Epilogue
SIX MONTHS LATER - TILLY
His mouth was between my legs.
"Corban…" I breathed, my fingers threading into his hair, my back arching off the bed.
He didn't answer. He never did when he was down there. He just pressed his hands flat against my inner thighs and held me open and worked me with his tongue like he had nowhere else to be for the rest of his life.
Slow circles. Then fast. Then slow again. Reading me. Knowing exactly when to pull back and when to press in, and I was shaking and trembling, my heels digging into the mattress.
He slid two fingers inside me and curled them up and I came apart. My hand flew to my mouth and he reached up and pulled it away.
"Let me hear you," he said against my skin.
So I did. I let go. I let the sound rip out of me as the wave crested and broke, and he stayed there through all of it, his mouth soft and steady until my body stopped shaking.
Before I could catch my breath he was over me. His weight settling between my thighs, his forearms on either side of my head, his forehead pressed to mine.
"Ready?" he murmured.
"Always."
He pushed in slow. That first stretch that still made my breath catch every single time. He filled me completely, and he held there, watching my face, waiting.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper.
He moved. Long, slow strokes that built and built. His mouth on my neck. My collarbone. The soft spot behind my ear that made me whimper. His hand slid down my side and gripped my hip. Then he changed the angle just slightly, and…
I gasped. "Right there."
He stayed there. Driving into that spot over and over until my nails dug into his back and my vision went white and I came again, harder this time, clenching around him, pulling him with me.
He buried his face in my neck and groaned, his hips stuttering, his whole body going taut, and I felt him let go inside me.
We stayed like that. Tangled and breathing hard and fast. His weight on me in the way I'd come to love. Heavy and warm and safe.
He rolled off eventually and pulled me into his side, and I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow down.
The afternoon light came through the skylight above us. The one Corban had cut into the roof when we extended the apartment, turning the cramped attic space into storage for all the things that had once lived in boxes on the floor. The apartment felt bigger now. Like it had grown with us.
Out back he'd built a shed where his Harley lived now. Gleaming and restored, every scratch and scrape long since gone. We rode it whenever we got the chance. Me pressed against his back, my arms around his waist, the wind pulling at my hair. I never worried about falling. Not with him.
The café was thriving. Six months of early mornings and late nights and learning to bake things I'd never tried before, and it had become mine in a way that felt permanent.
The regulars knew my name. The coffee was finally consistent.
I'd hired a girl named Bree who talked too much but showed up every shift on time.
I traced a lazy line down Corban's stomach with my fingertip.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"About us."
I loved everything about my life. I loved Corban. I loved my little business. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I had finally come to love myself.
I looked up at the man who had lost his tongue the first time we laid eyes on one another.
The man who spoke with his hands and his mouth and his steady, quiet presence.
Who had never once made me feel small. Who had waited and given and shown up, again and again, without asking for anything in return.
He looked down at me, his fingers tracing slow patterns on my shoulder.
"I love you, Tilly," he said.
I was at a loss for words.
So I kissed him instead.