Epilogue
SUNNY
Fluffy, sweet-smelling peonies can capture the full range of a human life: a joyous birth (white peonies), the gentle blush of first love (pink peonies), congratulations and good luck (light pink peonies), passionate love (red peonies), dignity and royalty (purple peonies), anniversaries and wealth (coral peonies), and a peaceful death (yellow peonies).
After Cor leaves, I dress quickly and freshen up in my store’s bathroom before heading home. My heart is soaring and aching all at once, like I’m on the precipice of the best period of my life or the worst, and I don’t know which it will be.
I reach for my purse on the counter, and the mysterious pink envelope catches my attention.
I’d completely forgotten about it when Cor came to me.
Slouching onto the stool where Bev sat so many times, I cleanly slice the envelope with a letter opener to find a card covered in hydrangeas.
Inside is Bev’s beautiful cursive, and every word I read makes me cry harder:
Dearest Sunny,
Ginnie and I have treasured your friendship all these years.
We’ve seen how hard you worked, how kind you are to everyone.
You were there for us when we needed you, and your store has been a bright spot in my gray world after I lost Ginnie.
She and I decided years ago that since we didn’t have kids, we’d leave you everything we had.
I gasp, and the note continues on as if she’d heard me.
Yes, my dear. We’re leaving you our home, where we lived so happily for so long. We’re leaving you our assets so you can move your shop to that gorgeous location up the road from me where you always wanted to be. Ginnie and I love you, Sunny, and we wish the best for you. All my love, Bev Sweet.
PS. Don’t worry about a thing, and don’t cry for me. My lawyer will take care of everything, and I am with Ginnie where I belong.
Another post-script is scrawled in a different pen color at the bottom:
PPS. Please go check on Orpheus—he’s yours now too, if you’ll have him. I’m afraid I’ve got him spoiled on that expensive Posh Pussycat brand of food, but he’s worth it.
“Oh my gosh! Orpheus!” My mind skips ahead to Bev’s painted “Smash the Patriarchy” hide-a-key rock in the petunia pot on her deep porch and the orange kitten that must be starving by now.
But I make sure to tell her how I feel as I put out my incense and rush to my car.
“I love you and Ginnie, too, Bev. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I will spoil Orpheus absolutely rotten, too.”
FIVE YEARS LATER
The wedding I’m preparing for has officially been dubbed “The Peony Wedding.” The grooms have been growing them together for the past five years—about as long as our shop has been in its new location—and they donated a frothy wealth of them from their garden for their big day.
Cor comes from the back room of our Sweet Sunny Day Flower Shop—the addition of Bev and Ginnie’s chosen last name was Cor’s brilliant idea—with a bucket of the reddest peonies. His apron looks so cute over his t-shirt and blue jeans that I just might have to tear them all off in a minute.
“Hey hot stuff, where are you going with my peonies?”
He grins. “Hello, my beautiful love. I thought you might need these next.” He sits the bucket on my counter and wraps his arms around me from the back, kissing my neck.
“Why thank you—I do.” I kiss his lips and again thank the goddess for letting him come back to me and for allowing him to continue his psychopomp work, which is so important to him. I lean back against him and sigh contentedly at how our lives are now.
When he left me that night all those years ago, I was so afraid I’d never see him again. I waited for three excruciating days. Meeting with the lawyers, overseeing the preparation for Bev’s services, and crying every night for him to come back to me.
And then, like an answered prayer, he appeared in my apartment the night before Bev’s funeral.
He couldn’t tell me much about what happened on the other side, but he told me that he went before Our Heavenly Mother, who listened to his contrition over breaking edicts and not-quite-edicts and granted his petition to stay with me and love me.
Apparently, she’d sent him into service as a psychopomp hoping that he would find the human experience he thought he didn’t want.
My gaze falls on the mural on the wall of our flower shop. It repeats the only words he could relate to me that she spoke: “Love above all.”
I run my hands along Cor’s arms around me, my body flushed with desire. He is right there with me, his hardness pressing against my backside.
“We won’t open for another hour,” he murmurs into my ear.
“Say less, lover.” I turn around and wrap my arms around him, and he lifts me and brings me into our office, to the sofa there that has weathered many afternoons—and mornings, and evenings—of our lovemaking.
He sets me down and kisses me like the delicious snack I am, then searches his eyes and runs a finger along my forehead, no doubt soothing a wrinkle away.
We smile in common understanding—he’s using a loophole in the rules to keep me young and fresh like his flowers, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to live in this earthly slice of heaven for years and years to come as he continues his duties.
My smile curves wickedly at him. I like to think I’m part of his reward for all his hard work.
Kneeling before me, he reaches under my skirt and pulls my panties down my legs, tossing them behind him. His firm hands spread my thighs apart with a smile that would make my panties drop if they weren’t already off, and he pulls my bottom to the end of the deep cushion.
When his open mouth presses hot against my core, I unravel.
He’s more talented than any fae lord or brooding, mythical king, and me and my smutty novels have taught him a thousand ways to engulf us both in pleasure.
He’s so slow and deliberate at his feast between my legs, leaving me a gasping, quivering mess even before he joins me on the sofa and fills me with his hot thickness inch by blessed inch until I am impossibly full, aching with the need for him to move inside me.
I thrust the tip of my breast into his mouth, and he greedily sucks it in, pinching me in his mouth and flicking his tongue to make me moan.
His appetite for my body is vast and insatiable.
Climax after climax barrel through me in heavy, consuming waves, and I wrap my arms around his head, my hands in his hair, exhaling in a long, languid moan.
When the powerful waves of his first climax undulate inside me, he breathes into my ear something that sounds like me. I kiss him like I’m afraid he’ll disappear again, but he doesn’t, and he won’t.
He is mine, and I am his, and we are home.