50. Epilogue Zayn
Epilogue: Zayn
Three months later
“That’s not how you make them,” Annie grumbles under her breath.
When she asked me to help make cookies for Cassie and Emmett’s baby shower, this isn’t what I pictured. I figured we’d go to the store, buy the cookie dough, bake the cookies. What does Annie want to do? Make everything from scratch, of course.
“Princess, I’m rolling the cookies like you told me.” I glare in her direction as I roll this cookie into the best fucking sphere someone has ever seen. “See?” I hold it up so she can admire my work.
“That’s much better. No more of these oval shaped, lumpy cookies.”
“You’re bossy.”
“It’s only because I love you,” Annie says, smiling in my direction.
“It’s because you love me that you’re bossy?” I quip.
She giggles as she rolls the cookie spheres in a cinnamon sugar mixture. “I can’t marry you if you can’t make cookies. I’m just trying to set us up for success here.” She adds a shrug before she waltzes over to me to plant a kiss on my cheek.
“You’ve already said yes. You can’t back out now.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Annie beams up at me, and I can tell she’s thinking back to a month ago when I proposed.
She moved back in two months prior, and I knew I wasn’t going to let her get away this time. Annie is too important to me, and the fact that she came back for me meant that she was choosing me just as much as I was choosing her.
She moved back in the same night of the party at January Studios.
We took the time to go over the contract for her new job together, and I even had her talk to my lawyer about some of the details to make sure she was getting the best deal.
There was no way my girl was going to regret taking this job.
Everything worked out, and she started a week after.
Her first client was a younger actress, barely twelve, who needed help with interviews.
Pulse PR got plugged into the Young Actors Association, and now they offer free help each month to our scholarship winners.
It’s been incredible to see Annie blossom in her role, taking on more responsibilities, and making sure that her voice is heard.
She deserves it, after all. Everyone deserves to achieve their dream.
“Okay, I think we’re done,” Annie says as she scans the counter.
Five dozen cookies lay on cooling racks, ready to be packed and transported to the baby shower tomorrow.
I’m leaning against the counter, watching Annie take it all in. Inspecting a few cookies, and smiling at our work. She saunters over to me and wraps an arm around my waist. I loop an arm around hers and pull her tight against me, allowing her head to rest on my chest.
“This is perfect,” she says with a sigh.
“What is?” I ask.
“Just, all of this. Some days I think what would have happened if I was assigned a different client a year ago. Then I wouldn’t have all this, I wouldn’t have you.”
“You don’t know that. We might have reconnected eventually,” I say.
“Maybe,” Annie drawls.
“But I get it because I think about that too. If you didn’t come around, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I might have gotten my shit together and somehow landed up getting the role, but I’d still feel like an empty shell. I wouldn’t have someone to share these memories with.”
“Yeah, you’re lucky you have me,” Annie says matter-of-factly.
I pinch her side and she squirms toward me.
“We would have found each other though. Even if you were never my publicist, Princess.”
Annie lifts her head from my chest to look at me. “You think so?”
“Without a doubt,” I say, kissing her forehead. “I would have found you, would have made you mine, in every lifetime.”