Epilogue #2
I’d seen him in battle mode. In protect-Amelia-at-all-costs mode. In bed, undone and unguarded.
This was different.
“I’ve been trying to find the right time,” he said. “And the right place. Somewhere that isn’t a hotel hallway or a war room.”
My pulse thudded in my throat.
“We’re going back to Dominion Hall after this,” he said. “We’re going to tuck ourselves into that suite down the hall from my brothers, and we’re going to pretend it’s normal to live in a fortress while someone with a vendetta circles the perimeter.”
“Your sales pitch needs work,” I said, but my voice was barely a whisper.
“We’re going to build something of our own when we can,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “A place that’s ours. Somewhere between my world and yours.”
A smile tugged at my mouth despite everything. “That’s a lot of logistics for a walk by the lake.”
“I’ve had time to plan,” he said. “Ever since I saw you in that stupid hotel lobby in Charleston, looking like you’d just survived a war and still had room in your head to worry about everyone else.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, and my heart did something wild and painful in my chest.
“Your parents are worried,” he said. “They look at me and they see danger. Guns. Secrets. The kind of life they never wanted for you.”
“They also see the way you look at me,” I said, throat tight.
“I can’t promise them this is safe,” he said. “Because it isn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
“Levi,” I murmured.
He stepped closer, close enough that the heat of him pressed against the cold.
“I can’t promise them safety,” he repeated.
“But I can promise you this—if you stay with me, I will spend every breath I have making sure whatever hits us hits me first. I will put my body, my name, my family’s resources between you and anything that tries to take you away.
Not because I think you can’t handle yourself.
But because I can’t handle a world where you’re not in it. ”
The world narrowed to his face. His words. The faint scent of soap and woodsmoke on his jacket.
He took something out of his pocket and held it out between us.
For a second, I thought it was the compass. Then the starlight caught metal, and my brain finally caught up.
It was a ring.
Simple. Elegant. A thin band of gold with a single stone, not too big, set low and practical, like it was meant to survive the real world and not just photos.
My vision blurred.
“I bought this the day we ran into each other at the hotel,” he said.
“Before the van. Before Victoria. Before Byron told us just how deep all this goes. I’ve been carrying it around like some kind of talisman while we put fires out.
I’m done waiting for the perfect moment.
There isn’t one. There’s just this. You.
Me. A dangerous world and a cold lake and your parents pretending they’re not watching from the kitchen window. ”
I made a small, helpless sound. I couldn’t help it. His voice, his face, the way his hand shook just slightly—it all crashed into me at once.
“Amelia Emerson,” he said, and my name in his mouth felt like a vow. “I love you. I love your brain and your stubbornness and the way you chase the truth even when it scares you. I love that you walked into my father’s war room and changed the entire conversation.”
I laughed, wet and shaky.
He took a breath.
“Marry me,” he said. “Be my home. Let me be yours. We’ll hunker down at Dominion Hall for as long as we have to, build our own place when we can, and fight whatever we have to fight in between. Just … do it with me.”
There it was.
The question I’d been circling.
Do you want this?
Not the fantasy version. Not the clean, easy one.
This. A man with blood on his hands and love in his eyes. A life built in the crosshairs. A family that came with yachts and war rooms and people who’d go to war for each other. A job that now meant steering an entire newsroom through a minefield.
I thought of my parents inside, hands wrapped around coffee mugs. The worry in my mother’s eyes, the acceptance in my father’s. They were scared. They would always be a little scared.
I was, too.
But when I pictured my future, my mind didn’t go to award ceremonies or bylines.
It went to Levi lying on some future sofa, half-asleep with a book on his chest. To him carrying groceries into a kitchen we chose together.
To him sitting across from my parents at this same table ten years from now, arguing about hockey and politics and whose turn it was to do the dishes.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Relief crashed across his face so quickly it almost hurt to watch. The hard lines softened, his shoulders dropping like he’d been carrying a weight I couldn’t see.
“Yeah?” he said, a little hoarse. “That’s a yes?”
“Obviously it’s a yes,” I said, tears spilling over now. “Did you really think I got on a plane with you to bring you home just to friend-zone you on the shore of my childhood lake?”
He laughed—a real, rough, delighted sound—and picked up my left hand with careful, callused fingers. The ring slid on easily, like my body had been waiting for it without telling me.
Gold against skin. Cold metal warming fast.
He leaned in and kissed me, slow and sure, his hand coming up to cradle the back of my neck like I was precious and breakable and his.
When we finally pulled back, my nose was red, my cheeks were wet, and my heart felt too big for my chest.
“Okay, fiancé,” I said, tasting the word. It fizzed in my mouth like champagne. “We should probably go tell my parents before my mother comes running out here with a thousand questions.”
“She already knows,” he murmured, brushing his thumb along my cheekbone. “But yeah. Let’s go tell them, anyway.”
We walked back up the path, his hand warm around mine, the ring catching starlight with every swing of my arm.
Through the kitchen window, I saw my parents at the table. Mom’s hands were over her mouth. Dad’s arm was around her shoulders.
They weren’t worried in that moment. They were just two people who’d watched their daughter walk out into the dark with a man and were now seeing her come back with a ring on her finger.
