Epilogue #2
“You’re a bold one,” he said, studying me now. “Waltzing into my office like you own the place, and I’ve never even seen your face around here. What are you? A new recruit with more guts than sense?”
My heart fluttered, not with fear but with possibility.
“One can only hope,” I murmured, and my voice came out softer and more honest than I meant it to.
Something shifted in his expression then, like that answer had landed somewhere unexpected.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lilah.”
He repeated it slowly. “Delilah.”
Like he was testing the feel of it in his mouth.
“Like the song?”
I grinned despite myself. “You know it?”
“Unfortunately,” he scoffed. “Every idiot with an acoustic guitar butchered that thing.”
I laughed quietly. “No. It’s Lilah. You just heard me wrong.”
He blinked, and his entire posture changed.
It was subtle, but I caught it.
“Wait,” he said slowly. “Lilah Kennedy?”
My stomach dropped so hard it felt like the floor tilted beneath me. There it was. The click. The moment.
“Well,” I said weakly. “Yeah.”
“Christ.”
The word wasn’t loud, but it carried. He dragged a hand down his face, fingers pressing briefly against his eyes like he’d suddenly become exhausted in an entirely new way.
“You’re Will’s daughter?”
“I wasn’t—” I started, already knowing I’d lost whatever game I thought I was playing.
“You weren’t thinking,” he snapped, finally looking at me fully. His voice wasn’t cruel, but it was sharp and protective and alarmed in a way that sent a strange ache straight through my chest. “That much is clear. You don’t belong in this world, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I protested quietly.
He shook his head. “You’ve got dreams. Soft skin.
No idea what blood smells like at three in the morning.
No idea what it’s like to wake up wondering if everyone you love is still alive.
You should be on a beach somewhere, drinking something stupid with your friends.
Not sitting on my floor asking about war. ”
My chest tightened then, not because he was wrong, but because he cared enough to say it like that.
“My dad was in this world,” I replied softly.
His jaw clenched. “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be.”
Silence fell after that, thick and heavy and breathless. For a moment I looked down at my hands where they twisted together in my lap. I should have left. I should have stood up, apologized, walked out, gone back to the life everyone else wanted for me.
Instead, I looked back up at him.
“He said you’d say that,” I whispered.
He blinked. “What?”
“He said you’d act tough,” I continued. “Pretend you don’t care. That you’d try to scare me off.”
His brow furrowed. “And?”
“And that you always cared too much.”
The words landed between us with a truth neither of us could avoid.
Something unreadable flashed across his face then.
Regret. Affection. Fear. Maybe all three.
And in that moment, sitting barefoot on his office floor and staring at the man who was trying desperately not to let me into a world that had already claimed him, I realized something that would shape the rest of my life.
He was never going to keep me out.
He was always going to be the one who taught me how to survive it.
The memory leaves me smiling before I even realize it. It starts small, just the soft pull of my mouth, but it grows anyway, fed by years and fire and all the impossible roads that somehow led us here.
Funny.
He tried so hard to keep me out. Out of the war. Out of the danger. Out of his world. Out of him.
Every warning, every sharp word, every time he told me I didn’t belong, that I was too soft, too young, too full of dreams for a place built on blood and silence.
And all he really did was walk me home.
Not away from the fire.
Through it.
He taught me where to step. When to duck. How to breathe when everything was burning. How to survive without losing myself in the process.
I glance sideways at him. At the man who once looked at me like I was something fragile he was afraid to touch. Now he looks at me like I’m something rare he refuses to lose.
Jon notices. He always notices.
He nudges my knee lightly with his own. “You smiling about something dangerous?”
His voice is teasing, but there’s warmth under it, a quiet awareness of everything we’ve survived together and everything we’ve almost lost.
“Always,” I reply softly.
It’s the truth.
He laughs, low and easy, the kind of laugh he only gives when he’s truly at peace. Then he shifts closer, one arm sliding around my shoulders and pulling me into his side like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like this is where I have always belonged.
I rest my head against his shoulder without thinking, feeling the solid steadiness of him beneath my cheek. His heartbeat is slow and strong and real.
Alive.
We sit there in comfortable silence as the sun sinks lower, spilling gold and crimson and soft lavender across the sky. The clouds catch fire for a moment before fading into dusk, and the light wraps around us like something sacred.
There is no gunfire. No alarms. No orders. Just quiet. Just breath. Just us.
I think about everything we didn’t get. We didn’t get a simple beginning. We didn’t get easy love. We didn’t get a story without scars. We didn’t meet in a coffee shop. We didn’t fall in love in safe places. We didn’t get promises without blood behind them.
We got captivity and secrets and fear. We got almost losing each other more times than I can count. We got nights where survival was the only goal.
And somehow, through all of that, we still chose each other. Every time.
We didn’t get a fairytale.
We got something better.
We got honesty. We got resilience. We got a love forged in fire and steadied by trust. We got each other.
And this time, for the first time in my life, we aren’t running. We aren’t hiding. We aren’t waiting for the next disaster. We’re falling hand in hand, watching the future unfold in front of us like an open road instead of a battlefield.
And we get to choose what comes next.