Jacks’ Epilogue
Jacks’ Epilogue
The afternoon light filters lazily through the big front windows of the bakery, casting golden rays across the tables and its customers.
Flour dust and coffee grinds coat my apron, and the comforting, familiar scent of freshly baked cinnamon and roasted coffee beans wraps around me like an old, warm sweater.
It’s been a full year since the smoke cleared over Seattle, since the dark shadows of that cellar finally lost their grip on my lungs. I don’t fight anymore, the canvas belongs to ghosts now.
I still run the cafe, here four days a week, and let my staff run it the others, so I can spend time with Hale and Silas.
I know I’m still healing mentally, so taking days where I can concentrate on myself is important to me.
And, Silas would throw a fit if I tried to work extra anyway, so, I take them, and I don’t actually hate it.
The phantom panic that used to seize my chest whenever someone moved too fast hasn’t vanished entirely, but it’s manageable now because of the therapist I’m now seeing.
He’s Eli and Finn therapist, and I have been seeing him since I was fit enough to move.
He’s performing miracles and he helps me unpack the wreckage piece by piece.
For the first time in my life, my skin feels like my own.
A chime rings out above the cafe door, and I look up from behind the espresso machine, flashing a bright grin at Finn. He walks over, throws his arm around me, taking the milk jug from my hand. “Shift’s over, brother. Go on, get out of here. You’ve got somewhere to be, remember?”
Being touched is becoming easier. Finn is easier than most, but I can handle a firm hug or a casual hand on my shoulder now. Just not for too long, and the guys have been amazing about it. They’ve learned how to read the lines, knowing exactly when to step close and when to let go.
I look down at the clock on the wall, wiping my hands on a clean towel. A quiet smile tugs at the corners of my mouth.
The police called me a few weeks after returning from Seattle. They told me that Dad and Ray were found dead inside the property, they put it down to murder, suicide. I had pretended to be upset, played the orphan role perfectly and then celebrated with a beer after. It had never tasted so sweet.
Peter Sale’s surviving network collapsed in on itself before the authorities ever had to kick the doors in.
But the call wasn’t just about closing a case. I then got a call from my mothers family lawyer.
Because Dad had never managed to legally pierce the tight legal ring-fencing of my mother’s estate, every cent of her inheritance, untouched and protected, rolled over directly to me.
Combined with the massive trust fund left behind by my grandfather that had been tied up in probate, the reality had finally set in: I was now remarkably wealthy.
I didn’t owe a damn thing to anyone.
I was free.
I pull off my apron, hanging it on the hook, and grab my jacket. Stepping out into the crisp, salty air of the Pacific coastline, I take a deep, steady breath of the ocean breeze.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A single text from Silas: Point. Now.
I don’t need to be told twice.
I pull up at the point and walk down toward the rugged shoreline where the jagged rocks meet the crashing surf, my boots crunch softly against the smooth gray pebbles. The tide is low, exposing the damp sand and the towering stacks of bleached driftwood scattered along the beach.
As I round the curve near the old rocky point, where Hale had run to the day he thought he was protecting me, I see him.
Silas is standing there, hands tucked casually into the pockets of his dark coat, his dark hair catching the golden afternoon sun as the waves crash against the rocks behind him. He looks as solid and unmovable as the coastline itself.
When he hears my footsteps on the stones, he turns. The tension that used to define his posture is gone, replaced by an open softness that is reserved entirely for me.
“You’re late, Dove,” he teases, though the corner of his mouth twitches upward into a fond, helpless smile.
“Traffic,” I reply, stopping just a few feet away, letting the sun warm my face as I look up at him. “What is this? You pulled me away from the best chocolate croissants Finn’s ever made.”
Silas doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he reaches out, and I step up to him, his warm fingers sliding gently into mine, lacing our fingers together. The heavy gold band on his pinkie finger presses softly against my skin, familiar and grounding.
“Come with me,” he murmurs, tugging me gently by the hand.
He leads me a little further down the beach, past a cluster of jagged boulders, toward the massive, weather-worn sculpture of driftwood we had found Hale sheltering under, the gnarled, sprawling roots of old driftwood, that someone had long ago shaped into a cougar crouching against the wind.
It was right here, kneeling in the cold sand, and in the shadow of this very log, that Silas had first looked at me with raw, terrifying honesty and told me he loved me.
We stop beside the bleached wood. The sunlight pours down over us, bright, blinding, and completely unclouded.
Silas turns to face me fully. His dark eyes are swimming with an intensity that makes my breath catch in my throat. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just lets his thumb trace slow circles over the back of my hand.
“A year ago,” Silas begins, his voice thick, dropping low as it carries easily over the sound of the surf, “I stood in a dark, rotting cellar in Seattle with a gun in my hand and a hole in my chest because I thought I was too late. I thought the world had taken you from me for good.”
My throat tightens, hot tears pricking behind my eyes, but I don’t look away.
“You fought your way back to me through a war built on blood and nightmares,” Silas continues, his other hand coming up to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone with infinite reverence.
“You carried the weight of a broken past, of a family that tried to bury you in the dirt, and you survived. You walked back out into the light, Jack. And every single day since then, watching you heal, watching you smile, watching you claim your life back… it has been the absolute honor of my life.”
He takes a slow, deliberate step closer. The air between us feels electric, charged with the weight of everything we’ve survived, every drop of blood, every sleepless night, every ghost we left behind in the dark.
“I told you once that I would burn the entire world to ash before I let anyone hurt you again,” Silas whispers, his voice breaking just slightly with the sheer, crushing depth of his devotion. “I meant it then. I mean it now. You are my home, Jack. You are my peace, my heart, and my entire future.”
Before I can even process what’s happening, Silas drops smoothly to one knee on the smooth gray stones.
My hands fly to my mouth, a ragged gasp tearing from my throat as the world around us stops, seeming to hold its breath, waiting… but all I see is him.
Silas reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small, dark velvet box. He opens it with steady fingers. Resting inside the velvet is a simple, heavy platinum band, gleaming brilliantly under the midday sun.
“You gave me your heart when there was barely anything left of it to salvage,” he whispers, like the words themselves are sacred. His gaze holds mine, dark and shining, unguarded in a way only I ever get to see.
“Marry me, dove. Let me be your shield. Your protector. Let me spend the rest of my life proving to you that you are safe, that you are loved, and that you will never, ever, have to fight alone again.”
He breathes out, a soft, trembling exhale, his thumb brushing my cheek like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
“Let me be the one who stands between you and every shadow, to be the man who chooses you, every day, without hesitation. Let me love you the way you should have been loved from the beginning.”
I lean down, his forehead rests against mine, his voice breaking on the final words.
“Say yes, Jack. Say yes and let me spend my life protecting the heart you trusted me with.”
Tears overflow, spilling hot and fast down my cheeks, but my face breaks open into the brightest, easiest smile I have ever worn in my life.
“Yes,” I choke out, the word escaping on a sob of pure, unadulterated joy. “Yes, Sol. Yes.”
Silas exhales a shuddering, breathless laugh, standing up so fast he nearly knocks me off my feet as he pulls me into his arms. He slides the heavy ring onto my finger, kisses where it sits, sealing it against my skin, before capturing my lips in a deep, desperate, utterly consuming kiss that tastes like salt, sunlight, and forever.
The cage is gone. The dark is behind us. There is only the endless expanse of the ocean ahead, the man who brought me back to the light, who showed his dove he could fly, free and un-caged.
And with the unshakable certainty that I am finally home.