Epilogue
Bronson
Five Years Later.
Max slid the bottle of beer across the bar without me having to ask.
“You look like hell,” he told me cheerfully.
“Melody’s teething,” I rumbled, picking up the beer.
Max winced in sympathy and moved down the bar to help someone else.
I carried my beer across the Bear Den toward the corner booth where Cade and Hall were already settled in, a pitcher sitting between them.
They had the relaxed posture of two men who’d managed to escape their houses for a rare evening out.
I dropped into the booth with a heaviness that had nothing to do with unhappiness and everything to do with the fact that I hadn’t slept more than four consecutive hours in two weeks.
“There he is,” Hall said.
“Here I am,” I agreed, as I took a long pull from my bottle.
Cade leaned back and studied me with an easy grin. His kids were slightly older and sleeping through the night. “How’s the bass running out past Miller Creek? I was out there Tuesday and pulled in almost nothing.”
“Too warm still,” I told him. Cade wasn’t a Red Oak Mountain native, so he didn’t know all these things. “Give it another two weeks and they’ll move back into the shallows. I took Peter out to the south bend last Saturday and we did all right.”
A familiar warmth rose in me that came from saying my son’s name out loud. It still hit me in the chest every time. “Kid’s got patience. More than I had at that age.”
“More than you do now,” Cade lobbed back.
I grinned.
Everyone knew I was patient as hell.
And Cade knew it better than anyone. We’d been in the same SEAL unit together.
I was always the one who could sit still and keep watch, even when our shifts sometimes stretched for weeks at a time when we were staking out a target. I never got antsy. I’d trained that out of myself.
“I had good luck with a crawfish rig down near the old dock,” Hall offered. “Might be worth trying.”
“I’ll take Peter down there next weekend.”
Our buddies Eric and Knox strolled over.
Eric set his glass down. “You look like shit, man. Is Melody still teething?”
“She is,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “She was up from two until four last night and then again at five-thirty. Lucy got up with her the second time, and I pretended to be asleep for about thirty seconds before I felt too guilty and got up, too.”
They all laughed. None of us were young men anymore. I understood why making babies was better in your twenties. Not that I’d give mine up for anything in the world.
Cade reached under the table and produced a small paper bag, setting it in front of me without ceremony.
“Mary sent that,” he told me. “It worked better than anything else we tried. She bought a dozen of them back when we were going through it, and this one’s for you.”
I opened the bag and pulled out a soft silicone teether still in its packaging. I turned it over in my hand and felt a rush of genuine gratitude that was slightly embarrassing for a man who had once neutralized threats in international waters without blinking.
“Tell Mary thank you,” I said. “Seriously.”
“She’ll want a full report,” Cade warned.
I tucked the teether back into the bag and set it beside me on the seat, and then all five of us turned toward the stage in the far corner of the Bear Den, because Lucy had just stepped up to the microphone.
She went by Lucy Hale now. Imagine my luck. Had for nearly four years, after a small, private ceremony that not even the most vigilant paparazzi had gotten a whiff of ahead of time.
The name change had cost Jimmy Watson his share in her future profits. Which suited my gal just fine. He’d gotten enough from her in the divorce proceedings.
Not that he could enjoy much of it from his jail cell.
They’d let him out eventually. But he knew better than to come anywhere near Red Oak Mountain.
That man wouldn’t be bothering her again.
She still went out on tour occasionally, but she kept it limited.
Lucy was going through her homebody days, and she’d flipped her script, touring two months out of the year and being here with me the other ten.
It seemed to make her happy.
These days Lucy spent a lot of her time in the recording studio I built for her on our land, a proper one with good acoustics and equipment she’d chosen herself.
But nights like this, playing on a small stage in a tiny mountain town dive bar for the sheer pleasure of it, were her favorite kind.
She played a simple chord progression on her guitar and started to sing, and the Bear Den went quiet the way it always did when Lucy performed.
The song was one she’d written recently, about finding love after the coffee’s gone cold.
I chuckled under my breath while she sang it, knowing it was based on the day our coffee maker died shortly after Melody had joined our family.
We’d been running on fumes until Valerie saved the day, popping in with a new machine she’d picked up in Fernwood for us.
I’d heard Lucy working on this song at the kitchen table two weeks ago and had stood in the doorway listening for a long time.
I watched her up on that stage now and felt it all over again.
This was the woman I’d fallen for on day one, and it had never stopped.
My heart was full of her. But it had expanded to hold the kids, too.
When I walked away from the SEALs I’d expected a quiet life out on my land, licking the jagged wounds in my heart from some of the tough shit I’d seen and done.
I had not expected to find Lucy Lee one week into my retirement.
And I had certainly not expected to be sitting in a booth at the Bear Den in Red Oak Mountain five years later, dog-tired and completely content, with a teether in a paper bag beside me.
Valerie was babysitting tonight. She’d relocated with Lucy. She was something more like family than an employee after all these years at Lucy’s side, and their bond was unbreakable.
Peter was four now, and Melody had just turned one.
Fatherhood had done something to me that twenty-two years of special operations had never managed to do. It had made me soft in all the right places.
I gazed up at my woman on the stage, every beat of my heart just for her.
Lucy finished the song as the bar cheered her on. She smiled out at the room with that open, unguarded expression that had undone me from the very first day.
She was stealing hearts in the crowd. She did it everywhere she went. Lucy was so damn easy to love.
She stepped off the small stage and crossed the bar toward our booth, as I slid out to meet her.
I pulled her into my arms, still amazed that I was the one who got to keep her.
Lucy settled in easily, her head tucking against my chest the way it always did, like she’d been designed specifically for that spot.
“Hey there, daddy,” she whispered.
“How’s momma doing? I like the new song.”
“Do you? I’m thinking about putting it in my next album.”
“You should. It’s a chart-winner.”
She laughed and pressed her hand against my chest. “You think every song I make is heading to the top of the charts.”
“Well, most of them do.”
My heart thrummed for her, but right now my cock was even louder, beating a wild drum that yelled, KID FREE MOMENT! KID FREE MOMENT!
I bent close and growled in her ear. “Want to get out of here?”
Lucy pulled back, and I could see the answer forming on her lips, but she narrowed her eyes slightly in that way she did when she wanted to negotiate.
“Only if you promise me something first.”
“What’s that?”
Her mouth curved, and she glanced toward the parking lot. “A quickie in the truck on our way home.”
I looked at her for a moment, this woman who was my wife and my home and the best decision I’d ever made.
And I gave her my dangerous look, the one she always said turned her on.
“It’s a deal,” I growled, already pulling her toward the door.
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