Epilogue
AURORA
Life is different. Life is good.
Life is my life. Mine. My own, nobody else’s. There’s nobody to tell me what to do anymore. Nobody keeping me locked up.
The office is cozy in its new setup. It’s only been a few weeks since Liam opened it up to me, and I’m still getting used to spending so much time together, but I like it more every day. He’s in his world, I’m in mine, but we make it work.
And he was right. Being able to look up from my screen to watch him reading or typing…
it’s nice. Spending time together fills the lonely void I dealt with all those years.
It lights up my heart and always makes me smile to see him sitting there.
I feel like I’m home, for the first time. I’m really home.
I’m a little embarrassed when he looks up and finds me watching.
“Hi,” he murmurs with a tiny grin. Could I ever have imagined this becoming possible?
Sharing an office with him? Wanting to spend time with him instead of being forced into it?
When I think back on that first night, how scared and angry and disgusted I was by him, it’s like I’m thinking back on another person’s life. Not mine.
“Hi,” I reply. “Sorry. You caught my eye.”
“You don’t ever have to apologize for that.” He jerks his chin in my direction. “How’s it going?”
“I have a ton of reading to do,” I report after finishing watching my latest lecture.
Intro to Psychology, pretty basic stuff, but what matters more is what it stands for.
It symbolizes me taking the first step into the future.
I can’t wait to dig in further, to take more classes, to start living like a normal person.
I can dream now. Not just fantasies, the kind of things I know will never come true. I can make it all come true.
And a lot of that is thanks to Liam, of course. It’s all thanks to him. He freed me by taking me hostage. It’s weird when I think about it that way, but it’s the truth.
Maggie is nice enough to bring us sandwiches for lunch which we eat at our respective desks while Liam goes through reports.
He’s doing everything he can to keep himself busy.
When he’s not busy, he’s thinking about Laura, and whether Nick will be able to bring her home.
So of course, why not restructure the businesses that landed in his lap after we were married? No better time, I guess.
He scowls when his phone rings, but his expression clears up when he sees who’s calling. “Ethan,” he murmurs, then picks up. “How’s it going?”
Then he looks at me. It’s the kind of look that makes my breath catch and my heart get stuck in my throat. “You’re serious? Hold on. Let me put you on speaker. I’m here with Aurora now.”
What’s this all about? Ethan’s voice comes through. “Hey, Aurora. Liam, how much does she know?”
“I told you, this has been between the two of us.”
“What is he talking about?” I ask. I don’t like the sound of any of this. I feel the old doubts and fears creeping in.
“We found her,” Ethan announces. “We found your mom.”
The news makes me fall back in my chair. I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach—all of the air leaves my body, and it takes a second to pull any back in.
“I told you, didn’t I?” Liam gets up and comes over to me, pulling me from my chair, wrapping me in his embrace. “I told you we would find her.”
“As it turns out, she’s been trying to find you for years,” Ethan explains. All I can do is lean against Liam and try to keep up. Mom. They found Mom. My actual mother. She’s real, she’s alive. And she was trying to find me.
“You’re sure it’s her?” It’s the first thing I can think to ask. “It’s really her?”
“She’s been living under her maiden name around fifteen hundred miles away,” Ethan explains.
“I’m sure she can tell you all about it.
Suffice it to say, Donovan made it impossible for her to come anywhere close to you, so she figured she would go far away, and it would make everything easier to live with. ”
My mom. My actual mother. Somebody I thought was dead all my life. She was out there, wanting me, missing me. “I can’t believe it,” I whisper.
“I can send you everything I have on her,” Ethan offers. I only nod my head furiously, too emotional to say another word. I turn my face, pressing it against Liam’s chest, clinging to him for dear life. She’s alive. They found her.
“Do that,” Liam tells him. “Get back in touch with her. We can set up a video call.”
“I need a minute,” I manage to choke out. “Maybe later today. I need… time.”
“You’ve got it,” Ethan tells me before three beeps signal the end of the call. Now, without him listening in, I can stop fighting the wave of emotion that’s trying to drown me. Liam holds me through it all, rocking me in his arms, giving me exactly what I need.
I’m still a shaky, tear-stained mess by the time the worst of it passes and I can breathe again. I feel weak, shaky, when I go to the bathroom to wash my face. When I come out, Maggie is brewing me a cup of tea at Liam’s instruction. He sits me down in the kitchen. “Are you happy?” he asks.
I can’t believe he needs to ask that. “I’m overwhelmed,” I admit with a shaky laugh, “but I’m happy. It doesn’t feel real!”
“I’ll bring her out here as soon as possible,” he promises. “We can work all of that out. Whatever the two of you want.”
His phone buzzes and he checks it. “Six o’clock. That’s when she’ll be free.”
Six o’clock? That’s five hours. But then I guess I’ve waited all my life, right? I can wait until then. “I’ll be ready.”
The thing is, how is a person ready for something like this?
