Epilogue
Bailey edged the car to a halt at the edge of the path, letting out a long sigh as she pulled her hair from her ponytail and shook it loose.
No matter how long the day, no matter how hard the case, she was always glad to come back to this place.
It was home to her. But more importantly, it was home to Aaron, and she couldn’t wait to see him.
She climbed out of the front seat and locked up the car, then tucked her keys into her pocket. She’d been given her own cruiser a couple of months ago, and she was still proud to drive it. A reminder of how far she had come, and how well she had done in earning Willis’s trust.
It had been nearly a year since she’d arrived at Warrior Peak Sanctuary, and the difference between her then and her now was almost staggering.
When she’d gotten here, she’d been a scared little girl, on the run for her life.
Now, she was a self-assured woman who had a thriving career and a reputation for bringing down the shadiest cops in the business.
The relief of knowing that the men who had tormented her and Aaron were behind bars was immense to her, even more than she thought it would be.
They had each been put away on plea deals, and a handful of cold cases had already been solved based on evidence they had obscured or destroyed, with a few more well on their way to the same end.
She had been working with the victims directly, doing what she could to restore their faith in the police after what they had been through.
She could only imagine how hard it had been for them, and she was able to relate to them based on her own experiences with Ziegler and his gang.
She made her way up the path to the cabin where she and Aaron had been staying for the past year.
It was small, but it wasn’t like they needed much space from each other anyway.
He had been teasing her since they had first moved in together that he had been keeping her flexible through his physical therapy, and she supposed with their bedroom antics, he was kind of right.
A flicker of a smile passed over her lips as she looped the final corner to their cabin.
Aaron was sitting out on the back porch, in the chair he’d grabbed from a dump and started to fix up in his own time.
It was something he had really gotten into over the last few months, restoring old furniture.
Most of it, he donated to local charities, but some pieces they had kept for their place.
It was starting to feel like a real home, and she found herself craving something even more like that.
He looked up from his lap when he saw her coming over.
It still felt a little strange to be in uniform and him not, but when he looked at her with such appreciation in his eyes, nothing else mattered.
She made her way up the steps to the porch, and looked down at what he was working on.
Spread across his lap was a blueprint, covered in small pencil strokes here and there.
“What’s this you’re working on?” she asked, and he lifted the blueprint from his lap and patted his leg, indicating for her to come take a seat.
“Just working on a building design,” he said.
She draped her arms around his shoulders. “Talk me through it.”
“Well, this is going to be the entryway,” he explained, tracing his finger along the paper. “And this is going to be the living room. Through here, the main bedroom, and down this hallway, a nice kitchen with a big window looking out over the mountains…”
“Wow, this place looks amazing,” she murmured. “What is it for? Is the sanctuary opening up new places to stay, or something?”
He glanced up at her, a smile on his face, and shook his head. “Nope, it’s not for Warrior Peak,” he replied.
She furrowed her brow, confused. “Then who is it for?”
“It’s for us,” he replied simply, and her eyes widened as she looked down at the page.
“You’re designing this for us?” she whispered in shock. She had seen him working on these pages a few times, but she had always figured it was something for the sanctuary she would find out about eventually.
But a home? For them? It made her head spin with the possibilities.
“Yeah, I want to give you a real home,” he replied. “A place we can live. A place with room to start a family, if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, Aaron.” She sighed and leaned down to kiss him. She couldn’t think of a damn thing in the world more romantic than what he had just said to her.
“I would love that,” she added, brushing her nose against his. “And where exactly is this palace going to be?”
“I already spoke to Xavier and Lawson,” he replied. “To see if they’d be willing to give up a little bit of the sanctuary grounds for us.”
She gasped. “And what did they say?”
“They said yes,” he replied with a grin.
She squealed and wrapped her arms around him even tighter, pushing her head into his shoulder.
“That’s the most amazing news,” she breathed.
So she could stay here with Aaron, continue her work with Willis, and they could start putting down real roots.
Just like the grass that had regrown to cover the paddock and the flowers around it, they could settle here and find a place to bloom.
A family? He had said something about a family, and her heart fluttered at the thought.
“I love you so much, Aaron,” she told him, and he ran his hand along her back, a small, simple gesture that made her whole body tingle.
“I love you, too, Bailey,” he murmured back.
For a moment, they just sat in the silence. The birds were chirping in the trees around them, the same songs they had been singing when she had first arrived, but her future looked a whole lot brighter than it had back then.
And she could hardly wait to see what else was in store for her.