Epilogue
EPILOGUE
ARKIN
3 years later
T he campus buzzes with excitement as students and families gather under a bright June sky. Rows of white chairs stretch across the manicured lawn, facing a raised stage draped in the university’s deep blue banners. Zach adjusts the edge of his black graduation gown, the usual two-day scruff gone after his very thorough shave this morning. His cap sits slightly crooked until I reach over to tilt it back into place with a grin. “Can’t have you looking a mess for the photos,” I tease, my own gown swishing slightly as I shift in place. Zach looks around the crowds, searching for Harrison and Ryan who are around here somewhere.
As the chancellor begins his speech, the crowd quietens. I glance over at Zach, who is tapping his fingers on his program. “You nervous?”
Zach chuckles quietly, shaking his head and leaning in. “Nah. Just ready to suck your cock in that gown.”
A guy in front of us with a mop of blonde curly hair looks at us over his shoulder with a wide-eyed expression.
His pockmarked cheeks redden before he turns back around.
I slam a hand to my mouth to muffle my laughter.
Winking, Zach faces forward again, pretending he didn’t paint a very vivid, tempting image in my head just now of him on his knees, with my big dick in his mouth, his cap tilted to the side again.
“It would be nice if I could get through graduation without an erection, you know. Our families are here.”
Even though I keep my voice low, the guy in front of me must hear because his shoulders pop to his ears.
Zach scoffs. “It’s payback for all the times I sprouted a hard-on at the kitchen table back in college.”
As he pretends to shudder, my shoulders shake with chuckles. “You should have seen your face back then. You looked like you wanted to murder me on the spot.”
My boyfriend, soon to be fiancé if he accepts my proposal tonight, shrugs. “Turned you on, didn’t it?”
I make no secret of checking him out, running my gaze over him in a slow sweep, which makes his cheeks heat.
“Eyes forward,” he whispers, lips twitching with amusement.
“I’d rather look at you while imagining other things. ”
This time, when the guy in front of us turns around, his cheeks could be mistaken for stoplights. Zach blows him a kiss because he’s a wanker who likes to rile people up.
Nudging him with my elbow, I give him a look that says, “Behave!”
“What?” he speaks near my ear, his voice low, breathy. “I bet he’d like to join in.”
I narrow my eyes. We shared a girl once, but that was then, many fucking years ago. I’m done sharing my ocean. He’s mine and only mine.
Some days, I’m convinced he teases me on purpose because he enjoys my possessive nature.
In truth, Zach is territorial, too, and would sooner put this guy in hospital than let him anywhere near me.
However, two can play this game. “I think I’d let him top me.”
Zach’s left eye twitches. Oh, how it twitches. Amused, I flash my best smile, the one that gets me anything I want.
He leans in close, his voice a low, erotic threat as he whispers, “Think we can make it through graduation without me beating someone up? Trust me, if you utter another fucking word like that, I’ll spill blood.”
“What’s the matter?” My gaze lingers on his tempting, skilled mouth—a mouth that’s brought me to climax more times than I can count. “Feeling threatened, baby?”
Those lips curve in a side smirk. “Try aroused, Ark.”
As he rakes his teeth over his bottom lip in a teasing move that he knows is my Achilles heel, blood floods south between my legs, filling my rapidly swelling cock.
As we eye fuck each other, I consider the downright filthy ways to destroy him later. I’ll let him fuck me first, though, because I crave his power inside me when he looks at me like he is now.
Fifteen minutes later, our names are finally called, and we step forward to accept our certificates. The applause is a loud roar in my ears as I scan the crowd for my siblings, Archie and Lily-Rose, who are in attendance today.
They’re at the back, standing with Zach’s family and his sister, Neriah.
My eyes mist and I smile at them before shaking the chancellor’s outstretched hand. He gives me my certificate, and the feeling of it settles something inside me.
Years of late nights and nightmares, nights where I couldn’t sleep, wondering if I would ever overcome my past despite countless hours of therapy, led me to this moment.
I did this.
I graduated from university.
I built a better future for myself, even as I thought they’d broken me beyond repair and taken everything I had to offer the world. No one can take this from me, though. No one!
Walking back to the seats, Zach leans in. “I know I tell you this all the time, but I’m so fucking proud of you, baby. You’re the most badass man I’ve ever met.”
His words hit home—more than he’ll ever know. Ducking my chin to hide the fact that I’m close to sobbing like a baby, my lips quiver as I try to rein in my emotions.
The road here has been long and dark, with more setbacks than not, yet throughout every downfall, Zach has been there to hold me up.
My ocean.
Although I came back a stronger version than I left, I was far from healed, and I’m starting to learn that some of my deepest scars might never fade completely. That’s okay.
The late nights Zach held me in bed, bathed in a strip of silvery moonlight, as I cried over my past are now some of my favorite memories.
My home is in his arms, and his is in mine.
What I’ve found, more than anything, is that my pain becomes beautiful in his embrace, like a butterfly leaving its cocoon—a connection that buries our anchor deeper into the stirred-up seabed.
“Hey,” he says, coaxing my teary eyes to his. “It’s okay to feel it all, Ark. You deserve this and every good thing coming your way. This is only the beginning.”
Placing my hand on the back of his neck, feeling the curls of soft hair there, I kiss his lips, tasting the sweetness that is Zachary Beckett.
Resting my forehead against his, I correct him, “ We deserve every good thing coming our way.”
“That too,” he replies, taking my hand in his. “Let’s go find our families.”