Epilogue Two - The Ashes
Jacob
Summer's out at the mall with Constance and Adelaide.
Part of me hates not having her here beside me.
The rest of me knows she needs it. Needs the laughing.
Needs stupid gossip and the overpriced milkshakes she hasn’t stopped talking about.
Needs a few hours where she isn't waking up out of a nightmare or going still every time an unknown number lights up her phone.
She's fought too fucking hard to claw those pieces back.
And honestly? Watching her smile again is the only thing that's kept me sane these last few months.
I stand in the middle of my backyard staring at the clusterfuck surrounding me and wonder how a man who dismantled an entire trafficking operation can't organize one surprise party without nearly causing a structural collapse.
The gazebo is finally up. Barely.
One of the support beams came down on Mason's head an hour ago and he damn near launched the whole thing into the sun.
"I swear to Christ," he'd snarled, while Carter folded in half laughing, "if this thing kills me after everything we survived, I'm haunting every one of you bastards."
Now white drapes shift softly around the edges of it in the breeze while Black balances on a ladder stringing lights through the trees.
The yard actually looks good. Really fucking good. Tables dressed in white linen scattered across the grass. Fairy lights wound around the fencing and the trunks. Music drifting from the speakers near the porch.
And for the first time since Rivers Ridge, my soul feels warm again.
Not haunted. Not full of ghosts.
Home.
Carter jumps down off the ladder after hanging the last of the bunting and wipes his hands down his jeans. "So, boss. What's next?"
Honestly? I don't know anymore.
I can run a sheriff's department. Coordinate a raid. Lead men into a building with no numbers and no backup. Sit across a table from a psychopath and take him apart with nothing but patience.
Apparently planning a proposal party is where God decided to humble me.
"Catering should be here in half an hour," I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair.
Pain rips straight through my shoulder.
"Fuck."
The hiss is out through my teeth before I can stop it.
Carter clocks it instantly. "You need to stop using that arm for everything."
"Yeah, well." I flex my fingers through the ache. "My left arm's useless."
Not entirely true anymore. The wound's healing well. Still hurts like a bitch, though—especially when I forget and lift something I shouldn't. Or reach too fast. Or do basically anything Summer's told me not to.
Black snorts from the ladder. "You got shot through the shoulder, boss. Maybe stop acting surprised it hurts."
"Appreciate the medical advice."
He gives me a sarcastic salute.
Mason walks past carrying another stack of chairs. "You're gonna end up back in the hospital before she even gets home."
"Not happening. Tamara would never shut up about it."
That gets a laugh out of everybody. Even me.
I head inside eventually and grab three beers out of the fridge, kicking the back door shut behind me with my foot.
"Fellas. Take five."
They follow me over to the porch and drop into the chairs looking about as wrecked as I feel.
Mason twists the cap off his beer and studies me. "Still sure you wanna do this, boss?"
I glance at him.
He shrugs. "It's a big thing."
Marriage. Forever. Commitment.
Funny thing is, none of that scares me. Not even slightly.
Losing her scares me. The thought of a world with Summer somewhere in it that isn't beside me—that terrifies the absolute fuck out of me. But marrying her? Easy. Easiest thing ever.
"I knew the moment I laid eyes on her," I say quietly.
And I did. Even back then. Even when she hated me. Even when she looked at me like I was the villain in her story and she wasn't entirely wrong about it.
Something in me knew. Summer Miller was always going to ruin me for every other woman alive.
Mason lets out a slow breath through puffed cheeks. "Well," he says eventually. "You two make a hell of a couple."
Something settles strange in my chest at that.
Because after all the blood and the bodies and everything we dragged ourselves through—we still somehow ended up here. At this. At a garden full of fairy lights and folding chairs.
I go back inside afterward and check the ring box again. For maybe the millionth time today.
Still there. Obviously. But I needed to see it again,
The stone catches the kitchen light when I flip the lid open. Beautiful. Different. Perfect for her.
I close it carefully just as the catering company starts coming through the side gate.
After that it's chaos. Food trays. Flowers. Music checks. Mason swearing at folding chairs. Black nearly putting an entire crate of champagne glasses through the patio.
An hour later, I finally get upstairs to shower and change.
