Chapter 57
Chapter Fifty-Seven
TALLY
Four Months Later
Everyone who matters is here—Cameron, Olivia, Celeste, my mother, Brinley, Cameron’s brothers, father and step-mother and his best friend Eli and his family—all of us gathered in this underground art museum with its soaring ceilings and dramatic lighting.
Lilith stands at the altar looking serene in her ministerial role, a role she took on specifically for today.
When she pronounces us husband and wife, I'll officially become Mrs. Kensington—a name change I once swore would never happen, not for any man on earth.
Yet here I am, practically vibrating with anticipation.
That's the thing about Cameron: he makes me want to break all my own rules.
I'm so fucking grateful for this second shot at everything—life, motherhood with Brinley, love with Cameron.
The docs at the hospital didn't sugarcoat it: eight more hours and I'd have been a goner.
Cameron finding me wasn't just lucky timing; it was the difference between my breathing and… not breathing.
And now? Pure, unbridled fucking joy. You know those people who flatline and come back talking about how everything's more vivid after?
They're not bullshitting. That first pancake after nearly dying tastes like heaven drizzled in maple syrup.
Flowers smell like they're pumping out pure ecstasy.
Makes me think of that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden puts a gun to some convenience store clerk's head just so the poor bastard would finally wake up and actually live. I get it now.
So, yeah, after that shit went down in the woods, I stopped taking the good stuff for granted.
My mom's been sober over a year now—longest stretch since I was ten.
My kid's already stacking blocks like she's building a damn skyscraper, and she's not even supposed to do that for another month.
Liv and Celeste would hide a body for me, no questions asked—and I'd do the same for those bitches.
Got my name on the deed to Manic Muse and a mortgage that's all mine.
Fucking miracle, when you think about it.
And, most of all, having Cameron—the kind of man who leaves notes in my coffee mug and brings home takeout from that Thai place across town just because I mentioned craving it once.
The kind who, despite working those brutal hospital shifts, still has enough energy to pin me against the kitchen counter the second he walks through the door.
Jesus, we've christened every surface in this apartment since I got discharged.
Ten hours a day is all we get because he works so much, and we've made damn sure to use them.
Not just the sex—though holy hell, the sex—but the way he looks at me after, like I'm some kind of miracle he's afraid might disappear if he blinks.
And, yes, we make love all over our house, up against walls, on countertops, bent over furniture—anywhere but in front of the baby.
Thank God Brinley, at just over a year, sleeps like the dead for 14 hours straight.
The second that monitor shows she's down, Cameron's hands are already tearing at my clothes, and I'm clawing at his belt.
We're insatiable. Mom? She's tucked away in the ADU behind our Hancock Park mansion—far enough that she can't hear me screaming his name.
The space fits her grand piano perfectly, which ranks just above oxygen on her priority list, followed by Cam, Brinley, and maybe me.
Sometimes I swear she'd trade me for him in a heartbeat—she worships the ground my future husband walks on.
Yes. Our new house is in Hancock Park, where the air smells like jasmine and money.
It's almost halfway between Cameron's sterile white halls at the UCLA Hospital and the buzzing needles of my tattoo studio.
I expected suburban hell—cookie-cutter houses and pearl-clutching neighbors eyeing my sleeve tattoos—but this place has character.
The streets are lined with jacarandas that rain purple blossoms onto pristine sidewalks.
Massive 1920s mansions with red-tiled Spanish roofs and imposing Tudor facades hide behind wrought-iron gates and perfectly trimmed hedges.
Every Wednesday and Sunday, I can walk three blocks to a farmer's market where hipsters in designer sunglasses sell $15 jars of honey next to old Italian men hawking heirloom tomatoes the size of my fist.
Our new house, which Cameron bought for us, sits like a fairytale castle on an acre of land—all steep gables, decorative half-timbering, and leaded glass windows.
The five-thousand-square-foot Tudor Revival sprawls across its lot, an English manor transplanted to Los Angeles, complete with a stone entrance archway and climbing roses that somehow thrive in the Southern California heat.
He insists it’s a slum compared to his brothers’ homes, and I’m sure he’s right, but to me, it’s a fucking palace.
A palace I barely contributed to, as my Echo Park home was barely above water, which means when I sold it, I only cleared about $5,000 after all the fees were factored in.
Cameron unloaded his Brentwood mansion—and I'm talking actual mansion, not just realtor-speak—then dropped straight cash on this gorgeous Hancock Park place. Three million bucks, and he still had enough left over to buy me this insane ring.
Jesus, this ring though. His brother Silas tracked down this natural black diamond that flashes with these secret colors when it hits the light—deep reds, blues, these moody forest greens.
The platinum band twists around like some badass roses-and-thorns situation.
He says it reminds him of me—which, yeah, the thorns part is pretty damn obvious.
But then he goes and says I'm mostly roses to him.
Beautiful. Colorful. Sweet, if you can fucking believe that.
Cameron's been a freaking saint about this wedding.
When I told him I'd rather get a full-body tattoo of Satan than have some big white circus, the relief on his face was priceless.
Probably still traumatized from flushing half a million down the toilet on that Willow disaster.
I shut down the Vera Wang nightmare scenario real quick.
"One bow tie shows up, and I'm pulling a Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride,” I warned him, though I've never actually seen that movie—Celeste has, because of course she has.