Time has never moved so slowly as it does today, every minute feeling like an hour.
I wind up abandoning my reading for now—there’s no way I can concentrate.
Instead, I fool around with one of the games I downloaded to my machine, but even then I can’t concentrate well enough to make any progress.
What has she been doing all this time? Was Dad the reason she left?
Did he force her into it, or did she make her own decision?
I should write these questions down, but then I don’t want her to feel overwhelmed.
Besides, we have plenty of time now. There’s nobody keeping us apart anymore.
Finally, it’s a few minutes to six. I spent a little more of my time finding the right thing to wear. I mean, I’m meeting my mom. I want to look my best. The one thing I don’t bother with is makeup, since something tells me this is going to be emotional.
“How do I look?” I ask Liam, running my hands down the front of my blouse.
Smiling down at my from beside my desk, he murmurs, “Beautiful, as always. She’ll be so proud when she sees you.”
That was the perfect thing to say if he was trying to make me cry. “Please, not yet,” I beg, fanning my hands in front of my eyes. “I don’t want to start off crying my eyes out.”
I sign in to the link Ethan sent, my nerves jangling, my hands trembling. My heart is going a million miles an hour as the screen changes and a video window pops up.
And then there she is, already waiting. I know the second I lay eyes on her that this is my mother. She looks just like me. I always wondered how I wound up with blond hair and blue eyes. I got them from her, along with her complexion, her nose, the shape of her mouth.
“Oh, my God.” She covers her mouth with shaking hands. “Is it you? It’s really you!”
“It’s me,” I whisper. “Hi.”
“Oh, Aurora…” she breathes, crossing her hands over her chest now. “I can’t believe it. I tried for so long. I wanted you so much. Please, I need you to know that. I need you to understand it.”
“We can talk about everything, I promise,” I reply. “But I understand.”
“Do you? That’s the one thing that’s kept me up at night all these years.
Whether you understand. Look.” She holds up a framed picture of what could easily be me holding a newborn, but it’s her.
I’m the baby. “I have slept with this by my bed every single night all these years. This is all I have. I just want you to know, I never stopped loving you, baby. Not for a minute.”
It’s too much. My heart is too full. All I can do is laugh and cry at the same time and cover my face with my hands.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she tells me with tears in her voice. “This must be a lot for you.”
Liam hands me a tissue, and I take it, dabbing my eyes before blowing my nose. “I’m so happy. I really am,” I tell her in case she has the wrong idea. “He told me… I thought you were…”
“I understand. The man who found me gave me the rundown. I understand he’s gone now, your father.” She doesn’t bother hiding her bitterness, not that I would expect her to after he kept us apart all this time.
“What happened?” I guess that’s the first thing I need to know. How it all happened to begin with.
“I decided I needed to get away from him.” Her voice is so soft, so sweet.
It’s filled with all the love I missed for so long.
“I needed to get you away, too. I didn’t want to raise you in his world.
I was young and stupid when we got married—but you came out of it, so there was a purpose, anyway. Look at you. You’re so beautiful!”
“So are you,” I croak before blowing my nose again. I’m sure I look very beautiful right now, all red-faced and snotty and teary.
“He found out about the plans I was making.” Sorrow fills her voice and her chin trembles.
“It was very ugly. I finally had no choice but to leave town when you were around two years old. He threatened all kinds of things if I ever tried to take you. And I did,” she adds.
“I tried to take you away from him. I guess you could call it kidnapping, but I was unsuccessful. He had eyes in the back of his head,” she mutters with a miserable groan.
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” I decide. “I want to talk about you, and me. When can we meet up in person?” I blurt out.
She laughs gently. “Am I dreaming?”
“If you are, then I am,” I point out. “But I think this is real.”
I look up at Liam, standing off to the side. He smiles. “Yeah, I think it’s real,” I decide.
“I love you very much,” she says. Tears stream down her cheeks the way they stream down mine. “Thank you for wanting to find me. I gave up hope of ever seeing you again.”
“I promise nothing is ever going to stand in our way from now on.” And the thing is, I’m confident enough to make that promise.
I believe it. All thanks to the man whose arms I fall into when the call ends.
He holds me for a long time while I cry, comforting me without saying a word, letting me go through what I need to go through without hurrying me along.
“Thank you,” I manage through my tears. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“All I want is whatever it takes for you to have everything you need,” he whispers tenderly.
I believe him. My heart believes him. It feels like the last piece of the puzzle has been set in place. I’m home. I’m exactly where I need to be.
The words come out easily. “I love you, Liam. I really love you.”
I could drown in his eyes, staring into mine while he holds my face in his hands. Gentle, like I’m something precious. “I have loved you for a while now,” he whispers. “And I plan on loving you for the rest of my life.”
I believe him. Finally, I found someone worth believing in. Somebody who makes me believe in myself. That’s worth everything.
Thank you for reading The Knight’s Queen.