Epilogue
ADELAIDE
Two Weeks Later
“You three are hiding your nerves really well,” I say as we climb out of the hired car.
Luca snorts. “Who says we’re nervous?”
“Ace, you’ve smoothed your shirt down four times in the last thirty seconds, and North, your jaw has been tight since we left the airport.”
“You’re imagining things,” North says.”
I laugh and wave them to follow me down the path to the front door, then I knock. It opens in about seconds.
“Addi.” Chris fills the doorway, all six-two of him, in a dark grey Henley and jeans, a dish towel slung over one shoulder, moss-green eyes smiling at the corners the second he sees me.
His hair is the same as always, short on the sides, longer on top so a piece of it falls over his brow in the breeze, and he clearly hasn’t shaved since yesterday morning.
I launch and crash against him hard, his arms coming up around me. He lifts me off the porch and holds me there for a second with my face pressed into his shoulder. “I missed you,” I mumble into the Henley.
“Been waiting all morning.” He sets me down and holds me out by the shoulders and looks at my face. His eyes soften, then hgrins and pulls me into one more quick squeeze and then finally lets me go.
“Right. Chris. This is Luca. Ace. North. My Alphas, scent matches, my everything.” I point to each of them in turn. “Guys. My brother, Chris.”
Chris steps out onto the porch. He offers his hand to each of them, then calls us inside. “Amazing to meet you all. Now let’s get inside where it’s warmer.”
He turns to North last, and there’s a second where they stare at each other. Chris doesn’t have the background my three do, but he’s an ex-biker who runs bounty hunters now, and there’s a common dialect there. Chris steps back and waves us in.
“Come on. Coffee’s almost done. Everyone else is out until later, so it’s just me for now. Hannah’s gone to town with the pack for a grocery run, she’ll kill me if we don’t save her some pastry.”
“Good thing we brought pastries,” Ace adds, smirking proudly because it was his idea.
Chris grins. “She’ll like you.”
Inside, the house smells like wood smoke and coffee, the fireplace in the living room is crackling low. Chris waves the guys toward the couches facing the flames.
“Sit. Warm up. Coffee in a minute.”
North takes an armchair. Ace lowers himself onto the long couch and stretches his arm along the back. Luca wanders the living room, checking out the photographs.
Chris tips his head toward the kitchen. “Come give me a hand.”
I follow him in. The kitchen’s exactly the way I remember it from over Christmas. Huge and every cook’s dream, but my attention is my brother who’s pulling down five mugs.
I hop up onto the counter the way I used to when I was younger and used to sit like this watching him make coffee. He hands me my full mug and pushes the carton of half and half, because he knows how I like my coffee.
“So,” he says. “You take a trip to Hawaii and return with three Alphas.”
“Sure seems that way.” I’m pouring that delicious creaminess into my coffee.
He leans his hip against the counter and faces me. “Well it suits you. I haven’t seen you look like this in a very long time.” He takes a breath. “I really love this for you.”
“You’re being really sweet.”
“I’m getting emotional, let me finish. I don’t know how much of that is those three men in my living room and how much of it is you, but whatever’s happening, it’s working.” He lifts his mug toward me. “And I am just so fucking glad.”
Then he sets his cup down and pulls me off the counter and into a hug. I awkwardly place my mug down and sink into him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He leans back just enough to look at me. “For what?”
“For how I’ve been these last few years.
Distant. Quiet. Busy.” I wipe at my face and let out a shaky breath.
“A lot of it was me trying to outrun my own mess. And I let all of that pull me away from you, and that wasn’t fair.
You needed a sister and I was half present on the best days, drowning in my own life, instead of seeing how much I’ve been missing out on. ”
“Addi, you don’t—”
“I’m serious. I kept thinking I’d fix it once things calmed down, and then too much time passed and it got easier to stay quiet than explain why I’d been.”
His face softens, and I’m going to cry.
“I’m fixing it,” I say. “Starting now. I want to talk more, pester you more with calls, text you stupid stuff. Tell me Hannah made for dinner, what Noel and Kane are up to, all of it. I want to be better in touch.”
A laugh catches in his throat. “Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”
I smile through fresh tears. “I’m trying, Chris.”
“I know and I truly appreciate the effort.”
“I’ve been missing you for a long time.” My voice cracks.
“Me too.” He squeezes me closer. He pulls back, eyes shining, wipes at them with the side of his thumb like I won’t notice, and reaches around me for his coffee pot.
“So,” he says, pouring into the last mug, “you said on the phone your Alphas are from Hawaii. You staying out there now?”
“We’re actually buying.” I stare at him, trying to read his face.
“Yeah?” He perks up, staring at me expectantly.
“Two places in fact.”
He stops pouring. “Oh.”
“One on Maui,” I say. “Somewhere quieter than Oahu. More space, more privacy, a little retreat, the kind of place we can disappear to when we need to.” I pause, then add, “And one here, in Whispering Grove.”
He goes very still for half a second. “Here?” he says, like he wants to make sure he heard me right. “You’re coming back home?”
I nod, suddenly feeling shy about it. “Yeah.”
A grin breaks across his face, quick and fierce and so full of joy it hits me straight in the chest. “Well, shit,” he says softly. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all week.”
I laugh, because now he looks almost smug about it, like the town personally won some kind of custody case.
“You hated this place,” he says.
“I hated being a teenager in this place,” I correct. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” he says, stepping in and pulling me into another hug before I can brace for it. “It really isn’t.”
I make a grunting sound that turns into a laugh when he squeezes me harder.
“I love you,” he mutters.
“I love you too.”
He leans back just enough to look at me, still holding my shoulders. “You know I’m going to be unbearable now, right?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. I’m going to smile at your men and then ask questions that make everybody sweat.”
“Please don’t do your brother thing.”
“That’s what brothers are for.”
“Chris. I swear to God.”
He’s already backing toward the kitchen door, grinning like a menace, carrying three cups. “You can swear at me after dinner.” He’s still laughing when he disappears into the living room, and I follow with the two mugs.
Chris hands out the coffees, and I give North one of mine, then Chris settles into the armchair across from them.
“Right,” he says, rubbing his hands together once. “Let’s do this properly.”
Ace groans. Luca laughs, and North just leans forward, elbows on his knees, and says, “Go ahead.”
I sink down between them with my mug in both hands, warm on both sides, the fire crackling, the pastries on the coffee table already half demolished, and my future spread out in front of me.
This is what it feels like when the life I almost lost turns into one I actually get to keep.
Chris takes one sip of coffee, smirking in my direction.
“So,” he says. “You’ve all been sleeping with my sister.”
“Chris!” I almost spit out coffee all over myself.
“Perfectly reasonable opening question,” North adds, of course he would.
By then Ace is laughing, Luca’s choking on his pastry, and Chris is grinning like he’s been waiting years for a moment exactly like this.
I laugh too, because what else can I do?
Outside, the last leaves are spinning down into the yard. The fire pops softly, and for the first time in a very long time, nothing in me is braced for loss.
I’m home.
And somehow, impossibly, I get to keep all of it.