Epilogue
The glass treehouse was full of noise.
It was the good kind of noise. The kind that settled into the walls and stayed.
Small rain boots by the front door, lined up next to August’s shoes because Maverick insisted on doing everything Daddy did.
Crayon drawings taped to the floor-to-ceiling glass—a purple dog, a house with too many windows, something that was either a truck or a dinosaur.
A booster seat at the kitchen island with a smear of peanut butter on the tray that I’d missed during cleanup.
Maverick was with my mom for the weekend. Diane had picked him up Friday afternoon with a bag of library books and a sleeve of animal crackers, and Maverick had gone to her without looking back, which was the highest compliment a three-year-old could pay.
She made the drive up at least once a month now and stayed in the guest room—the white duvet, the reading lamp, the bed that had been perfectly made and untouched for four years before I came along. She kept a toothbrush in the bathroom and a sweater in the closet.
We’d had the kitchen-table conversation.
Not once—many times, in the years since the gala.
The first time was three months after August and I got together.
I’d driven to her house on a Sunday afternoon and sat across from her at the same table and told her everything.
Why I’d chosen First Light, what I’d been carrying, the baton I’d picked up off the floor when I was fifteen.
She’d cried. I’d cried. She told me she was proud of me, and then she told me she was sorry—not for quitting, but for never explaining why.
She’d been too exhausted to have the conversation then, and by the time she wasn’t, it felt too late.
It wasn’t too late. It was past tense now. Healed.
August was on the cantilevered deck with his coffee, barefoot, looking at the valley the way he did every morning.
I leaned against the doorframe and watched him.
The beard, the jaw, the ink down both arms catching the early light.
He’d filled out slightly in the past five years—broader through the chest, thicker through the arms—and it suited him.
Everything about this version of him suited him.
His phone was on the kitchen island behind me. I glanced at the home screen. The BrindleIQ Connect dashboard filled it. Forty-seven active mentorship pairs had become ninety-three. He knew six of their names by heart, and he checked every week.
He turned and saw me watching him. The smile came slowly—not the almost-smile, not the beginning of one he didn’t let finish. The real one.
“Mav survived the night,” I said. “Mom just texted. He passed out before they hit the highway last night and slept through till seven.”
“That’s because she let him eat animal crackers for dinner.”
“She’s a grandmother. That’s the job.”
I stepped out onto the deck, closing the door behind me. The way he looked at me made my breath catch the same way it had on the rooftop five years ago. Some things didn’t change. Some things just got deeper.
I crossed the warm wood to him without a word, the morning air cool against my bare legs beneath the loose sleep shorts and tank. August set his coffee down on the wide railing as I sank to my knees in front of him.
My fingers hooked into the waistband of his gray sweatpants, tugging them down his hips. No underwear—just bare skin, his cock already hard from the way he’d been watching me.
I wasn’t surprised. We’d made love twice last night, falling asleep tangled and naked in the sheets, finally alone in this house for the first time in weeks. The freedom still felt like a gift.
I took him into my mouth slowly, savoring the familiar weight and heat of him.
My tongue traced the underside before I drew him deeper, hollowing my cheeks.
One hand wrapped around the base while the other slipped lower, fingers gently rolling and stroking his balls the way I knew made his thighs tense and his breath hitch.
He groaned low, one hand threading into my hair—not guiding, just holding on. I worked him with long, wet pulls, taking him as deep as I could, loving the way he filled my mouth, the salt and musk of him, the quiet power in every twitch against my tongue.
“Eliza,” he rasped after a few minutes, voice rough. His fingers tightened, then eased as he nudged me back. “Up.”
I rose, lips tingling. He moved me gently toward the railing. I braced my hands on the smooth wood, the valley sprawling out below us in a sea of green and gold, morning light catching on distant rooftops and the winding roads below.
His chest pressed against my back as one broad hand slid down my stomach and into my shorts, diving straight beneath the thin fabric of my underwear. His fingers found me already slick and aching. He stroked through my folds, circling my clit with just enough pressure to make my knees tremble.
“Look at it,” he murmured against my ear, voice dark and low. “All of it while I touch you.”
I moaned softly, hips rocking into his hand. He kept teasing, two fingers sliding inside me while his palm ground against my clit, steady and relentless. The valley stretched endlessly beneath us, open and bright, and I felt exposed in the best way—held safe by him, seen only by the trees and sky.
He pulled his hand free only to shove my shorts and underwear down my thighs in one motion. I stepped out of them, kicking them aside. Cool air kissed my skin.
August dropped to his knees behind me, hands spreading my legs wider. Then his mouth was on me—hot, demanding, tongue licking from my entrance to my clit.
He devoured me from behind, no hesitation, sucking and lapping until I was gasping, gripping the railing hard.
The pleasure built sharp and fast, his beard rasping deliciously against my thighs, his hands holding me open.
I came with a broken cry, thighs shaking, waves crashing through me as he kept licking me through it.
Before I could catch my breath, he stood. His cock nudged my entrance, thick and ready, and he pushed in deep in one smooth thrust. I moaned loud at the stretch, the perfect fullness.
He started moving, fucking me with long, powerful strokes that pressed me harder against the railing.
One hand stayed on my hip, the other braced beside mine.
Every thrust drove him deeper, the angle hitting that spot inside me that made stars burst behind my eyes.
The valley blurred in front of me, wind whispering across my skin, his body claiming mine right there in the open air.
My eyes drifted closed as his hand snaked around to find my clit again, fingers circling in tight, perfect rhythm with his thrusts. The pressure built again, hotter, deeper.
“August—” I gasped.
“Come with me,” he growled, voice strained.
We came together. Pleasure tore through me in pulsing waves as he buried himself deep and pulsed inside me, his groan mixing with my cry. Our voices echoed out over the valley, raw and unfiltered, carried on the morning breeze.
Afterward, we lay in the sheets with the morning light pouring in from every direction.
The valley was bright below us, the canopy green and gold, the glass walls turning the whole bedroom into the thing he’d always wanted it to be—a house that floated above the world with love and laughter inside it.
I was tracing the ink on his shoulder, following the lines the way I’d done that first night. He watched my fingers move, his hand resting warm and heavy on my hip.
“Can I tell you something?” he said.
“You always can.”
“The night on the rooftop. When you were leaving that voicemail and I was standing by the fireplace with my drink.” His thumb moved against my hip. “You asked me later why I said yes, and I never answered.”
“I remember.”
“It wasn’t because of First Light. It wasn’t the mission or the gala or the cause.
” He paused, and his jaw did the thing it always did—the slow shift, the thought turning over before he let it out.
“It was because you sounded like I used to. Before the company, before the board decks, before I stopped looking at the dashboard. You sounded like someone who still knew why she was doing it.” His eyes found mine. “And I wanted to hear it again.”
The sun was on my hair and his hand was on my hip, and through the glass, I could see the whole valley spread out below us, bright and wide and full of morning.
“You hear it every day now,” I said.
“Yeah.” He pulled me closer. “I do.”