“Oh my God. This is totally Splash!” Maya gave Eve a little push toward Sawyer, who was still standing a few feet away.

“This is what?” Sawyer’s brow furrowed as he turned to Maya.

Maya pushed Eve again—hard. Right. Now it was her turn. “I don’t want to go back to Toronto.” Her voice was shaky and quiet—almost a whisper—but that was okay, because she was talking only to him. “I mean, I love Toronto. I’ll miss it. But I already told Jessica to take the Mermaid off the market.”

Sawyer inhaled a sharp breath.

“I’m staying. I was so focused on what I thought was my dream job, but I didn’t realize that what I have here is my dream everything. I got my dream back.” Her voice hitched, and she had to swipe away a few rogue tears, but she didn’t care. “I got my love back.”

“Evie.” That was all, just her name. He seemed to have lost his voice. But that was okay. She had one now.

She cleared her throat. “So, yeah, I guess I’m an innkeeper now.” She turned to Maya, who was beaming.

“You’re also the mer-queen!” Maya held up a teal-sequined monstrosity. “You can use my tail. I cut a hole in the bottom last year, because I refuse to be jailed. So you can walk in it. Kind of.”

Eve accepted the tail but turned to Sawyer, because there was more to say. “I’m sorry I didn’t have the guts to tell you earlier how I felt. But I love you.”

He bent down and picked up the crown that had fallen off his head. “Do you love me enough to put on that ridiculous tail and be my mer-queen?”

She pulled on Maya’s tail. “I do. I can swim now and everything.” She pointed to the float. “Is that my canoe?”

“It is. I realize that you don’t need it now that you can swim, but…”

“It’s good to finish things. To read all the way to the end of the story.”

“Yes.” He took her hand. “Exactly.”

Sawyer and Evie walked back to the float. The sun had come out, and he watched it shine down, as it had so many times before, on his Evie, the queen of the mermaids.

As they approached the base of the float, he boosted her up, and the marching band broke into “Kiss the Girl.”

So he followed the girl up onto the float, put his own tail on, righted his crown, and did exactly that.

Epilogue

Epilogue

A month later

They waited for Maya to arrive before starting the official tour. When she did, everyone broke into applause. Sawyer ushered her into the kitchen of the Mermaid and noted with amusement that she still had “blood” on her hands—she had played the title role in the fall play herself.