Epilogue
Gabrielle
“What in God’s name is that?” Cal stared at the swirling, dark-green-and-black shot on the gnarled wooden table in front of him.
“It’s a shot,” I answered, sliding into the high-backed leather booth with my matching concoction. I picked up the drink menu of what passed for this small town’s local brewpub. “It’s called the Reaper. You’re welcome.”
He squinted at it. “It’s eleven in the morning.”
I shrugged and spun my glass between my fingers. The rim was sticky from a careless pour, and the licorice burn of cheap absinthe cut through the clamor and yeast of midday bar air.
“If we’re toasting the death of my career, that’s rather brutal, isn’t it?”
“Death, yes. But also the opportunity for rebirth.”
“How philosophical.” He pushed his sleeves to his elbows—his tie and jacket lay abandoned in the car. A few locks of his dark hair fell haphazardly across his forehead. He lifted his glass. “What’s in this?”
I clinked my shot to his. “Doesn’t matter. Bottoms up.”
We downed them, the liquor searing a path straight to my stomach.
He coughed into his fist and slammed the glass down. “That was revolting. Possibly the worst drink I’ve ever had. Did you order battery acid?”
“That’s extra.”
He leaned back in the booth, eyeing me. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m enjoying you. Free, unshackled. Slightly singed, but alive.
” I rolled my glass between my palms, savoring the last bitter warmth of the shot.
“You realize this is our first time out in town as…us.” The word surprised me with its brazen self-evidence.
“No more hiding. No more cover-ups. No more…” I fumbled for the word and came up short. “Pretending.”
He tilted his head. “A bar at eleven a.m. isn’t exactly the agora of public opinion. But it’s a start.”
“It’s the principle,” I said, ignoring the faint sting of absinthe clinging to my tongue. “I like not having to look over my shoulder. I could lean across this table and kiss you right now, and nobody would care.”
He glanced around the bar. The only other patron was a grizzled man in a Vietnam veteran ball cap, nursing a beer at the far end of the counter.
“I see your point,” Cal conceded. “We’re positively blending in.”
A waitress with purple streaks in her hair ambled over. “Ready for another round?”
Cal shuddered, pure theatrics.
She laughed. “Yeah, the Reaper packs a punch.”
“Understatement of the year,” he returned. “Do you serve a proper bitter here?”
She scratched her ear with the back of her pen. “Closest I’ve got is a decent IPA.”
“That’s…not even in the same postcode.”
“It’s on tap and cold.”
He shrugged. “That’ll do then.”
“Two of those,” I said, folding my menu. “And a basket of fries.”
The waitress drifted off, her purple ponytail swinging behind her.
I nudged Cal’s foot under the table. “So, what’s next?”
“Next? As in…”
“What do we do next? Where do we go? We can reinvent everything.”
He looked around. “You want to plan out our lives in a bar?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a pub.”
He shot me a look from beneath his lashes. “This is not a pub.”
The waitress returned with our beers and fries, then skittered off again.
He tipped the basket, and the fries tumbled over each other like straws. “I took you to a proper pub back home. This isn’t a pub.”
I took a long sip of my beer—cool and crisp, exactly what I needed. “Do you want to go back home? We could live in the house your father left you.”
The words slipped out before I could think better of them.
Cal’s smile faded. He shook his head, more gently than I expected. “No. I don’t mind visiting Isabel now and then, but there’s nothing left for me there.” He said it like a fact, not a wound.
I picked up a fry. “So where do you want to go?”
He studied me for a long moment, as if calibrating an answer.
“I’ve got a year-long cooling-off period.
But I’m not particularly sorry about it.
” He flicked his gaze to the window, where the summer light glanced off the hoods of parked cars.
“I could use a sabbatical anyway. I might even finish my book.” He paused, laugh lines deepening.
“But I’m more concerned with what suits you.
Your next steps. Where do you want to go? ”
“There’s plenty of places I could go. MIT, Georgia Tech, Michigan.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “But I was thinking… I’d really love to go abroad.”
