Epilogue
PENELOPE
I was going to throw up. Or pass out. Or throw up and then pass out, which would at least give the book club something to talk about besides my filthy novels.
It had been a couple weeks since my secret had come to light, and I still wasn’t used to it.
Definitely wasn’t used to the sly looks shot my way by knowing patrons or when my girl gang reached out, demanding access to my “pervy little brain” or the husbands who’d come up to me and told me how much they appreciated what my books had done for the, uh, intimacy in their marriages.
I wasn’t used to being so open and vulnerable. And as terrifying as that was, it wasn’t as hard as it once had been. Not now with Declan by my side.
“You’re spiraling.” His voice came from the doorway of the back office at One Night Stan’s, where I’d been pacing a groove into the floor for the past ten minutes.
“I’m not spiraling. I’m preparing.” I smoothed the front of my dress for the fourteenth time and clutched my annotated copy of The House of Sovereign Sin against my chest. “There’s a difference.”
“Uh-huh.” He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching me unravel with the calm understanding of a man who’d seen me do this a hundred times and planned to watch me do it thousands more. “You don’t have to go out there until you’re ready.”
“That would be great.” I nodded quickly, trying to swallow down my nerves, but it was no use. “Except I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”
He pushed off the frame and stepped toward me, crowding my space just enough to stop my pacing. “Then I’ll tell them all to fuck off, and we’ll just go home.”
Home.
My home was no longer the apartment of our shared thirty-day sentence, and it wasn’t the townhouse I’d rented while the owners were enjoying their retirement traveling around the world.
My home was and always would be with Declan.
And right now, that just happened to be in his house—our house.
The dark blue Cape Cod sat on a hill overlooking the water, close enough to hear the waves at night and smell the salt in the air every time you opened a window.
Inside held a kitchen with enough counter space for my tea station and his coffeemaker, a window seat that Darcy had claimed within thirty seconds of arrival, and a room at the end of the hall that held nothing but floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a reading chair bathed in natural light.
Empty. Anticipating. Like he’d left a space in his life and had been waiting for me to fill it.
I scoffed and rolled my eyes at Declan. “You can’t tell patrons to fuck off in your own bar.”
“The hell I can’t.” He turned like he was actually going to do it. “Watch me.”
“Stop.” I caught his arm with a laugh that loosened something in my chest. “I’ll be fine.”
He turned back, cupped a hand around my nape, and pressed his thumb beneath my chin to tip my face up to his. “You’re gonna be better than fine, rebel. And if you’re not, say the word, and we’re out.”
“It’s going to be hard to hear me all the way from the bar.”
His lips twitched the tiniest bit. “It’s cute that you think I’m going to be anywhere except right by your side tonight.”
Of course that was his plan.
I melted into him like always, and he kissed me. Long and slow and grounding, his hand steady at the base of my spine.
When he pulled back, the worst of my panic had been replaced by something warm and settled.
He tipped his head toward the door. “Ready, baby?”
I gripped my book in one hand and his in the other and took a deep breath. “Ready.”
He guided me out, pulling me behind him to clear a path, and then he stepped aside to give me my first look at the bar.
It was overwhelmingly clear Mabel had been in charge of decorations.
Fairy lights tangled with feather boas hung from the ceiling.
Centerpieces made from literal eggplants adorned each table, along with enough glitter that we’d still be finding it for years to come.
And in the center of it all sat what could only be described as a throne, draped in pink satin and ringed with smiling peen garland.
The unhinged decorator herself spotted me before I could retreat and banged a bedazzled cowbell against the bar. “Attention, cliterature queens! The author has arrived! Get that brilliant, filthy mind of yours in the hot seat, sugar!”
Every head in the room turned to me, and my cheeks immediately burned with the heat of a thousand suns. Sutton wolf-whistled while Chloe shrieked. Rowan let out a whoop, and Willa raised her glass in a toast so matter-of-fact it made me laugh despite myself.
