clinic. Evenings on the couch, takeout containers on the coffee table, Toby sprawled between them with a book.
Normal. Extraordinary in its utter normalcy.
She’d watched Sebastian rebuild his company from the ground up, piece by painstaking piece. No more shell corporations. No more cutouts or gray-market contracts. He’d stood before a room of investors and told them the truth—the whole truth, from that first forgery to the final confrontation with Grant Blackthorn. Some had walked out. More had stayed, drawn by the rare sight of a man who had stopped running.
The Blackthorn trial had made national news. Grant and Owen Blackthorn were serving consecutive sentences at a federal facility in Colorado, their empire dismantled by the weight of their own paper trails and the testimony of the man who had once been their most valuable asset. Sebastian had testified for three days straight. Cassidy had watched from the gallery, Toby’s hand in hers, as Sebastian answered every question without flinching.
He’d told her later that the hardest part wasn’t recounting the crimes. It was admitting how long he’d been too afraid to leave.
She turned from the window as Quinn knocked once and pushed the door open. “Your dress is hanging in the closet. I had it steamed this morning.”
“You didn’t have to do all this.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow. “You’re getting married in my backyard. The least I could do was make sure you didn’t look like you’d been sleeping in a tent.” She crossed the room and took Cassidy’s hands, her grip warm and solid. “Are you ready?”
Cassidy thought about the question. Ready. It felt too small for what she was about to do. She’d spent a decade raising Toby alone, building walls high enough to keep out anyone who might hurt them. And then Sebastian had come home, and she’d watched those walls come down, brick by brick, until there was nothing left between them but air and trust.
“I’ve been ready for a year,” she said. “I just didn’t want to rush it.”
Quinn squeezed her hands. “That’s not rushing. That’s making sure the first time is the last time.”
The ceremony was small by design. Twenty chairs arranged in the grassy clearing behind the cabin, white ribbons tied to the backs, a wooden arch that Dorian had built himself over three weekends. Sebastian had offered to hire a planner. Cassidy had said no. She wanted something that felt like them, not something that looked like an invoice.
She walked down the aisle alone, because some traditions were worth keeping. Toby stood at the front in a tiny blue suit, a velvet ring pillow clutched in both hands like a shield. He was grinning so wide his face looked like it might split.
And Sebastian. He was wearing a gray suit with no tie, his hair still a little too long, his eyes fixed on her like she was the only solid thing in a world that had spent years trying to unmake him.
The officiant was a woman from the local courthouse, quick and efficient, with a voice that carried warmth without sentimentality. Cassidy barely heard the words. She was too busy watching the way Sebastian’s hands trembled slightly when he took hers, the way his thumb traced the inside of her wrist as if he was still learning the shape of her.
“I, Sebastian, take you, Cassidy, to be my wife. Not because I deserve you, but because I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to earn you.”
Dorian cleared his throat. Quinn sniffled audibly. Toby held up the rings with the solemnity of a knight presenting a holy relic.
The kiss was brief and soft, because Toby was watching, and because some moments didn’t need spectacle to be real. When Sebastian pulled back, his eyes were wet.
“Hi, husband,” Cassidy whispered.
“Hi, wife.”
Later, after the cake had been eaten and Toby had been allowed seconds and Quinn had made a toast that somehow managed to be both profane and tearful, Cassidy found herself standing on the porch as the sun began to tilt toward evening. The sky was doing that thing it did in late summer, gold bleeding into pink, the trees casting long shadows across the grass.
Sebastian came up behind her, two glasses of champagne in his hands. He handed her one and leaned against the railing, his shoulder brushing hers.
“Dorian’s teaching Toby how to build a fire,” he said. “I think we have about fifteen minutes before one of them sets something on fire.”
“That’s fourteen more than we need.”
He laughed, low and quiet, and the sound of it settled something in her chest. There had been a time when she’d thought she’d never hear that laugh again. A time when she’d convinced herself that the man she’d loved had been a ghost, a story she’d told herself to get through the long nights of single motherhood.
But he wasn’t a ghost. He was standing next to her, the weight of his ring visible against his skin, a future written in the lines around his eyes.
“Quinn’s letting us stay for the week,” Cassidy said. “She’s taking Toby fishing tomorrow. Says she wants to teach him how to bait a hook.”
“Is that safe?”
“For the fish? No. For Toby? He’ll be fine.”
Sebastian shook his head, but the smile stayed. “I called the office this morning. They don’t need me until September. I told them I was taking the summer off.”
“You can’t take the summer off. You’re the CEO.”
“I’m a husband first.” He said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And a dad. The company can wait.”
Cassidy set her champagne glass on the railing and turned to face him fully. The porch creaked beneath her feet, the wood still warm from the day’s heat. She reached up and touched his face, the line of his jaw, the small scar above his eyebrow from a fight he’d never told her the full story of.
“You’re really staying,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m really staying.” He covered her hand with his. “I’ve got nowhere else to go, Cass. And nowhere else I want to be.”
From inside the cabin, Toby’s laughter rang out, followed by Dorian’s gruff protest and Quinn’s delighted cackle. The sound of a family being built, one messy, imperfect moment at a time.
Sebastian pulled her close, and Cassidy rested her forehead against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. She thought about the years they’d lost—the birthdays missed, the nights she’d cried into her pillow while Toby slept in the next room, the holiday dinners eaten alone because she couldn’t bear to pretend she wasn’t waiting for someone who wasn’t coming.
But she thought about the years ahead, too. Soccer games and school plays and the inevitable teenage tantrums. Long weekends at this cabin, watching Toby grow taller and braver and more himself. A lifetime of mornings with this man beside her.
“I used to think our story was a secret we had to hide,” Cassidy murmured, her fingers laced with his. “But now I think it’s just a story that took a long time to tell. And I’d wait a thousand summers more to get to this one.”
Sebastian kissed her temple, Toby nestled between them, and the sky turned soft amber as the three of them began to build their forever.