It's hot today, so I go with chino shorts and a white linen shirt instead of jeans, and it feels strange as hell wearing normal clothes. Most of my life has been spent in a uniform with a badge clipped to my chest.
Funny how fast things change.
By the time I come back down, people have started arriving properly.
Harris and Sarah got here a while ago, and seeing the two of them together still does something to me every time. Because every time I look at them I'm back in that warehouse. The old man tied to a chair behind a curtain. Sarah running the length of the floor toward him.
I think she and Summer help each other more than either of them knows. They talk most days now.
Reyes turns up about twenty minutes after them.
First time I've seen the man out of a hospital gown since the night we loaded him into the back of my truck. He's thinner than he was. There's still dressing taped under his shirt from the last surgery—I catch the corner of it at his collar when he turns.
And Mason is at the gate before Reyes has got both feet out of the car.
Which is interesting, because I've been watching Mason check that gate all afternoon.
Four times. Maybe five. Every time a car slowed out on the road.
I'd assumed he was waiting on the caterers or was keeping an eye out incase Summer returned early.
He rushes up the driveway and takes the weight off Reyes's bad side without being asked. And Reyes lets him.
That's the part that stops me, actually. Because that man has never accepted help from another living soul in the entire time I've known him.
But he accepts it from Mason.
"You're late," Mason says.
"It took me longer to get dressed alone than I thought it would.”
Mason's mouth twitches. His hand stays flat against Reyes's back a beat or two longer than it needs to before he takes it away. Then he walks him over to a chair in the shade, comes back with a beer Reyes never asked for, and takes the seat beside him.
I've spent my whole career reading people across a table. It's about the only thing I've ever been consistently good at.
So I notice the way they look at each other. I see the way Mason squeezes his hand under the table and the way Reyes rubs his thumb over Mason’s knuckles.
I think about a hospital corridor at four in the morning. Mason standing at those double doors staring down at his own hands with another man's blood drying on them, refusing to walk away from them.
I'd like to stay, he'd said. I'd like to—
He never finished the sentence. I never asked him to. Trauma binds people together in strange ways, and if there is something going on between them, hell, good for them.
Trauma has changed our lives too. I made damn sure Summer got proper help after all of it. A therapist out of LA who specializes in trafficking survivors, and it costs a fortune, and I could not care less. Her getting through this matters more than money ever has.
When we first came home from the Ridge, I barely let her out of my sight. Slept every night with her curled against my chest, because some part of me genuinely believed that if I loosened my grip for one second she'd be gone again.
And sex? I never pushed. Never initiated. Not once.
Here's the thing I've never said to her.
Jackson told me what had happened to her. He looked me in the face while I was chained to a chair and told me exactly what he’d done to her, and what he'd let his men do, and he enjoyed every second of the telling, and I have carried it every day since.
She doesn't know that I know.
She's never spoken about it. Not to me. Not directly.
And I have never once asked her to—because the moment I do, it stops belonging to her.
She gets to decide if she ever says it out loud, and when, and to who.
If that day never comes, then it never comes, and I'll go to my grave holding it on my own.
Because whatever happened in that house changes nothing for me.
Nothing.
She's still mine. Still the most beautiful woman I've ever laid eyes on. Still the only woman I'll ever want.
Over the last few weeks we've found our way back to each other. Slowly. Always on her terms. Always with her setting the pace and me following it. And watching her take those pieces back, one at a time, has been the most humbling fucking thing I've ever been allowed to witness.
The sound of tires crunching over gravel snaps me back.
My pulse spikes. Black glances through the front window.
"They're here."
Fuck.
Everybody starts scrambling at once.
"Inside," I bark.
People scatter, laughing, Carter nearly going over a chair trying to get through the back door.
The SUV rolls slowly up the driveway and stops.
Then Summer climbs out.
And Christ. Every single time, it still hits me the same way.
Constance and Adelaide get out after her, trying and completely failing to look casual.
Summer glances between the house and the yard, suspicious. "What's going on?"
God, she's beautiful.
I walk toward her while the other two hover like a pair of kids trying not to ruin Christmas.
"Can you two head inside and give us a minute?"
They nod, though not before exchanging a look that practically screams oh my God it's happening.