We stepped inside to a flurry of hugs and tears and terrible jokes about dowries. Mom grabbed my hand and inspected the ring like she’d been in on the design.
“It’s perfect,” she said, voice thick. “Simple. Strong. You’ll be able to type in it.”
“That was the idea,” Levi said.
Dad hugged me hard enough to make my ribs creak, then pulled Levi into his arms so abruptly it startled them both.
“Welcome to the family, son,” he said gruffly into Levi’s shoulder. “Try not to get my kid killed. I’m very fond of her.”
“I’m very fond of her, too,” Levi said, and his voice shook just enough for me to hear it.
Later, in the small guest room that still smelled faintly like my teenage self, we lay awake with the ring catching the glow from the streetlight outside. Levi’s body was a long, solid line of heat beside me, his arm heavy across my waist.
His palm slid from my waist to the dip just beneath my ribs, thumb brushing the underside of my breast through the thin cotton of my shirt.
“Stop thinking so loud,” he murmured against the back of my neck, voice gravel and midnight.
“I can’t.” My voice cracked on the last word. “You put a ring on me, Levi.”
His low laugh vibrated through my spine. “Still processing, huh?”
I rolled over to face him. Moonlight striped across the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the straight line of his nose, the mouth I’d kissed a thousand times and somehow still wanted more. The diamond on my left hand glinted when I reached up to trace his lower lip.
“I want to feel it,” I whispered. “That it’s real. That you’re mine now. Officially.”
Something fierce flashed behind his eyes. He caught my wrist, turned it, and pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the center of my palm. Then he guided my hand down between us, wrapping my fingers around the hard length of him straining against his boxer briefs.
“Feel that?” His voice dropped to a growl. “That’s been yours since the first time you looked at me like I was a story you hadn’t decided whether to write or burn.”
I squeezed, and he hissed through his teeth.
My shirt was gone in seconds, yanked over my head and tossed toward the rocking chair my mother swore was an antique. My panties followed. He shoved his own underwear down far enough to free himself and kicked them off the foot of the bed.
Skin to skin, the years collapsed. We were in the desert again, sneaking around in that tent, both of us pretending we weren’t already in too deep.
Only this time, when he slid inside me, there was no pretending anything.
He pushed in slow, watching my face like he was memorizing the exact moment I took him home. I was slick, ready, but still the stretch burned in the best way. He was thick, relentless, perfect. When he bottomed out, we both stilled, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air.
“Engaged,” he said, voice rough with wonder. “You’re going to marry me.”
“Yes,” I breathed.
He pulled back and drove in again, deeper this time, hips rolling in that controlled, lethal way only a man who’d spent years mastering his body could manage. My legs wrapped high around his waist, ankles locking just above the dimples at the base of his spine.
Every thrust nudged the headboard against the wall in soft, rhythmic thumps that sounded obscene in the quiet house. I should’ve cared that my parents were two doors down, that the floorboards creaked, that the bed was too small for what we were doing to it. I didn’t.
I dragged my nails through his hair, down the nape of his neck, and he shuddered.
“Harder,” I whispered against his mouth. “Make me feel it tomorrow when I’m sitting at my mother’s table pretending to be a good daughter.”
He groaned—half laugh, half curse—and gave me exactly what I asked for. One arm hooked under my knee, opening me wider, changing the angle until every stroke lit me up from the inside. The other hand slid between us, fingers finding my clit with devastating accuracy.
I bit his shoulder to muffle the sounds I couldn’t hold back. He tasted like salt and heat and forever.
The pleasure coiled tighter, faster, until I was shaking beneath him, chasing it, begging without words. He circled my clit once, twice, then pressed hard and held.
I came with his name caught behind my teeth, inner muscles clenching around him in long, rolling waves. He followed seconds later, hips snapping forward, burying himself deep and spilling inside me with a broken sound that was half sob, half prayer.
We stayed tangled like that, sweat cooling, hearts racing. He didn’t pull out. He just shifted enough to keep his weight off me, face buried in my neck, lips moving silently against my skin like he was saying vows no one else would ever hear.
Eventually he lifted his head. The streetlight caught the ring again as I cupped his jaw.
“Fiancé,” I whispered.
His smile was slow, soft, devastating. “Future wife.”
Outside, snow started to fall past the window. Inside, we were warm, wrecked, and finally, unquestionably his.
In a few days, we’d fly back to Charleston.
We’d drive up the long, winding drive to Dominion Hall and move our things into the suite down the hall from his brothers.
We’d fall asleep to the sound of the ocean and the hum of security systems, hunkered down in a fortress while an enemy with an old grudge circled somewhere out in the dark.
We’d build a life inside those walls.
Danger was waiting. Watching.
But tonight, listening to Levi’s heartbeat and my parents’ ancient furnace churning in the walls, the fear didn’t feel as sharp as it had before.
I had my work. I had a family made of blood and choice and battle. I had a ring on my finger and a man beside me who would walk into hell if it meant I came back out.
I slipped my hand into his under the covers, fingers fitting between his like they’d been made to.
Wherever the compass pointed next, I knew this much:
I’d follow him anywhere.
And somehow, impossibly, that felt like the truest thing.
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