EPILOGUE #3
She nibbles on her lip with a teary-eyed nod, overcome by emotion but finally accepting herself through my lens. And everything about soaring into the clouds feels like coming home.
As if I’m not already undone by her radiance, she presses herself against me, nipping and sucking on my earlobe with her gravelly command, “You make me whole. Fill me up, Axel.”
We let go and tumble over the divine precipice together, touching heaven with tangled limbs and tandem heartbeats. Panting breaths and whispered vows.
With a hum of contentment, she nuzzles her face into my neck, and I scratch up and down her spine, confident there is no greater paradise.
After a few minutes, her airy, postcoital voice wakes me from my satisfied stupor.
“Do you think it was chance that brought us together or that it was somehow meant to be?”
I grant her the respect of pondering that, even though the truth is inscribed in my marrow.
“There is no realm or world in which my soul wouldn’t gravitate to yours.
I would find you in heaven, hell, and any purgatory in between.
You will always be mine, so I suppose it’s fate.
You were the thorn I was destined to grasp, the piercing beauty that saved me. ”
A breathy, satiated titter flows out of her, breezing over my fevered skin. “But you’re always spinning for luck on your watch.”
“That’s true,” I concede, captivated by the vision of La Lune Noire as the pilot steers us back over land, my stomach flipping with the brisk dip.
“But it’s changed. For years, I based my day on whether I could get one of the numbers my mom wanted me to play before she died.
It was a habit that had me stuck, turning me into a gambling addict who was losing everything to that damn wheel.
Roulette is called the devil’s game because all the numbers added together equal six-six-six, so I began to view it as the symbol of my demise.
But it was the opposite. The day you arrived, I had the urge to play green. And I got it.”
She lifts her head, studying me. “Why does that matter?”
I drag my knuckles down her silky cheek, enchanted by the inquisitive gems staring back at me.
“Green is the representation of the house edge. It has the highest payout, but it’s the biggest risk.
And there you were, my emerald-eyed siren song, taunting me with a jackpot life, if only I could manage not to lose everything in the process. ”
She rewards me with blushing cheeks and her ebullient laugh. “I love you and your crazy logic, Axel Noire.”
I’ll never get enough of her sassy use of my name.
Mine.
“You did your fair share of taunting,” she goes on, “but our standoffs won me you as my husband. So, I’m the victor when it comes to a jackpot life. You’re my everything.”
I weave my fingers through her hair, nip at her lower lip, and kiss her with every bit of pent-up passion I saved for her and only her, until she’s purring into my mouth and I release her with a promise. “I love you, Zar. Every breath I have will be devoted to showing you.”
And maybe that’s the silver lining of all we’ve lost. There isn’t a second I take for granted. All of them are moments I believed I’d never have, and I’m all too familiar with how quickly it can go up in smoke. This—ensuring this woman feels adored and desired—it’s what I was made for.
She nestles back into the crook of my neck so she can relax and enjoy the view out of my window as “House of the Rising Sun” pipes through the speakers.
“This feels like a sign,” I muse, gripping my forever with the resort of my past and future still in my sights.
“My mom loved this song. She viewed it as a perfect representation of La Lune Noire—the temptation, the ensnarement, and the ruin of it.” A beat, filled with an organ solo, passes before I kiss Zara’s sweet nose. “She’d have adored you.”
“Mine would’ve loved you too. You’re the first person who saw the parts of me she’d nurtured instead of only the armor I wore after she died.
I wish so much that both our mothers could see us together, on the other side of the pain.
” She plays with the hair at my nape, lost to our bubble in the sky.
“Do you agree with your mom about La Lune Noire being the house of the rising sun?”
“Not anymore,” I tell her, truly feeling unshakable, despite the danger the underworld always presents. Nothing in this life is easy, but it’s worth it. “This is a new era. No more ruin. La Lune Noire has her queen, which changes everything.”
“A new era. I like that because for me, it’s the setting of safety, strength, and belonging.
Home and family. I set down my one-bullet-in-the-chamber gun, but we’re still spinning a win.
And call it rebellion, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the sun coming up.
We have enough love and fight inside us to rise even if it didn’t. ”
No matter the trial, she’s always my fierce little Thorn.
“That’s right, darling. I’d bet my whole fortune on green. In our house, it’s roulette rising.”
THE END