Epilogue #2
"Cazzo! Don't say such things in front of the darlings!" Heath and I both scrunched our noses in annoyance, thinking he meant us, but then Mickey lifted an arm and popped his bicep, kissing it. "He didn't mean it," he whispered to his muscles, and we burst into another laughing fit.
"I don't know how we're related," Matthias said, but his lips had ticked subtly upward.
I was still giggling, clutching my stomach and wheezing for relief, when a wrongness brushed the edge of my awareness—just the sense of being watched. Not thinking much of it, I glanced past the fence toward the front of the house.
My stomach dipped.
There, idling at the curb, was a dark, unmarked car. The windows were tinted black, swallowing any reflection of the afternoon sun. For half a second I told myself it was nothing. A neighbor. Someone lost.
Then the back door opened.
The man moved fast. Black baseball cap pulled low, jacket zipped high despite the heat.
He crossed to the mailbox in swift strides, and my pulse spiked as he slid a small, neatly wrapped package inside—and then he turned just enough.
I caught the flash of ink along his knuckles.
A familiar curve at the edge of his wrist. A line disappearing beneath the collar at his neck.
I jolted up from the root. My legs moved before my mind caught up, and suddenly I was sprinting across the yard.
I slammed open the gate, my flats pounding the grass.
“KANE!” I shouted. The word tore out of me, rocked me.
I tripped over myself, forcing myself to stop a few yards away, my natural instincts flaring and telling me not to get closer just in case I was wrong.
The figure had gone rigged, one tattooed hand braced against the open back door, someone else driving the vehicle. I heard something unintelligible get ordered from within the car, the man still frozen, and so was I.
Somehow, I knew. If I took another step, if he did, I was risking both of our lives. His head tilted just slightly, allowing the sunlight to fight away the shadows of his cap, and I—
“Kane,” I breathed, feeling Rafe’s presence at my back before the warmth of his hand gripped my shoulder. I knew it wasn’t just to steady me but to steady himself.
It was him. I would recognize those green eyes across lifetimes, no matter how devoid of humanity they looked when his gaze finally met mine. It was all he gave us, that single look, before he ducked into the car, the door slammed shut, and the vehicle peeled away.
Gone. He left.
I strode to the mailbox, hands shaking as I yanked it open. Inside sat the package. Rafe’s hand closed over my wrist before I could reach in. It was reckless, I knew, to pull that gift out, but I had to.
“It’s addressed to Henry,” I said, voice unsteady as I gingerly took it out of our mailbox. “I’ll open it. Just in case.”
Rafe nodded once, staying close as I peeled the paper away carefully, my pulse ricocheting at the sight of worn but well cared for leather.
It was a baseball glove. Stitched into the inside, faded from the glove being several years old, were small initials: K & T.
Kane and Thorne. A lump formed in my throat when I saw a note folded at the bottom of the box.
My hands were shaking so hard around the box that Rafe took the liberty of plucking the note free.
We had an audience by then, most of the party having followed us out front, and Rafe wrapped his arm around me, clutching me to him as we both read the note. There were only four words.
Tell him I’m proud, Kane had written. That was…it. No explanation or notion to tell us that he was safe.
My vision blurred.
Behind us, Henry called my name, cake still smeared on his face. “Mom, what is it?”
I pressed the glove to my chest, breathing through the ache blooming there, the joy that Kane was alive and…the grief that I now knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d spent the last two years in hell. That he was still in it.
Rafe’s hand slid into mine. He didn’t look away from the street, his body angled outward, protective. When he glanced at me, his expression was fierce and gentle all at once. He’s alive, he signed. Alive, Arden. That's more than we've had since he vanished.
I nodded, tears slipping free, knowing one day, Kane would come home to us. He would. I knelt to Henry and pressed the glove into his cake-slathered palms, smiling softly. “Look what Uncle Kane brought you.”
Mickey and the other Ravens froze at my words, Matthias lifting his cell in an instant.
“Uncle Kane was here? That was him?” Henry asked.
“Yeah, I think so…I know so.” I pulled back the inside of the glove. “And you see this? That’s his and Uncle Thorne’s initials. I think this glove used to be theirs.” I let my gaze drift to Mickey’s. “He’s been to his childhood home maybe.”
Mick nodded, joining Matthias and getting on the phone.
“Why didn’t he stay?” Henry asked, running his thumb over the initials. “There’s lots of cake still. You made too much, mama.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Too much? You told me last night you wanted infinity cakes!”
He rolled his eyes. “You can’t take things so seriously.” But he still pressed me about Kane. “Why’d he leave again?”
“I don’t know, baby,” I said softly, “but true family doesn’t give up on each other. I promise you, if Kane could’ve stayed, he would’ve.”
“Then is he in trouble?”
I glanced up at Rafe who was watching us with a dark look, lost in his head. I hesitated before Heath stepped in, dropping into a crouch next to me.
“You know what, buddy, he might be, but you know what’s really cool about your family?” she asked him.
Henry shook his head.
“We fight back,” she said simply.
I nodded and touched Henry’s cheek gently. “Especially Creed. Whatever trouble Uncle Kane is facing,” I told him sincerely, believing it with my entire soul, “it doesn’t stand a chance.”