Epilogue
Eli
Seven and a half months later, I stand in the backyard of the Sin Bin with frosting on my shirt and full legal custody of my daughter.
The backyard looks different than it did a year ago.
The pool still gleams too blue under the late afternoon sun, and the patio still has expensive furniture that most of us are too sweaty and careless to deserve.
The lawn is still stupidly perfect because Killian pays people who know how to make grass look like it has a trust fund.
But everything around the pool has changed because Mila exists now, and Mila existing means every sharp edge in this house has either been padded, blocked, locked, moved, labeled, or glared at into obedience by Mrs. Alvarez.
The pool is now gated off with a sleek black safety fence that Killian pretended to install because of “liability” and not because he watched one water-safety video, went silent for three terrifying minutes, and ordered the most secure babyproof pool barrier on the market before dinner.
No one calls him out on it anymore. Mostly because we enjoy living here.
There are yellow balloons tied to the patio posts, a duck-themed banner stretched across the pergola that says ONE HAPPY DUCK, since this family collectively decided my daughter’s entire brand was waterfowl. There’s even a cake on the outdoor table shaped like a rubber duck.
Mila’s presents are stacked in the shade, most of them wrapped badly since elite athletes have many skills and none of them include clean corners.
Meanwhile, my baby girl is in the massive playpen area on the grass, surrounded by soft mats, plush ducks, stacking cups, board books, and a tiny toy basketball Ryan keeps insisting is her favorite despite all available evidence suggesting her actual favorite object is any adult’s car keys.
She’s wearing a pale-yellow romper with white ducks on it, and a tiny birthday crown that lasted six full minutes on her head before she ripped it off and tried to chew the number one.
Her cheeks are flushed from the heat, her dark wisps of hair curling around her temples, and every time someone says her name, she looks around like yes, thank you, I am aware I’m the main event.
She has four teeth, a dangerous amount of attitude, and the deep conviction that every phone exists solely to be chewed on.
She has no idea how many wars were fought to get her to this day. Maybe that’s the mercy of it.
I lean against the patio railing with a cold bottle of water in one hand and Julian’s fingers tucked casually into the back pocket of my shorts.
He does that now. Touches me without asking the room for permission.
Not in a possessive way that makes me feel displayed, but in the quiet, steady way he has always had when he wants me to know where he is. Here. Close. Yours, if you want me.
I don’t think he realizes how often his hand finds me. Shoulder, waist, back pocket, the nape of my neck when my thoughts start getting too loud. Or maybe he does know and just pretends not to because it lets me accept it without making a thing of it.
I tilt my head slightly toward him. “You know you’re going to stretch my pocket out.”
Julian doesn’t even have the decency to look apologetic. He’s wearing sunglasses pushed up into his dark curls, his shirt open over a tank. “You can bill me.”
“I’m already billing Killian for emotional damages from the duck cake.”
From a few feet away, Killian, who is talking to Luca near the grill, turns his head without missing a beat. “Denied.”
“You didn’t even hear the details.”
“I heard billing and my name.”
“That could’ve been positive.”
“It never is.”
Ryan, sprawled sideways in a lounge chair, lifts his drink. “I’d like to bill Killian for the emotional damage of being forced to wear shirts at family events.”
Liam looks at him from under the umbrella where he’s holding a plate of cut fruit. “You are not wearing a shirt.”
Ryan looks down at his open button-up like this is brand-new information. “Spiritually, I am oppressed.”
Sage, sitting beside Luca with his feet in the pool, says, “Spiritually, you need supervision.”
“Matteo supervises me just fine,” Ryan says, far too smugly.
The yard becomes instantly interested in a way that is frankly predatory. Ryan realizes his mistake approximately two seconds too late.
Luca slowly turns. “Does he now?”
Ryan points at the pool. “I think Mila is doing something adorable.”
“That was a terrible deflection, and you pointed the wrong way,” Adrian says from the shade, not looking up from where he’s assembling one of Mila’s new toys with the focus of a bomb technician.
Damon laughs softly from the edge of the pool where he’s sketching with his feet in the water. Roman’s in the pool, laughing at the way Ryan is clearly suffering.
