Epilogue
Cash
Six Months Later
“We don’t have to do this,” I reminded Sage as we made the last turn onto the long gravel driveway.
“I know,” he said. “I’m okay, promise,” he added. His hand was resting on Daisy’s thigh. She was sitting between us in the front seat of our truck and I’d never been more grateful for bench seats in my life. Because her presence wasn’t only helping Sage.
I’d debated long and hard over whether what we were about to do was the right thing or not, but after talking to Sage’s therapist about it, we’d decided it might offer some of the closure he needed.
If such a thing could really be had after all he’d suffered.
It had taken us a long time to find a therapist Sage was able to connect with.
He went through three before he finally found one who he felt spoke to him like a person rather than a case number.
Despite him feeling more comfortable with the younger, female psychologist, it’d still taken him weeks to open up to her about the cult that had destroyed his life and stolen his innocence.
He’d only recently admitted to the woman that he’d been the one to take Mouse’s life.
We hadn’t been certain if it was something that should be addressed with the local cops who’d investigated Mouse’s death or not.
Although she hadn’t said as much, Sage’s therapist had seemed to be okay with letting sleeping dogs lie.
As far as she was concerned, it was the cult who’d killed Mouse.
Just as surely as they’d nearly killed Sage.
Daisy and I had participated in Sage’s sessions whenever he or the therapist had asked us to, but it was a process that he had to endure mostly on his own.
But we were starting to see real progress.
He was taking on more and more of his own decisions and when he was struggling with something, we always tried talking through it first. If at that point he still felt the need to have me take over for him, I always did.
His therapist knew about the dynamic we had, but instead of condemning us for it, she’d actually helped us to figure out when and how to use it to help Sage in his recovery.
Instead of it being Sage’s only coping mechanism, it became one of many tools we used to help him get through the darker moments.
Which were fortunately happening less and less.
After Sage’s admission about what had been done to him and Mouse, I hadn’t been able to just let things go.
I’d talked to Ronan and Memphis about the so-called church and its beliefs and before I’d even finished my story, Ronan and Memphis had started in on a plan to try and pinpoint if any sects remained, including the one that had been responsible for the brutality forced on Sage and Mouse.
If they were found, they’d be punished and any kids who were located would be rescued.
But I wouldn’t be doing the punishing, though a part of me really wanted that more than anything.
For Sage’s sake, I knew I couldn’t be a part of it.
He needed to put the cult behind him and there was no way for that to happen if I was participating in the process of bringing the perpetrators to justice.
And there was no way in hell I’d do it in secret, either.
Sage knew that the group would be going after the members of the church, but the only updates he would get would be if the people who’d hurt him and Mouse specifically were found.
Even then, I’d be the one to make the decision how much I told Sage. He and I had both agreed to that.
Daisy was also limiting her interaction with the investigation. Like me, she didn’t want to keep secrets from Sage and she wanted us to be able to move on from the past as a family. So Mav would be the one who’d handle the tech side of the investigation.
Life between the three of us had settled into something I doubted any one of us could have envisioned.
It was almost too easy sometimes. We’d moved Daisy into our bedroom the very night we’d made love together for the first time (after we’d eaten the rubbery pasta that had sat neglected on the stove for hours and hours).
Daisy was busy with work, but she rarely played her online games anymore – a choice she’d made, since Sage and I had no issue with her enjoying them.
We suspected that while most of that stemmed from her desire to spend more time with us, at least part of it had to do with the reminder that Dylan was still missing.
We had recently gotten word that there was a new lead that one of Ronan’s men was going to follow up on to see if it led anywhere, but Daisy, not surprisingly, was careful not to get her hopes up.
Since Sage and I still had to travel for work, and jobs often kept us from home for days at a time, we’d decided Daisy needed some company, so we’d adopted a dog from the local shelter as a surprise for her birthday.
Well… we’d planned to adopt a dog. What we’d ended up with were three dogs, four cats, a couple of chickens, and a goat.
And I had a feeling we were just getting started since Daisy had recently asked me and Sage to fix up the barn behind the house.
As the truck cleared the trees lining the narrow road, I felt my stomach knot at the sight of the old farmhouse. It looked like it would fall over with the next stiff breeze, but I knew we weren’t that lucky.
