Epilogue
FALLON
My Beautiful Forever
The room is cloaked in shadows, the only light spilling in coming from the hallway. It dances across the floor in ripples, like the waves softly lapping against the hull of the yacht as we sail along the Intracoastal Waterway to Virginia, then head east across the Atlantic.
Standing there in the stillness, barefoot and shirtless, warmth radiates from the tiny bundle swaddled against my chest as I hold my one-month-old daughter tightly in my arms. I gaze down into Penelope’s big, teal eyes—not quite blue like mine and not quite green like her mother’s, but a perfect amalgamation of the two.
Penelope Mirielle Montgomery. I insisted on Penelope because that’s Elizabeth’s middle name, and I wanted our child to carry a piece of her.
We chose Mirielle because she’s our little miracle.
The pregnancy wasn’t an easy one, and Elizabeth was on bed rest for the entirety of her third trimester.
I’m not a praying man, but damn if I didn’t beg God on my knees every fucking night to look over the two souls I loved more than anything.
That if He was planning to take them, for him to take me instead.
He must have heard me because on May twenty-seventh at eleven forty-five, Penelope came screaming into this world.
I bawled my fucking eyes out the first time I got to hold her.
“Such a little troublemaker,” I coo to her, brushing a fingertip over the downy softness of blonde fuzz covering her head. As soon as Elizabeth fell asleep, Penelope started fussing.
Penelope blinks once, slowly, completely unbothered at the nickname, those impossibly wide, curious eyes fastened to my face as if I am the only thing that exists in her world.
Her sweet breath is a whisper against my collarbone, her tiny fingers curling instinctively around my thumb.
A boulder of emotion swells in my throat, making it almost impossible to breathe.
How can something so small and fragile make me feel like my whole life has been rewritten?
“How about a story?” I say, gently swaying her back and forth, back and forth, letting the rhythm work its magic.
“Once upon a time,” I begin and press a kiss to the crown of her head.
“There was a devil with a shattered soul. He didn’t remember what light felt like.
Didn’t know how to love. He only knew how to survive.
But this devil wasn’t made of horns and fire.
He was a man. But inside, he was lost. Angry.
Broken. He existed in the shadows and darkness because he didn’t believe he deserved the light. ”
Penelope’s cheeks flush with sleepiness, her lashes fluttering rapidly as she struggles to stay awake.
“And then one day, an angel came into his life. She didn’t have wings, not the kind you can see.
But when she smiled, the devil saw heaven for the first time.
The angel didn’t run from him. She stayed.
She saw every ruined piece of him and stayed anyway.
She looked past his darkness and scars and saw something…
good. Something worth saving. And she did.
She saved him. The angel saved the devil.
” I pause when my voice cracks, my heart aching in the best way as I remember that night with Elizabeth in Barcelona.
Penelope’s grip tightens around my thumb, urging me to go on.
“Devils aren’t supposed to fall in love with angels.
But he did. He fell deeply in love with the beautiful green-eyed angel. ”
Penelope’s lips pucker, and she makes a soft coo that melts me completely.
“The devil fell in love with his angel the way fire loves oxygen. He didn’t love her because she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, or because of her big, kind heart or her strength.
He loved her because she saw all his jagged, broken pieces and thought he was perfect just the way he was.
She chose him. Chose to give her heart and her love to him, and because of that love, I get to hold you now, a former devil cradling his redemption in his arms.”
I close my eyes and hold my daughter closer. Her breaths have slowed, her chest moving in and out in a steady cadence, her tiny body growing heavier in my arms.
“I didn’t know I could love someone so much until I met your mama, or how I got lucky enough to deserve that angel’s love. But you, sweet girl…I love you even more than I ever thought possible.”
Penelope emits a quiet sigh, her tiny fingers twitching against my chest, her mind already dreaming. She doesn’t stir when I brush a kiss over her forehead and lay her in her crib.
“Only good dreams,” I tell her.
Quietly backing away, I stop when I see Elizabeth watching from the doorway, a gorgeous smile curving her beautiful mouth. She looks every bit the angel I described, with her long, blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders and those ethereal light-green eyes shimmering with so much love.
When I reach her, I tip her face, and she rises on her tiptoes to kiss me.
“I love you,” I tell this woman who is my everything.
“Not as much as I love you,” Elizabeth replies.