Cal looked up from his drink, eyebrows raised. “That’s rather vague. Did you have a country in mind, or are we throwing darts at the map?”
I sucked in a breath. “Switzerland.”
He sputtered into his beer. “Switzerland?”
I shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “Zurich ETH. It’s one of the best engineering schools in Europe. Top-tier aerospace program. It’ll be intense, but—”
“You’re brilliant. You’ll keep up.”
“Do you mean that?”
His face softened. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.” He took a long drink and gave me a look—not quite sadness, not quite nostalgia.
And then I remembered—too late, of course—Switzerland was Claire.
The beautiful disaster. A continent-sized wound that had taken a decade and an ocean to scar over.
I tried to backpedal, but my tongue tripped on the handoff. “Unless you… I mean, Zurich’s not the only option. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s stupid expensive, the winters are brutal, and—”
“Switzerland is perfect.”
I wanted to stitch up the moment with something witty—my usual arsenal of sarcasm and defense-mechanism humor—but all that came out was an apology. “I’m sorry, Cal. That was thoughtless. I didn’t mean—”
He caught my hand, fingers warm around mine, and shook his head before I could spiral. “Darling, if you’re worried about my delicate emotional state, don’t be. You haven’t reopened an old wound. If anything, you’re the reason it ever healed.”
I stared at him, searching for the wince, the shadow, the ghost. But it wasn’t there. The memory was present, and always would be, but it no longer cast him in grayscale.
A strange effervescence bubbled in my chest—pride and gratitude, bright and giddy. I squeezed his hand. “You’re really okay with it?”
“Of course I am,” he said. And then a sly smile crept in, like he was savoring a private joke. “Switzerland keeps coming up. Third time in as many months, actually. Maybe the universe is telling me something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t going to act on it, but back in April, I was approached about a one-year research associate position at CERN. I turned it down, obviously. But I still have the contacts. There might be something for me yet.”
My jaw practically hit the table. “CERN? The CERN? Home of the supercollider? The physicist’s wet dream?”
Cal laughed—genuinely laughed—and his gray eyes sparkled. “I’d have called it the physicist’s Olympus. But yes.” He leaned back in the booth, lines creasing at the corners of his eyes. “Slight hitch though. CERN is in Geneva. ETH Zurich is, well, Zurich. Bit of a schlep, even by Swiss standards.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, waving off the logistics. “I have to get in first.”
He looked genuinely affronted. “You’ll get in. You’re one of the most gifted students I’ve ever taught. And I’ve taught at three universities, so that’s not hyperbole.”
I blushed and drowned in a long pull of my beer. “Too bad I studied French and not German.”
“That’s right. I’d forgotten.”
I nodded. “Four years in high school and two advanced semesters at Page.”
He flicked the rim of his glass. “If I end up in Geneva, I suppose I’ll finally have to learn the bloody language.”
I reached across the table, walked my fingers up his forearm, and gave him my best attempt at coy. “I could teach you…”
A slow, wolfish grin unfurled. “You realize you’re tempting me with one of my more persistent boyhood fantasies.
” He took my hand and grazed his lips across my knuckles.
“Not my French instructor at Eton. She was ghastly. But you…” He kissed the inside of my wrist. “I could be persuaded to be a good student for you.”
I dragged my fingertips along the inside of his collar. “Just so we’re clear”—I bunched his shirt in my fist, tugging him closer—“I’m not above giving you homework.”
His mouth curved—more sin than smile. “Grammar drills or oral exams?”
I leaned in and kissed him. “Yes.”
The look he gave me wasn’t a smirk or a smile—it was pure intent, slow and simmering, like he already had me back in our bed.
A low hum lit under my skin—an electric ripple down my spine, blooming behind my ribs and radiating out. God, this man. I’d never get used to the way he could melt me.
I dragged the tip of my tongue across my bottom lip, just enough to make his eyes track. “I’ll try not to abuse my power.”
He brushed a knuckle down my arm. “I rather wish you would.” He raised his glass. “To the future, then. Our personal renaissance.”
I grinned and tapped my glass to his. “To us.”