Which was why I was glad to see the large crane sitting just a few dozen feet from the house. A couple of men in construction vests and hardhats were milling around, drinking coffee.
“It looks like our house,” Sage murmured.
He was right. The structure did look a lot like our house. But even if it’d been in pristine condition, it would have been the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.
I closed my hand over his briefly before I focused on getting the truck parked.
Daisy and Sage got out, followed by the three dogs who’d been lying solemnly in the back seat…
like they’d known something big was up. Even once they were outside, they stuck by our sides, which was a far cry from their usual raucous behavior.
They probably sensed the presence of the inherent evil all around us.
I took Sage’s hand in mine as he wrapped his other arm around Daisy’s shoulders.
We went to stand in front of the house. I kept my eyes on Sage as he studied the dilapidated building.
“Do you want to go in?” I asked. I had no desire to see the inside, but this whole thing was about closure for Sage.
His therapist had said to let him lead and to just be there to support him.
Sage looked at the house for a long time, then shook his head. “No.” He paused, then looked at me with a small smile. “Tell them to tear the fucker down.”
I brushed a brief kiss over his mouth and then waved with my free hand at the guy sitting in the crane’s cab.
He got it started and worked the levers that got the large wrecking ball attached to it pulled back.
We were far enough away that we didn’t need to worry about being hit by any potential debris.
Daisy and I both leaned into Sage’s side as the wrecking ball flew and left a huge, gaping hole in the side of the house.
Then another.
And another.
There was no big celebration as the house was razed until it was nothing but a pile of rubble.
Just silent contemplation. I didn’t ask Sage if he felt better because I wasn’t foolish enough to think that demolishing the house would take away the pain.
It was just a baby step among many much bigger, more important steps that Sage would have to take over the rest of his life to heal from the wounds that had been inflicted on him in that terrible place.
Truth was, he’d likely never fully heal. He’d just learn to go on.
It was more than enough.
I sent Ronan a silent thank you as I watched the last of the house fall and the next piece of machinery move in to start cleaning up the debris.
When I’d hit on the idea of buying up the farmhouse and having it demolished to give Sage some closure, I hadn’t had enough money to buy the property outright, since it was part of a large parcel that the sellers refused to break apart.
I’d set aside my pride to ask Ronan if I could borrow the rest of the money from him and he’d instantly said yes.
But before I’d been able to buy the property, I’d been contacted by my Realtor and told the property had already been purchased.
I’d been upset, of course, but that had lasted as long as it had taken for Ronan and his husband to show up on our doorstep to hand me the deed to the property a few weeks later.
A pre-wedding gift, they’d called it. Admittedly, it’d been hard for me to accept something so generous, but I’d wanted the closure for Sage more than I’d wanted to hang onto my pride.
When I’d told Ronan I’d pay him back, he’d told me to pay it forward instead.
It was Sage who’d come up with the idea of what to do with the money we made when we resold the property.
Our plan was to donate every cent to the handful of survivors of the Church of Pure Love that Mav had been able to find during his research.
There weren’t a lot of them, but they were all people who’d been forced as kids to endure what Sage and Mouse had.
Most had escaped, a few had been rescued by family members.
All still suffered from the wounds of the past.
The money wouldn’t solve their problems, but hopefully it would help most, if not all of them, start to heal. Sage had even talked about maybe one day reaching out to some of the people as part of his recovery, since a few had formed a small support group.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked.
Sage nodded. “Yeah.”
As cathartic as watching the house come down had been, it was only part of the reason we’d come to Mississippi.
Saying goodbye to the farmhouse wasn’t anywhere near as important as who we were going to go say goodbye to next.
It had been Sage’s decision to visit Mouse.
While no other family had been located for the little girl, when the news about her death had aired, thousands of people had donated money to give her a proper funeral and burial.
Sage hadn’t attended the service, but that had been a good thing.
He hadn’t been ready to say goodbye back then.
He was ready now.
I pulled his hand up to my mouth and kissed it while Daisy pressed a soft kiss to his shoulder. I led them both back to the truck. I wasn’t surprised that Sage ended up between me and Daisy on the front seat.
It was what he needed for this final piece of our trip before we began the long journey home.
And between me and Daisy, Sage would always get what he needed.
Always.
The End