“Leave him alone,” I say, because I am generous and because I would rather not discuss a Blackthorne owner at my daughter’s birthday party. “He has one brain cell, and it’s overheated.”
Ryan clutches his chest. “I expected betrayal from many people, but not you, Father of the Year.”
I lift my bottle toward him. “Then that’s on you.”
Julian laughs under his breath, fingers flexing once in my pocket. “You’re in a good mood.”
I glance over at him, and the sun catches his eyes, turning hazel warm behind the shadow of his lashes. “Our daughter is one, the cake hasn’t melted, nobody has fallen into the pool, and full custody means I can tell every imaginary critic in my head to fuck off with legal backing.”
His smile softens, and there it is—the small gravity drop beneath the joking. He knows what those words cost and what they mean. Full custody. The court order is tucked in a file in my safe and saved in three digital places because I am my lawyer’s favorite paranoid client now.
My name. My rights. My daughter. No pending question mark hanging over every bottle, nap, and medical appointment. No one can come to take her because of the house I live in or the way she arrived, or the lies Celeste told in the letter she forged.
Mila Matthews is mine on paper in the same way she was mine in my arms from the first night, and some mornings I still wake up terrified that I dreamed the ruling.
Julian’s hand leaves my pocket and settles at my lower back. “Love you, baby,” he says in a low tone just for me.
My face warms. Months of loving this man openly has not made me immune to him saying things in that low voice.
I should be used to this by now, the way happiness can sit beside grief without asking one of them to leave.
I’m better at it than I was. Therapy helps.
Julian helps. Mila helps, not because she fixes anything—that’s too much responsibility for a baby who once got mad at a banana—but because loving her gives my life a center that Celeste doesn’t get to own.
Still, some facts sit quietly underneath every good day.
Celeste is still missing. The warrant for her arrest promises only prison as her welcoming committee if she ever shows up again.
Her name turns up in conversations with Mara in most of our meetings.
There have been sightings that weren’t sightings, tips that went nowhere, financial trails that dried up, people who lied because they were scared or paid or stupid.
Three of her sorority sisters have been formally implicated. More than implicated, really. Named. Charged in connection with drugging, blackmail, non-consensual recordings, conspiracy, and enough digital horror that I stopped asking Mara for details unless they directly involved my case.
The evidence became bigger than me, the kind of thing that rewrites how a school sees its own pretty houses and party traditions when enough lawyers force them to stop looking away.
Celeste’s parents apologized after Mara arranged a carefully controlled conversation.
Stiff and devastated people sat across from me and admitted they didn’t know how to be in Mila’s life without bringing Celeste’s shadow with them, so they chose not to pursue a relationship.
They offered restitution—real restitution, not hush money.
I accepted it for Mila’s future and nothing else.
I still don’t know how I feel about them.
Blakely’s name is another locked room. That wound belongs more to Julian than to me, but it lives in our house anyway. The investigation opened wider after one of his victims died by suicide, and there are days Julian gets quiet in a way I know better than to crowd too fast.
Prosecutors use words like pattern and coercion and abuse of authority. Reporters use worse ones. Blackthorne says things about institutional accountability in carefully drafted statements that make Killian smile like he’s mentally burning their PR team alive.
Blakely is gone from campus. Not gone enough from the people he hurt but gone from the places where he could keep hurting them.
Justice is slower than rage. Mara told me that once, and I hated it.
I still hate it, but I understand it better now.
Rage wants everything destroyed immediately.
Justice builds the thing that keeps the destruction from being dismissed as noise.
I have learned to be patient in ways I never wanted to learn.
I have also learned that patience and forgiveness have absolutely fucking nothing to do with each other.
Today, though, I’m trying not to think about courtrooms or missing women or prosecutions.
Today is for the pool, the heat, my daughter in her enormous playpen fortress, and Julian’s hand warm at my back while the family I chose argues about cooler access.
Mila moves faster every day.
That’s what I try to hold onto when the darker thoughts circle too close. She crawled before I was ready. She pulls herself up on furniture with the terrifying confidence of someone who has no concept of skull fragility.
She babbles at ducks, screams at socks, and laughs hardest when Killian pretends to be stern with her. She has more uncles than any baby should reasonably have, all of them insane.