Epilogue
Natalie—A bunch of weeks later
Preston slings a zinger across the surface of the air hockey table. It slides into my goal, and he gives a quiet yelp of triumph.
I sigh.
Here’s the thing.
It didn’t take Preston long to become a superstar at fun.
He needed an outlet for his competitive spirit, since he’s not helping companies devour other companies and gunning for a promotion—and apparently his outlet is…
Everything.
Which, don’t get me wrong, I love it. I love anyone who takes a game seriously. I love a real competitor. I love the way his competitive spirit riles mine.
I just hate losing.
And the look he gives me right now tells me he knows it.
“Quit it,” I grumble, but we both know I don’t mean it. We also both know I’ll reap my reward later when he’ll make sure we both “win” in bed. And have plenty of fun. Preston and I always have amazing sex, but we have the best sex after we’ve been sparring all night, like we have at the arcade, jockeying for first place.
At first when Preston moved back to Rush Creek, I stayed at the lodge, and he rented a sweet condo downtown. But then he started talking about the possibility of us moving in together. I resisted because it was hard for me to imagine how we’d find a place that fit both our budgets. After a few days of back and forth, he came up with a plan I adore: We’ll split costs based on our respective net worths. It’s only fair, after all. And, you know, he loves keeping the spreadsheets, and I love watching his forearms while he does it.
So we’re buying this incredible house with a gorgeous view of the mountains. It’s a pretty small house for a gadjillionaire and a pretty big house for a broke activities planner…but we both love it and can’t wait to move in.
I stayed away from my mom for a little while, but a couple of weeks after she confronted me in the parking lot, she showed up to a Learn to Crochet class, which, if you know my mom, is one of the more improbable things that could happen. She sat quietly crocheting all night, and at the end, she came up to me and said, “I don’t want to lose you.”
I stared at her. Then she said, “I didn’t think I wanted to crochet, but it was…kind of…fun.”
She said the word fun like it was slightly dirty, so I stared at her for a while longer.
Eventually, she bit her lip, and looking more uncertain than I’d ever seen her, she said, “I was wrong, and I’m sorry. And I do. Want you to be happy, I mean.”
I accepted her apology, warily, and we’re working our way back to each other. Slowly. She’s told me a little about how she grew up—in a house where her father controlled everything and her mother bowed to his iron will—and how she vowed to have enough power and money never to let that happen to her.
I still haven’t told her what I overheard as a teenager, but the therapist I started seeing about my mom issues thinks it’s not a bad idea, so maybe I will someday. I’m not quite ready to care what my mother thinks of me—and I might never be again—but…well, she cooks a mean roast, and I’m totally not the type to cut off my hand to spite my face.
Meanwhile, Preston has been taking things slowly, too, trying to figure out what he wants to do next. I know not to rush him. He’s got plenty of money, and right now he’s glorying in actually having time , which—he tells me—he wants to spend with the woman he loves. Sometimes he wanders the land pondering various things he could do with it. One day it’s dude ranching, another it’s small-scale farming, another it’s expanding Hott Springs Eternal and building more event spaces.
He’ll figure it out.
He hired Franklin away from Grantham-Hoyer and brought him out to Rush Creek, where he’ll continue to be Preston’s assistant on whatever project Preston undertakes next. And also, in case we need Italian pastries.
In other Hott news—and I mean that in every sense of the word—Rhys got his letter, the dreaded one from his granddad’s will. We all got called into Arthur Weggers’s office, and Rhys actually showed up (I think he’d seen the futility of resistance). He read out his letter, which said?—
Well, let’s just say that our resident cynic landed waist deep in his least favorite thing: weddings. And that the wedding he was tasked with planning belongs to one of his least favorite people, the sunny, eternally optimistic divorcee whose ex-husband he represented in their divorce a couple of years back.
The rest of us are munching popcorn and trying to figure out how he’s going to survive Fox Hott’s latest round of shenanigans.
Preston holds up his arcade swipe card. “How about we have a rematch—winner gets to be on top,” he says.
That makes me laugh.
“How about we have a rematch—winner has to be on the bottom?” I counter.
He stalks around the table, bends down, and sets his mouth right by my ear. “How about winner fucks the loser very slowly and very deeply from behind while she’s braced over a big stack of pillows?”
“There are a lot of assumptions built into that,” I say breathlessly.
“Well,” he says. “All good analysis starts with some assumptions.”
My body has lost all definition, drawn gravitationally to his.
“Family place,” he reminds me, before dropping a chaste kiss onto my cheek.
“Game on,” I tell him.
He beats me soundly, but I can’t find it in me to care.
Thank you for reading Some Like It Hott!