Declan’s brothers were once again behind the bar, keeping the place running while he stayed by my side.
Holly sat near the front, glowing with the kind of pride that would’ve been more appropriate at a graduation ceremony than a book club discussing the merits of praise kinks and consensual restraint in a book written by her honorary daughter.
Even Molly and Theo were in attendance, their grins contagious as they waved wildly from their seats at the back.
“You got this, rebel,” Declan murmured, pressing a kiss to my hair.
With a nod and a shaky exhale, I released his hand and took my seat in the ridiculous throne, adjusting a feather boa that immediately tried to strangle me.
Declan didn’t go to the bar. Didn’t find a seat in the back. He positioned himself just behind my right shoulder, arms crossed and scowl in place, and didn’t move.
Rowan raised a brow from across the room. “You standing guard, Dec? Expecting a mob?”
Declan didn’t blink. Just stood there like a six-foot-four wall of tattoos and territorial intent. “Gotta make sure my girl gets what she needs tonight.”
The room went still for half a second. And then Mabel sighed so dramatically the feather boa on the table in front of her fluttered. “Lord have mercy. I think that resuscitated my ovaries.”
Laughter and hoots erupted around us, but I barely paid attention to that. I was pink and breathless and so completely in love with this man that I forgot to be nervous.
What followed was two hours of the most chaotic, hilarious, and deeply affirming experience of my life.
The people in attendance asked real questions—about my process, my inspiration, why I’d hidden behind a pen name.
I answered honestly, and with each response, I felt another piece of armor I’d been wearing for years fall away, leaving only me in its wake.
Mabel ran a sex toy raffle between discussion questions. Rowan made a very specific comment about chapter fourteen that nearly made Declan choke on his beer. Chloe proposed that Eden Foxbury deserved her own holiday, and somehow the motion passed unanimously.
At the end of the night, Molly stepped up to me with a grin so wide, it nearly split her face in two. She clutched The House of Sovereign Sin to her chest. “Don’t run out this time, okay?”
I breathed out a laugh, took the book from her outstretched hand, and signed it without hesitation, inscribing a note just for her.
You didn’t know you were changing my life that day, but you did. Thank you isn’t enough.
She glanced at it, her eyes immediately filling with tears, and her spine snapped straight, like she could force the emotion down through sheer force of will.
She cleared her throat, muttered something about allergies, and disappeared into the crowd before I could say another word.
I let her go. Some people needed privacy to feel things. I understood that better than most.
Declan materialized beside me after the crowd thinned, nearly everyone having filed out besides a couple stragglers, the Steele men, and my friends. “Ready to go home?”
I glanced up at him, and the look on his face—quiet pride wrapped in that permanent broody scowl—made my heart so full it hurt. “Ready.”
We were heading toward the door, calling out our goodbyes, when the cold evening air swept in from behind us, sharp and sudden.
A man I’d never seen before strode in—tall, dark-haired, his jaw set in a firm line and his eyes hard. He scanned the room with a quick, assessing gaze before making his way to the bar.
“Kitchen’s closed,” Atlas said without looking up. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m looking for Stan.”
The name landed like a grenade. Declan’s entire body went rigid at my side, his hand tightening against the small of my back. Across the room, Lincoln’s easy grin vanished. Xander straightened almost imperceptibly from where he leaned against the wall.
Atlas finally looked up, his expression pure granite. “Can’t help you.”
The stranger didn’t flinch. Didn’t back down. He just stood there, absorbing the wall of hostility like he’d been expecting it.
“My name’s Maverick Holt.”
It didn’t ring a bell for me. And apparently not for anyone else either, as they all continued regarding him with blank stares. The brothers had clearly perfected this particular brand of dismissal over the years.
But this guy didn’t back down or walk away.
“Maverick Steele Holt.” His voice was harder now as he slid his gaze over each brother, one by one. “And I’m pretty sure someone here knows how the fuck to find my father.”
Thank you for reading The Roommate Rules!