Epilogue #2
He typed one-handed. Fast. Clumsy. Thumbs smearing blood across the glass.
Sorry. Can’t make it. I’ll explain later.
He hit send. Dropped the phone beside him in the gravel. Didn’t look at it again.
Walker’s truck skidded to a halt. Doors flew open.
Boots on gravel. Walker’s voice, low and urgent, asking questions X didn’t have answers for.
Bear appeared with a medical kit, dropping to his knees on Creed’s other side, his face set in the expression that meant he’d switched into doctor mode and everything else—fear, anger, the particular horror of seeing a man beaten beyond the point of humanity—had been temporarily filed away.
X kept pressure on the wound. His good jacket was ruined. The velvet box in the pocket was probably crushed. The earrings—silver, understated, the thing he’d spent a week picking out—were sitting in a pool of another man’s blood, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Creed’s eye had closed. His breathing had gone quiet. Too quiet.
“Pulse is weakening,” Bear said. His hands moved with the quick, certain efficiency of a man who had done this a hundred times. “We need that ambulance yesterday.”
“It’s coming,” River said. He’d stopped pacing. Stood now with his arms wrapped around himself, his face pale under the security lamps. “Five minutes out. Maybe less.”
Five minutes. Creed didn’t have five minutes. X could read it in the slackness of his skin, the gray tinge creeping into his lips, the way each breath seemed to cost more than the last.
He leaned down. Put his mouth near Creed’s ear.
“ándale, cabrón. You don’t get to die on our driveway after all the shit you’ve pulled. Not tonight. I have plans.”
Just dinner.
One dinner.
To get it out of her system, Mariah told herself.
To prove that the attraction was surface-level and would dissolve under the weight of actual conversation. To confirm that Xavier Vega was exactly what he appeared to be: charming, unserious, and fundamentally incompatible with a woman who ran her life with the precision of a Swiss watch.
Her stomach tightened. Not with nerves. With something warmer. Something she had been refusing to name.
She was excited.
Actually, stupidly excited. The kind of excited that made her check her phone three times in five minutes.
The kind that had her changing outfits and putting on her grandmother’s pearl earrings.
She was thirty-one years old with a seven-year-old son and a business that required her to be composed, controlled, and relentlessly practical at all times.
She did not get butterflies. She did not stand at windows watching for headlights.
And yet, here she was.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
She checked the time again. He was late.
Oh, hell, no. He was not blowing her off, was he?
She picked up her phone and texted him.
And waited.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she swiped to open the text.
Sorry. Can’t make it. I’ll explain later.
Mariah read it. Read it again. The words did not change.
She set the phone down. Picked it up. Checked for the three little dots that indicated he was typing something else.
Nothing.
The screen stayed dark.
No call followed.
No second text clarifying, apologizing, offering a rain check.
Just silence.
The embarrassment arrived first, climbing her throat and settling hot behind her eyes.
Not because she had been stood up—though that was certainly happening—but because she had allowed herself to care.
She had closed her shop early. She had arranged childcare.
She had stood in front of her mirror and smiled at her reflection like a woman with something to look forward to, and Xavier Vega had canceled with the same casual disregard he brought to everything that wasn’t immediately entertaining.
The anger came next. Cooler. More familiar. She welcomed it. Anger was useful. Anger kept things tidy.
She looked at the dress. The cardigan. The pearl earrings.
Twenty minutes of decision-making, rendered pointless by eleven words on a screen.
She had known better. She had known better from the first day he walked into her shop with that smile and that ridiculous question about flowers.
Men like Xavier Vega did not change. Men like Xavier Vega were fun precisely because they took nothing seriously, and the moment something required seriousness—the moment it required showing up, on time, with the same energy he brought to everything else—they vanished.
She should have kept saying no.
She’s spent years telling him no. She’s about to need him more than anyone.
Mariah Duval built her whole life in Solace on one hard-won truth: never trust a charming man again.
So when Xavier “X” Vega turns his easy grin her way, she shuts him down every single time.
But when the past she ran from finally catches up, the only man reckless enough to stand between her and the danger is the one she’s spent so long keeping at arm’s length.
X has hidden behind that charm his entire life. For Mariah and her son, he’ll finally have to prove there’s something real underneath—and that a man built for a good time can be trusted to stay.
Every book is an adventure, and I’m so glad you’re on this one with me. Thank you for reading!