Epilogue #2
Sloane settled back onto the couch, glancing toward the kitchen, where Draven and Diane were deep in some debate about whether the baby’s latest growth spurt warranted a size change in her clothes already.
She thought about how impossible this exact scene would have seemed to her a year ago, sitting on a bathroom floor in a wedding dress, certain she’d never trust another man’s promises again.
She hadn’t pictured this, any of it, the rooftop, the contract, the man who’d orchestrated his way into her life with a precision that had once terrified her and now simply read as devotion.
She certainly hadn’t pictured a kitchen full of people who loved her without condition, a daughter sleeping peacefully down the hall, a mother humming hymns while she cooked dinner for a family that had somehow grown to include her fully again.
Hugh reappeared a few minutes later, mildly sheepish, Aaliyah now wide awake and fussing softly in his arms despite his earlier confidence. “Okay, in my defense, she was already stirring before I even got close.”
“Of course she was.” Draven crossed the room in three long strides and took his daughter from his brother with the easy, instinctive confidence of a man who’d already logged a hundred late nights perfecting exactly this motion, settling her against his shoulder and bouncing her gently until her fussing eased into soft, curious silence.
He pressed a brief kiss to the crown of her head, murmuring something too low for anyone else to catch, and Sloane watched the whole exchange with a familiar warmth pooling low in her chest.
“You’re not even going to pretend to be subtle about how possessive you are over that baby,” Hugh said, settling onto the arm of the couch, grinning.
“No,” Draven agreed simply, without a trace of apology. “I’m not.”
“He’s the same with Sloane,” Diane called from the kitchen, stirring something on the stove without looking up. “Watches her like she might disappear if he blinks too long. Has done since the day they met, from what I understand.”
“She did disappear once,” Draven said, glancing toward Sloane with the faintest, knowing curve to his mouth. “I had to hire a man to find her.”
“You’ll never let that go, will you.” Sloane shook her head, though affection colored every syllable of the complaint.
“Not for as long as I live.” He came to sit beside her, Aaliyah now drowsy and quiet against his chest again, and slung his free arm around Sloane’s shoulders, pulling her in against his side with the same easy, possessive certainty he’d carried since that very first night.
“I found something worth keeping. I intend to keep finding new reasons to be grateful for it for the rest of my life.”
The evening wound down slowly, dinner stretched out over easy conversation, Hugh and Draven trading old stories about their childhood that always seemed to grow slightly more exaggerated with each retelling, Diane asking Hugh more questions about Renee than he was entirely prepared to answer with a straight face.
Aaliyah made the rounds between laps at the table, passed gently from one set of arms to another, utterly unbothered by the noise and warmth surrounding her.
* * *
Later, once Hugh had said his goodbyes and Diane had retreated to the guest cottage for the night, humming the same half-remembered hymn under her breath as she crossed the lawn, Sloane stood at the nursery window with Aaliyah finally settled and asleep in her arms, watching the lights flicker on in the cottage a hundred yards away.
Draven came up behind her, wrapping both arms around her waist, his chin resting against the top of her head, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all, simply watching their daughter sleep in the soft glow of the nightlight.
“I used to think a life like this wasn’t built for someone like me,” Sloane said quietly, breaking the silence.
“Every time something good happened, I kept waiting for the moment it would all fall apart, the way it had before. I think I spent the entire pregnancy bracing for some version of an ending.” She paused, watching Aaliyah’s small chest rise and fall against her own.
“Even after the wedding. Even after the house. Some small, stubborn part of me kept waiting for something to come along and ruin all of it.”
“I know.” His arms tightened slightly around her.
“I watched you do it. I think I understand now why it took you so long to believe any of this was real.” He pressed a slow kiss against her hair.
“I used to think that meant I had to prove something to you constantly, every single day, like there was a number of proofs I could finally reach where you’d stop bracing.
I don’t think that anymore either. I think you just needed time. Not convincing. Time.”
“I believe it now.” She turned slightly in his arms, careful not to disturb the baby cradled between them, and looked up at him. “I don’t brace for the ending anymore, Draven. I just get to live in it. In this. However long it lasts.”
“It lasts forever.” He said it simply, no hesitation, the same unshakable certainty he’d carried with him since the very first night he decided she was worth pursuing. “I told you that on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, and I meant it then exactly as much as I mean it now.”
She leaned into him, resting her cheek against his chest, listening to the steady, familiar rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her ear while their daughter slept warm and safe in her arms. Outside the window, the lights in the cottage dimmed one by one as Diane settled in for the night, close enough to walk over in the morning, exactly the way Draven had promised her she would be.
The estate sat quiet and full around them, every room holding some small piece of the family they’d built since a chance night on a rooftop two years ago.
Sloane carried Aaliyah to the crib and laid her down gently, watching her settle into sleep with the particular trust only an infant could manage, certain in her small body that nothing in the world could touch her here.
Draven came to stand beside her, his hand finding the small of her back, and together they watched their daughter sleep for a long, quiet moment before finally, softly, closing the door behind them.
“Come to bed,” he murmured, his hand sliding down to lace through hers.
“In a minute.” She turned to look at him fully in the dim hallway light, taking in the whole of him, the man who’d once pretended not to watch her from across a rooftop, who’d orchestrated an entire career path just to keep her close, who’d learned to soothe a crying infant at two in the morning with the same fierce devotion he’d once reserved only for boardrooms and acquisitions.
“I just want to remember this exact moment a little longer first.”
“We have a lifetime of exact moments ahead of us.” He pulled her gently against him, pressing a slow kiss to her temple.
“But I understand the impulse. I have it constantly, these days. I look at you, at her, at all of it, and I find myself wanting to hold onto every single second a little longer than I probably should.”
“Maybe that’s just what it feels like,” she said softly, “when you finally land somewhere worth staying.”
He didn’t answer with words, just pulled her closer, his arms wrapping fully around her in the quiet hallway outside their sleeping daughter’s door, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, Sloane let herself simply exist inside the moment without bracing for whatever might come after it.
* * *