Epilogue #2
“He said Halloween parties are a workplace hazard,” Ghost adds.
Fletch frowns. “Do you think he meant, like, structurally or for his own health?”
Ghost looks at Evan’s costume. “Tonight? Both.”
Remi lets out a tiny breath of laughter, and Ghost’s expression softens before he looks back down at Zela’s candy bowl.
Above the bar, beside Colt’s framed photo, someone has placed a tiny plastic pumpkin and a shot glass full of orange liquid. A paper sign beneath it reads:
For Lawson.
Do not drink unless you want him haunting your bathroom.
– Gwen
My throat tightens, but it doesn’t close.
Elle tugs me closer to the photo and lifts both arms. “Penny, can you pick me up.”
I glance at Evan, and he’s already watching. The inflatable costume makes it impossible for him to scoop her up properly, so I bend carefully, pray no-one can see under my skirt, and lift Elle onto my hip.
She leans toward Colt’s photo, serious as anything.
“Hi, Colt,” she says. “I’m the egg.”
The room around us keeps moving, but something in me goes very still. Remi’s eyes shine, and Gwen suddenly becomes fascinated by wiping down a perfectly clean section of bar, and Fletch looks up at the ceiling.
Ghost reaches past Remi for a napkin, leaving a fresh water beside her empty glass as he goes. She reaches for it without looking up.
Elle pats the frame once with her hand. “Daddy is the dad penguin. Penny is the pretty mom penguin. And Gus, he’s a fish, but we don’t eat him because he’s family.”
Remi presses her lips together, fighting a smile that trembles at the edges. “I think he’d like that.”
Elle gives a satisfied nod, then wriggles to get down because Max is about to challenge her to a candy corn sorting competition. I watch her go.
Stacey can't come near her, now. She took a deal and signed away any right to come near any of us. Last I heard, she was somewhere in Toronto, with court-ordered treatment folded into the terms of a sentence that still doesn’t feel like enough.
The man from the tower is still a blank space with a police file wrapped around him, still out there somewhere. Some days, that thought can drag me straight back into smoke and rope and the heat of flames.
But not tonight. I stay where I am a second longer, looking at Colt’s grin in the photo.
“I’m still sorry,” I whisper, low enough that only Evan hears.
He moves behind me as much as the costume allows, one flipper brushing the side of my arm.
A year ago, guilt would have dragged me under by now. It would have wrapped both hands around my throat and told me I didn’t deserve the laughter in this room. Tonight, it sits beside me instead. Heavy, yes. But not in charge.
I touch the edge of the frame once, then turn around. Evan looks down at me through the little face hole in his ridiculous costume, eyes soft and honey warm and so full of love that it still feels like sunlight through my ribs.
“You okay?” he asks.
I take stock of myself. Feel the ache. The warmth. The strange steadiness inside me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I am.”
His expression shifts at the answer, and I know he believes me because he doesn’t ask again. Instead, he reaches out with one inflated wing and taps the tiny beak on my head.
I blink. “Excuse me.”
“You were getting that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re about to climb into your own head and redecorate it badly.”
I narrow my eyes. “Did you just flick my beak?”
“Yes.”
“In public?”
“I’ll do it again.”
“Bold threat from a man who can’t fit through doorways.”
“Careful.”
I grin. “Or what?”
He flicks the beak again.
“Unbelievable,” I say. “I survived a fire and you’re bullying my costume.”
“You’re terrorizing me in public.”
“You’re eight feet wide and full of air. I think you’ll live.”
His mouth twitches. “Keep talking, Lucky Penny.”
I step closer, letting my silver heel brush against the edge of his comically large penguin foot. “Or what?”
For a second, all the noise in Neverland fades beneath the way he looks at me.
Then Elle barrels into his side, bounces off the inflated costume, and lands on her butt with a delighted shriek.
“Daddy is squishy!”
The entire bar loses it.
Evan closes his eyes. “I’m taking this costume off the second we get home.”
I lean in close enough that only he can hear me. “Good.”
His eyes open again, slowly. I smile and tap my little beak against his inflatable chest. “I have plans for you.”
For the first time all night, Evan Prince is rendered entirely speechless. It’s beautiful.
Unfortunately, Fletch notices.
“Oh, no,” he says loudly. “The penguins are making eye contact.”
Frankie smacks his arm. “Leave them alone.”
“No, this feels like nature documentary behavior.”
“Fletcher,” Evan warns.
“Right. Sorry.” Fletch raises both hands. “Respecting the colony.”
Finn leans back on his stool, observing us openly. “I don’t know. I’m learning a lot about penguin courtship.”
