Epilogue
Payson
Six months ago I walked into a courthouse in the city with a birth certificate, a paternity test, and a lawyer Ledgar had been paying for three years to be ready for this exact moment and I watched Vivian Reith's face go through about eleven different emotions in the span of thirty seconds when she realized what was happening. The settlement took six weeks but Griffith had pulled together enough from Jarrell's accounts and Vivian's paper trail to make a legal fight the last thing she wanted and she knew it. Though she didn’t go quietly. The penthouse still sits at the top of the casino with those same windows that run from floor to ceiling in three different rooms with a view that stretches further than the eye can see. I stood in it the first day we came back and looked out those windows at the view I became accustomed to for years. A view that I no longer see when I look out. I called Ledgar’s younger sister, Chloe, and told her she could have it for as long as she wanted it and she cried with excitement. She’d been wanting to move back closer to the family since she finished college but told everyone she was waiting for the right place.
I almost cried too. Griffith has a key and standing instructions that he can use the penthouse if needed until their sister moves in.
He used it twice last month and both times I had to turn the security camera off or I would catch him and his wife doing things I don’t want to see.
The drive out takes the better part of a day and I know every mile of it now.
The way the city gives way to suburbs and the suburbs give way to the open country roads that start to climb with the mountain.
The air changes the further you drive, it becomes cleaner and cooler.
Duke knows the drive too. He starts watching out the window about an hour out and by the time we hit the gravel he’s on his feet in the backseat, and when the house comes into view he barely controls his excitement and I know exactly how he feels.
The house looks the same way it did the first night I pulled into the driveway with an envelope in my passenger seat and no idea what I was driving into.
The warm glow of the porch light shines down onto the steps illuminating my view from the deep dark of the woods.
I’m not sure when his house started to feel like my home, but I don’t pretend it to be anything else.
Life out here has a different shape to it than living in the city.
Mornings are our normal coffee and occasional sex on the porch we have come to enjoy.
Evenings are long and unhurried and belong to the both of us.
Mostly we have evolved into me stealing whatever he is cooking, because let’s face it, I can’t cook to save my life.
I started a design practice out here working remotely and I love it.
I have clients I’ve kept from the city and a few new ones who found me through word of mouth, who don’t mind that I live in the middle of the mountains with a forty pound dog who thinks he’s a child and a man that sits at the kitchen counter with me asking every twenty minutes if whatever I’m working on is ready to look at yet.
It’s been a nice change that I didn’t see coming.
I’m currently working on a project when he walks in and tells me we’re going to our spot. I look up from my laptop at him. “Now?” He’s already got us coffee in hand, Duke at his feet vibrating with anticipation to be outdoors. “Ledgar, it’s almost dark.”
“I know what time it is.” He sets my coffee down on the desk beside me. “Let’s go.”
I look for a moment at the unreadable expression he has on his face that I’ve become considerably better at reading these last few months.
It’s a look he’s had on all day. I noticed it first thing this morning over breakfast and again now.
I close my laptop and he takes my hand and we walk out through the woods the same as we always do, hand in hand.
Duke weaves through the trees somewhere ahead of us, excited to be running free.
The trees start to thin and the canyon opens up in front of us the way it always does, gorgeous and breathtaking all at once.
I could never get used to this view and I wouldn’t want to.
He steps down onto the rock slab and reaches back for my hand.
He helps me down onto it like he normally does and we sit close to each other, my back to his front with the whole canyon spread out before us.
He doesn’t say anything right away which I’ve learned he does things according to his schedule not anyone else’s.
“I’ve been trying to figure out the right time to tell you this,” he whispers into my ear.
I tilt my head enlisting a kiss to the spot just below my ear he knows drives me crazy.
“I love you,” he says with certainty. “I have loved you since before I knew what to do with you. The day I left ripped my heart out, and when you returned to me, I swore I would love you as hard and as long as you would let me.” He pauses, turning my face to his.
“I should’ve said it a long time ago, and I need you to know that my feelings for you aren’t going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.”
He kisses me with a passion that consumes me as the canyon holds us capture.
My eyes fill with unshed tears. “I love you more,” I say, kissing him again.
“I’ve known how you felt for awhile, I have just been waiting for you to catch up.
” Something breaks across his face that is warm and real.
“I love you,” I tell him. “I told you that day on the porch a few months back. I meant it then and I mean it now.” I hold his gaze as his thumb brushes over my cheek.
“I have loved you every day, Ledgar.” He kisses me again, and I moan softly into his mouth as our tongues tangle with each other’s.
“I’ll love you until my last breath, Payson.” I smile up at him.
“You don’t have any other option,” I tell him, and we sit there at the edge of the world as the dark takes over and the lake goes still and the stars start to find their places in the sky above. And in this moment, I no longer hate him. Instead, he is my ruin.