Epilogue
Shane
The waiter left out drinks on the little tables on each side of the beach recliners, and we snuggled up, inhaling the scent of salt and sand. The sweet coconut scent of slathered sunblock. The zingy lime of the cold margaritas.
I readjusted the beach wrap so that her bullet scar was properly covered. “The plastic surgeon said not to let any sun get on it while it’s healing,” I scolded her gently. “You have to be careful.”
She twitched the wrap open, and touched the puckered, shiny red scar. “I’m thinking I might dress it up with another tattoo, once it’s completely healed,” she mused. “Some big, fun flower. A huge poppy, a Bird of Paradise, something like that.”
I leaned down to kiss it. “If you want. But I think it’s beautiful just like it is. It says to me, I survived the impossible. I conquered all. That makes me happy.”
“Awww. That’s sweet,” she murmured, grabbing her drink for a sip through the paper cocktail straw.
She glanced over to Holly, who had just leaped headfirst into a warm, green-blue wave of seawater.
“The girls are having fun,” she murmured, as Reggie followed suit, shrieking in delight.
“I love to see that. It heals my heart.”
“Yeah, but the whole household seemed pretty shocked that we opted for a honeymoon with two ten-year-olds in tow,” I said. “But after all that time in that cell, I don’t want to take my eyes off Holly. Or Reggie, either. She’s a great kid.”
“So glad we’re in agreement about that. And about staying stuck to them like glue.
Besides, any minute now they’re going to turn into adolescents and tell us to piss off, so we should enjoy these moments while we can.
” She took another sip, and her eyes flashed over to my untouched cocktail. “Don’t you like your margarita?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said. “It’s just hard to let go.”
“Of what?”
I shrugged. “I can’t let down my guard,” I admitted.
“Alcohol makes me relax, and relaxing feels dangerous. I can drink a beer up at the Mountain House, with a gate and a wall and a security staff and sensors and cameras always running. But a beach resort? Any random asshole off the street could come walking down the beach with bad intentions.”
“They could,” she agreed. “But statistically speaking, they won’t.”
“Once the press gets wind of that Halliwell inheritance, those statistics might change,” I warned her.
She winced. “Ay-yi-yi. As if that guy hadn’t screwed with my life enough. He had to unload that particular truckload of bricks onto my head, too.”
I laughed at her. “I bet you’re the only person in the world who has ever looked at two hundred billion dollars in that particular way. Load of bricks, huh?”
“When you’ve been staring death in the face for yourself, your sisters and the man you love?
Yes, actually. That’s the moment that you understand what two hundred billion dollars of ill-gotten gains is actually worth.
Which is to say, not worth shit. And it’s a full-time job for a whole army of number-crunching, bean-counting accountants who need to be managed and monitored.
Which is not how I ever wanted to spend my days. ”
“So delegate,” I suggested. “You want that money spread where it’s most needed, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, her voice doubtful. “Delegate how?”
“Ethan knows this woman, Raine Lazar, in Seattle. She runs a top-rate philanthropic organization, the Grace Foundation. She already has the army of bean-counters ready to go. They’ll help you.
You can unburden yourself of Halliwell’s legacy with no trouble at all.
They’ll know just what to do with it. And they are totally on the level.
They do great projects, all over the world. You can pick and choose.”
She relaxed slightly. “You think? And then we can relax?”
I looked over to where Reggie and Holly played at the water’s edge in their bathing suits, giggling and squealing as they outran the foaming surf.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just because Halliwell is dead and SmokeScreen is wiped out of existence, that doesn’t mean that the world is suddenly a bed of roses.
It’s still full of danger. All the time.
Particularly if you have kids. Relaxing still scares me to death. Sorry.”
Cass took a sip through her straw, smiling. Then she draped her lithe body over mine, reached for my margarita, and put it in my hand. “Take a sip,” she urged me.
I did as she said. It was nice. Ice-cold, tangy and sharp, with the slight burn from the salted edge. She rattled her ice cubes, set down her glass, and cuddled closer.
“It scares me, too,” she said. “But the trick is, we might be scared, but we just don’t stop. We just keep at it, scared or not. We’ve had practice, right?”
I thought about it and took another drink. “True thing.”
“I happen to know first-hand that you function spectacularly well when you’re scared. Catapulting ice sculptures, flinging knives, sniping from helicopters. You rock.”
“You’re pretty damn impressive yourself when it comes to that, babe.”
She shrugged that off. “So let’s just go up to the room while the girls go to their dance thing. We can passionately congratulate each other on how incredibly brave we are.”
“Yum.” I was smiling like a fool. “Sounds like fun.”
“Remember this one thing,” she said. “Write this down. On the bathroom mirror in lipstick. Every good thing that comes your way? You deserve that thing. Got that?”
“Got it,” I said dutifully.
“And every bad thing that comes your way?” she went on.
I waited. “Yeah? What about every bad thing?”
“Fuck that thing,” she said crisply.
I let out a crack of startled laughter and pulled her close. “God, I love you.”