Gwen turns her head toward him. “Do you want to spend Halloween outside?”
Finn grins. “Is that where you’ll be?”
“Oh god,” Tucker mutters. “He’s definitely gonna die.”
The night folds around us after that, warm and loud and strange. Elle wins three rounds of candy corn sorting, loses one dramatic game of pool against a retired firefighter who very clearly cheats, then falls asleep half an hour later with her egg costume dented against Leah’s lap.
By the time we make it home, my feet ache, my cheeks hurt from laughing, and Evan’s inflatable penguin costume has developed a slow leak somewhere near his left side.
He stands in the hallway deflating in real time, enormous penguin body sagging around him while I press both hands over my mouth and try not to laugh so hard I cry.
“Don’t say it,” he warns.
“I’m being supportive.”
“You’re shaking.”
“With support.”
The house is quieter than usual without Elle’s little voice filling every corner.
Leah had taken one look at our egg-child asleep across Herb’s lap at Neverland and announced she was keeping her overnight, and Elle had barely woken long enough to agree before burrowing deeper into the blanket around her.
Gus, still half-dressed as a fish, trots in from the living room, gives Evan’s collapsing penguin suit one long look, then turns around and leaves again.
“Even the dog has abandoned me,” Evan mutters.
“He’s a fish tonight. Loyalty is complicated.”
Evan’s eyes cut to mine through the little face opening. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I have waited all night to be alone with you and your terrible life choices.”
His mouth twitches, then his gaze drops. The hallway goes still as he catalogs the tight black-and-white dress. The little feathered cuffs. The ridiculous beak headband perched in my hair.
And the silver heels.
Heat moves through his expression so quickly my stomach dips. When he notices, his mouth stretches into a sinful curve.
I take one step backward, the silver heels clicking against the floor. He follows, still partially trapped in the deflating remains of the penguin.
The absurdity of it should ruin the moment, but it doesn’t. If anything, it makes the heat worse, because Evan Prince is looking at me like he might devour me in a hallway while wearing nylon wings and a battery pack.
“You survived the penguin suit,” I tell him.
“Barely.”
“You’re a hero.”
“A damn martyr.”
“Mm. Very brave.”
His eyes darken at that, and the teasing between us changes shape. “You know what I thought about all night?”
“The structural integrity of inflatable costumes?”
His gaze drags down my body again, lingering at my feet. “Those heels.”
My breath catches, even though I knew. Of course I knew. I felt him watching all night. Felt the weight of it every time I crossed my legs at the bar, every time I stood on my toes to kiss his cheek, every time the hem of my dress rode a little higher and his jaw shifted.
“These old things?” I kick a leg up behind me, aware of the way my very short dress just got even shorter. “I should take ‘em off.”
“Leave them on.”
I stare at him, and Evan’s eyes gleam.
A breathy laugh slips out of me. “You’re very committed to the theme.”
“I’m very committed to you.”
The words are gentler than the heat in his eyes, but that’s Evan all over. Filthy and tender in the same breath. My ridiculously grumpy man with a nickel in his wallet and my pebble on his nightstand, who still kisses the faint scars on my wrists.
I step into him. Or as close as I can get, given the penguin situation. His hands find my waist immediately, sliding over the tight fabric of my dress before settling at the small of my back. He pulls me toward him, and I rise easily on the heels, meeting his mouth halfway.
The kiss starts slow, but it doesn’t stay that way. It never does. His demanding mouth opens over mine and I sink into the familiar heat of him with a soft sound. His hands tighten at my waist, then slide lower, gripping me through the dress as he walks me backward toward the bedroom.
I laugh against his mouth when my heel catches slightly on the hallway rug.
“Careful,” he murmurs.
“You worried I’ll lose a shoe?”
“No.” His mouth brushes my jaw, then the side of my neck, before his dark eyes fix on mine. “I’d find it.”
The words shouldn’t undo me the way they do, but they do. Because he would. He has. He always will.
I slide my fingers into his hair, and his expression softens for half a second before the heat returns. “Bedroom.”
“Yes, sir.”
His brow lifts. “You trying to kill me tonight, Lucky Penny?”
“I’m a penguin,” I whisper against his mouth. “We mate for life.”
“Fuck.”
By the time we reach the bedroom door, Evan has managed to shove the costume down around his hips, which means my very serious, very competent firefighter boyfriend is now half shirtless, half penguin, and fully ruining me.
I lean back against the doorframe and drag my eyes down him.
“You know,” I begin, “this might be the weirdest foreplay we’ve ever had.”
“Top three,” he says, kicking his way out of the costume at last.
It collapses on the floor with a sad little wheeze, and we both look at it, then at each other.