Epilogue — The Choice
Evie
Three months later
The letter came on a Tuesday. Cream linen stationery, no return address. I knew the handwriting before I opened it.
Genevieve. Your father and I have had your accounts reinstated. The trust fund is accessible. Do with it as you see fit. We trust you‘ll be sensible.
I sat at the kitchen counter with my cold coffee and read it twice. No apology, no invitation home. Just the money, unlocked, and a message underneath the message that said everything my mother couldn’t.
Stay where you are. Don‘t bring him to Denver.
I could have been angry. Three months ago, I would have been. But I understood what this was. The Carringtons cutting their losses, buying distance, drawing a clean line on a ledger they’d been keeping since the morning I walked out. Transaction complete. Daughter written off. Balance settled.
I picked up my phone and pulled up the listing I’d been looking at for two weeks.
A house. Small, timber-framed, three miles from the compound, backing onto national forest. Two bedrooms, a porch that wrapped around two sides, a workshop out back. Close enough to the compound that the ride was nothing. Far enough that it was ours.
Doc came in from outside. Wiping his hands and grease on his forearms. I turned the phone toward him. He looked at the listing, looked at the letter on the counter, looked at me.
“They reinstated everything,” I said. “Their way of making sure I never need to come back.”
“And you want to buy a house.”
“I want to buy our house. My money, my name, my decision. Not because I’m stuck here. Because I want to be here. With you.”
His whole face opened. The guard he wore so well fell away and what was left was just love, plain and unguarded.
“Plumbing’s probably shot,” he said. His voice was thick.
“Probably.”
“Let’s do it anyway.”
I grinned. Pulled him down to me by the front of his shirt and kissed him, my hands sliding under the fabric, finding warm skin.
His breath caught. His hands found my hips, lifted me onto the counter, stepped between my thighs, and kissed me until the house, the letter, the trust fund, all of it disappeared behind the feel of his mouth on my throat and the low sound he made that meant the kitchen was about to become unavailable.
I wrapped my legs around him and let the rest of the world wait.