Epilogue
Gray, One Month Later
I slip out into the garage and do what I’ve been doing every single night I’ve been home since construction began in earnest on Faye’s house.
Go through the boxes of debris they’ve cleared out.
Hoping to find more of her belongings.
Most of the boxes yield nothing aside from ashes, but tonight I get lucky.
Really lucky.
Carefully, I brush off the splinters and ash, extracting a binder from the box.
The cover is charred, almost unreadable.
Except for four letters that have my heart in my throat.
I.P.E. And S.
The spine makes an ominous creaking sound as I carefully open it.
Inside, the handwriting is old and looping, made in the cursive my generation never managed to fully master.
To my Faye.
From my heart to your stomach.
Love,
Nana
I close my eyes for a long moment, trying to find calm, to steady my shaking hands.
Then, when I’ve got my shit together, I carefully turn the pages.
Mom’s Buttermilk Biscuits
Verna’s Sugar Cookies with Salted Caramel Filling
Easy Chicken Pot Pie
Homemade Fudge Cake with Double Chocolate Frosting
Dad’s Beef Stew
Faye’s Stupendous Chocolate Soufflé
And…
Nana’s World-Famous (at least to her) Banana Bread
“Fuck,” I whisper again, carefully closing the binder. It must have once been blue, but the outside and edges of the papers within are charred and coated in black ash. Combined with the texture of that scorched fabric, it was easy to assume it was just another block of melted plastic.
But it’s not.
It’s probably the most valuable thing in Faye’s house.
I start to stand.
But I don’t get the chance.
“You found it,” Faye whispers, kneeling at my side, tears streaming down her cheeks as she carefully opens the cover, thumbs through the pages, taking her time, not protesting when I draw her into my lap, when I wrap my arms around her middle.
She reaches the end of the book then just as carefully closes it, holding it gently to her chest before she spins to face me.
Her eyes blaze with emotion as she whispers, “Thank you.”
I touch her cheek. “You don’t need to thank me, Red.”
A nod to the mess of boxes I’ve slowly been making my way through. “I kind of think I do.”
God, I love her. “Then thank me by kissing me.”
Her smile is warm and sweet and her kiss is equally so, but as is often the case with Faye, I find my control eroding, my need taking over.
Unfortunately, just as I start to pull her more firmly into my arms in preparation of standing, I hear a familiar pounding on the front door.
Faye looks at me.
I look at her.
Then I sigh and stand, extending a hand to help her to her feet.
My divorce was finalized today—the judge signing off on the agreement—so it’s no surprise Courtney isn’t happy.
She’s shown up a half-dozen times over the last month—despite Luna having been activated to work her magic.
I never thought I’d find someone to match Luna’s tenacity.
But Courtney is proving to be just as stubborn.
I just…well, it’s not that I don’t care. I still feel a sliver of guilt as I walk across my new rug in the entryway, pull open the front door Faye and I repainted a deep brown after I returned from the second leg of the team’s road trip last month.
It’s just…the doorbell no longer has me fighting the urge to run.
To fix.
To hide.
No shame. No pretending I was completely innocent. And no taking it all on my shoulders.
Faye’s doing.
And mine.
And therapy.
Working through acknowledging and being a grownup and trying to build healthy habits.
I hate it—feeling raw and vulnerable and still not completely free of the past and its guilt, of my memories and all my regrets…
But it’s also like I’m finally taking full breaths again.
Progress, not perfection.
And lots of banana bread.
Plus it helps that the headlines have become more like—
From Scandal to Sweethearts: Grizzlies Captain and Local Author Prove True Love’s No Fiction
Grizzlies’ Captain Credits ‘The Woman Who Made Me Brave’ for Midseason Comeback
The Love Story That Changed the Conversation: How One Romance Novel Sparked a Genre Reckoning
And best of all…
#BananaBreadGoals Trends Again After Faye Sullivan’s Cookbook Reveal
“We have bananas, right?” I ask as I see Courtney glaring at us through the side pane of the front door.
“Always,” Faye says.
“Up for some baking after this shit is done?”
It’s nearly midnight and Faye has spent the last few weeks been dealing with her own heavy pile of the past—permits and insurance, managing the rebuilding, her own therapy appointments, dealing with her publisher and own requests for interviews, and working on her revisions, their deadline rapidly approaching now that her book is back on the publication schedule.
She’s exhausted—I know she has to be.
But she just takes my hand, lifts on tiptoe, and presses her lips to my jaw. “Of course.” Her mouth curves. “We have to try out Nana’s recipe.”
“I love you,” I murmur.