I shot down the fancy catering (told Olivia to leave her chef hat at home and just bring her dancing shoes), and vetoed any cake that that’s taller than my forearm.
Cameron gets it. He's done the whole society-page bullshit before—that Italian villa place with Alecia, and the Beverly Hills mansion he almost used for Willow.
Now he just says, "The only thing that matters is you showing up. "
Last night in bed, with moonlight slicing through our vaulted ceiling and spilling across that massive fig tree outside our balcony—the one I'm definitely hanging a tire swing on for Brinley—he gripped my waist and breathed against my neck, "Jesus Christ, Tally, I wish we were married already. Right fucking now."
"Well, you better," I said, digging my nails into his shoulder. "Because if you aren't desperate to marry me, we have a serious fucking problem, don't we?"
He crushed his mouth against mine before pulling back.
"No. Listen to me. When I was about to marry Willow, my stomach was in knots—the bad kind.
Roman saw it. He told me how he couldn't sleep for three days before marrying Lilith, how his heart hammered every time he thought about making her his. With Willow? I would’ve been counting the hours till it was over.
" He seized my hand, the one with the blinding 3-carat diamond, and pressed it hard against his thundering heart.
"But with you...God, Tally. I can barely breathe when I think about making you mine forever.
I'm burning alive waiting to call you my wife. "
It's fucking surreal - when we're in bed, his fingers weave through my hair like he's memorizing every strand, his hand grips mine so tight I feel our pulses syncing, and he wraps around me like he's terrified I'll disappear.
All the shit I used to run from, I now can't live without.
Post-sex, my head against his thundering heart, his fingertips tracing the ink on my skin like sacred text, whispering things that crack me open - that's what destroys me.
The sex? Christ, it's nuclear. When he's inside me, I scream until my throat burns.
When his tongue claims me, I shatter so completely I forget my own name.
But after? When we're sweat-slicked and breathing like we've been drowning?
That's when I feel branded by him. Owned.
Saved. That intimacy hits harder than any orgasm, and I never saw it coming.
“Ha. Well, I guess that says it all. We were meant to be, as much as I tried to pretend otherwise.”
Yeah, Cameron gets it. He knows now I've been in love with him since that first night, even if I couldn't admit it to myself, let alone him.
I finally told him everything—how I pushed him away because I was convinced I'd wreck his life like I thought I'd wrecked my mom's.
How Sibley helped me see I'd been carrying my mother's addiction like it was my own damn fault.
Like if I'd just hidden her pills better or hadn't set her off, she wouldn't have relapsed again and again.
Like her getting caught was somehow always on me.
So now he knows. All of it. And when he understood I pushed him away because I loved him too much to drag him down with me, everything shifted.
He hauled me to a couples therapist—Dr. Wallace, a thousand bucks an hour—who turned out to be worth every penny.
Six sessions, three times a week for two weeks, and suddenly I could see my patterns clear as day.
The work I'd been doing with my regular therapist for months had laid the groundwork, but nearly dying was what really woke me up.
Dr. Wallace just helped me cross the finish line—to where I'm standing today, about to marry Cameron without a single doubt in my heart.
So, now, here we are, in this sun-drenched art gallery with its gleaming hardwood floors and white walls adorned with vibrant local artwork, surrounded by the people we love in their casual attire and genuine smiles.
No stuffy reception—we're all heading to O'Malley's, that dimly lit dive bar with the cracked leather booths and neon beer signs, to shoot pool on the worn felt tables and throw darts at the cork boards with years of tiny holes.
We'll buy everyone pints of frothy local IPAs and greasy loaded nachos, of course, and then we're going to Indigo, with its intimate stage and blue mood lighting, to hear my Mom's fingers dance across the ivory piano keys. To me, that's a perfect reception.
Only problem is that Brinley can't go, with her chubby cheeks and wispy dark curls, but she'll be hanging out with Violet and Esme, Violet's nanny who smells like cinnamon, at Celeste's mansion, so it won't be too terrible.
She'll be at the wedding, though, toddling down the aisle in her tiny cream-colored dress with the satin bow.
She doesn't understand, although she's 16 months old with those bright, curious eyes that follow everything, so maybe she understands more than I think she does.
And Brinley is hilarious now. In her Gymboree class, she builds wobbly towers of primary-colored blocks, dances with her arms flailing wildly to "The Wheels on the Bus," and creates finger-paintings with bold purple and green swirls that show me she'll have the Steele gene for artwork because it's pretty damned good for a sticky-fingered kid her age.
She's learning all the things I didn't learn until I got into kindergarten—how to share her favorite stuffed giraffe with the drooling boy next to her, how to wait her turn on the mini-slide, how not to scream and throw a tantrum on the polished marble floor of the Westfield Mall, which she actually did one day, becoming dead weight in her little denim overalls and screaming loudly enough to wake the dead.
But she's doing well in Gymboree, and her social skills, according to her Gymboree lady with the perpetually cheerful voice and rainbow-colored scrunchie, are exceptional.
I'm hoping that what's showing up in her this young will be what she'll end up being—she's already empathetic when she pats crying kids on the back and creative with her finger paints and I know she's extremely intelligent as she was talking and walking earlier than many of her peers.
Yeah…I’m one lucky bitch, that’s for goddamn sure.