“Damn right you do,” she tosses back with a wink.
Which means that when I open the door to confront Courtney, I’m laughing.
“You’re a real bastard, you know that, right?” she snaps.
I lean against the doorframe, lift my eyebrows in question, chuckles still emerging from my throat as I ask, “Why am I an asshole this time?”
“You know exactly why!” she snaps. “Winston is angry at me and he may not go through with the wedding.”
I smirk. “I think you mean your aging fiancée is finally aware of your crap.”
“I mean that Winston said if I don’t smooth things over with you and get you to recall those bulldogs who are fucking with his businesses then he’s going to leave me.”
I keep my face neutral.
But inside I’m putting the pieces together.
A year ago, Luna inherited a huge chunk of her family’s company…and used that leverage to get into business with a pair of powerful businessmen, Jean-Michel Dubois and Jace Henderson.
Apparently she’s been using her leverage with them on my behalf.
I guess that’s what she meant about stepping things up.
I fight to keep the satisfied smirk off my face. “Why should I care about Winston’s business?”
“Because if I don’t have Winston then I’ll have to come back here.” She pauses and I wait for her to say more, to expand on the threat.
She doesn’t.
So, I shrug, say, “It’s not like that stopped you before.”
“Gray,” she snaps.
I just stare at her and wait.
“Ugh!” She stomps her foot. “You want me to promise to go away and never come back? Fine. I promise. Now call off your dogs.”
More staring. More waiting.
Just to give her a bit of the torture she gave me.
“You keep that promise—and stop talking about Faye and me to the media—”
She winces, which is all the confirmation I needed.
She planted the stories.
Fucking hell.
But instinct tell me to ask, “The chapter too?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says haughtily.
“Faye?” I call.
“Yeah, honey?”
“Will you ask Luna to ask Jean-Michel if lying to the press about us and your book is defamation?”
“I heard you two talking about it!” Courtney snaps. “It wasn’t a lie to say you inspired her.”
I lift my brows.
She scowls. “Okay, fine,” she snaps. “I may have…spent some time in your back yard and…” Her eyes drift away and she coughs. “…taken pictures of a chapter or two—”
Faye gasps.
“You left your laptop on the table,” Courtney says in a rush. “And I needed something to read.”
My fucking ex.
I resist the urge to throttle her and turn to Faye, the only one who matters in this conversation. “What do you want to do, Red?”
Her temper is flashing in those gorgeous brown eyes.
But she only shakes her head, says, “I just want to be done with this.”
“Your lucky day,” I tell Courtney. “No social media about us, no interviews, no pointed comments or anonymous sources.”
She nods.
“You follow through on that, and I’ll ask Dubois and Henderson to steer clear. “But,” I add as she starts to turn away, “if you renege, know they’ll be eager to hop back in and make an example of you.” A beat. “And Winston.”
Courtney glares as our eyes hold, each of us staring the other down.
But I don’t cave.
Because I didn’t make her into this nightmare.
And see how healthy I’m getting?
Gold star for my therapy.
“Fine,” she growls and whirls around.
“Hey, Court?” I call as she storms down the steps.
She turns back, snaps. “What?”
“You forgot this.” I snag the box I ordered a while back from the table just inside the door, having bought it for exactly this moment.
“What is it?” she asks when I hold it up.
“Consider it a going away present.” I toss it her way, half-expecting her to let it fall to the ground. Instead, she catches it, glares at me, then continues flouncing away.
Shaking my head—greedy greedy—I move back into the house, start to close the door.
Faye frowns. “What was—?”
Pop!
Courtney shrieks.
Faye’s eyes go wide.
I allow myself one peek (and maybe also a pic) of Courtney covered in glitter then slam and lock the door, grinning at the shocked expression on Faye’s face.
Sometimes happy endings arrive softly, slowly lifted from the ashes to reveal the beauty beneath, and others…burst into life with an explosion of glitter.
But each are beautiful in their own way.
“Gray?” she presses.
Unable to resist, I lean down and kiss the woman who owns my heart. “Seemed fitting,” is all I say as I pull back.
Wide eyes again. Another shocked shake of her head.
Then she laughs—and it’s the best sound on the planet, tinkling through the air, feeding my heart and soul…and then my stomach as she takes my hand and draws me down the hall and into the kitchen.
“Grab the bananas,” she orders.
“On it.”
Then—together—we make Nana’s banana bread.
It has two eggs, not one.
And it tastes better than any of the other recipes we’ve tried.
Probably because it was straight from Nana’s heart to our stomachs.
Harper
I exhale and roll my shoulders.
Because he’s out there.
Leo Richardson.