Epilogue #2
Sam followed, docile and trusting, as Roz guided her onto the bed and pulled back the covers. The sheets were warm, and the comforter smelled like lavender.
Roz didn’t rush. She undressed Sam with quiet care, one strap at a time, letting the slip fall to the floor before folding it neatly and setting it aside.
Then she laid her down like a secret and climbed in after her.
Roz lightly caressed her across her entire body, over her collarbone and along her shoulder, the divot of her elbow, between her fingers, along her hips, over her stomach, between her breasts. Each touch elicited a flutter from Sam’s heart, and she let go of everything except the present moment.
Roz shifted her body to sit between her thighs, but she didn’t rush.
She stretched her arms and ran her fingers from the tops of Sam’s feet, up her ankles, legs, knees, and back to her thighs.
With the most delicate of touches, she dragged her fingers along Sam’s inner thighs, and Sam felt heat pooling in her belly as every sense within her awakened, as they always did around Roz.
As Roz mapped the space between Sam’s legs and reached her already warm core, Roz looked up at Sam, who was already watching her.
Sam smiled, the corners of her lips curling upward in that soft way reserved only for Roz in their most private of moments.
She rested her head back on the pillow and felt Roz bend low, her hair tickling Sam’s thighs as she ghosted her pursed lips over Sam’s heat before running her tongue between her folds up to her clit.
Roz drew circles around Sam’s clit before sucking on the nub, and Sam felt the rush of pleasure spike in her body as Roz knew exactly where, when, and how to make Sam go feral with need.
“Oh fuck, Roz, right there.” She moaned loudly, no longer self-conscious about how her body responded to Roz’s expert touches.
Roz kept at it, humming her approval, which sent ripples throughout Sam’s body.
When Roz flattened her tongue on Sam’s clit and raised her mouth just enough to whisper, “my good girl,” between strokes, Sam lost control and felt every cell in her body scream out for Roz as her climax shattered her and left her breathless.
Roz held her and coaxed her through the aftershocks of her orgasm, whispering her sweet “I love yous” and stroking Sam’s hair. It was no less passionate, but so much more loving than they had ever been. And Sam knew without any doubt this was exactly where she belonged.
Afterward, Roz cleaned her gently, then slipped back into bed and pulled Sam close, so close she could barely tell where one of them ended and the other began.
They lay like that for a long time. Breathing. Tangled.
Eventually, Sam spoke.
“Do you think this is what forever feels like?”
Roz didn’t answer immediately.
She just kissed her forehead, traced a fingertip down the dip of her spine, and said, “If it isn’t, we’ll build it ourselves.”
Outside, the city kept on rushing too fast, too loud, too much.
But in that room, with Roz’s arm around her waist and the ribbon still knotted at her throat, Sam was everything she wanted to be.
Loved. Adored. Safe.
Her princess.
6 months later
Dawn found them the way it often did now—half-tangled, half-awake, wholly at peace.
The apartment was still and warm, the curtains breathing faintly with the changing light.
In the kitchen, the kettle clicked off with a soft sigh, and Roz poured coffee into two mismatched mugs—the heavy stoneware one Sam claimed, and the porcelain one Roz had brought back from a conference years ago and never used until now.
The scent rose, rich and dark, and Roz felt it loosen the last knots in her shoulders.
Sam was already at the balcony door, a blanket slung around her like a cape, hair mussed, bare feet silent on the wood. She glanced over her shoulder when Roz approached, that lazy, private smile tilting her mouth. It was the smile Roz lived for—the one that said I’m home without a word.
“Coffee,” Roz murmured, pressing the warm mug into Sam’s hands.
“Saved my life,” Sam said, voice rough with sleep.
Roz’s mouth curved. “Not yet. But I do enjoy the practice.”
They stepped out onto the balcony, the air cool and damp from last night’s rain.
Far below, the city rubbed its eyes—traffic a whisper, windows blinking on one by one, gulls somewhere out of sight.
The sky held to its blue-gray hush a moment longer before the first low streaks of gold began to catch on glass and stone.
Sam leaned her elbows on the railing and took a slow sip. “Shift’s at nine,” she said, not complaining. Sam didn’t complain. She simply measured, appraised, adjusted. “Quieter week, they say.”
“They always say.” Roz folded the blanket over Sam’s shoulders more snugly and smoothed it where it caught against her collarbone. The habit was impossible to break—she was forever straightening, tucking, aligning. Sam indulged her. Always. “What’s on your docket, Captain?”
Sam’s mouth tugged. “Hydrant inspections, ladder maintenance, paperwork. Riveting.”
“Ah.” Roz glanced sideways, feigning solemnity. “Forms. The true emergency medicine.”
Sam snorted into her coffee. “Says the woman who leaves a surgical atlas on the kitchen counter like it’s a cookbook.”
“It was one page.” Roz sipped, then conceded, “Three.”
“Four. I counted. Twice.” Sam bumped her shoulder. Under the blanket, Roz felt the heat of her, the line of her body easing into hers the way it always did—as if they had been made to slot together and had finally remembered it.
A faint sound rumbled from inside—the soft thud of paws followed by a questioning chirp.
A sleek, coal-gray cat appeared at the threshold and sat like a sentry, tail flicking slowly.
He’d been Sam’s idea, a rescue with a crooked left ear and a habit of sleeping in laundry baskets.
Roz had resisted for exactly thirty minutes before buying a litter box and three types of treats.
“Morning, Sir Percival,” Sam said without turning. “Permission to enter denied.”
Percival blinked once, regal and unbothered, and sauntered away.
They watched the sky open as if it had changed its mind about being sullen. Light climbed every surface until it found them too, brushed over Sam’s cheekbones, struck sparks in Roz’s eyes. In the quiet, their breath seemed louder than the city. Coffee steamed between their palms.
“You slept,” Roz said after a while, gentle surprise threaded through her tone. “Through. No calls. No nightmares.”
Sam made a small sound. “You wrapped me up like contraband and told me I wasn’t allowed to worry.”
“I said you were not allowed to carry.” Roz set her mug on the railing and turned, bracing one hand beside Sam’s hip.
Up close, she could see the pillow-crease faint along Sam’s jaw, the softness at the corners of her mouth that meant the day hadn’t sharpened her yet.
“You can worry all you like, Princess. I’ll take it and file it alphabetically. ”
Sam’s eyes warmed. “Under ‘H’ for Harrington?”
“Under ‘O’ for overzealous.”
Sam’s laugh faded into something quieter. “You always know what to say.”
“No,” Roz said, honest as bone. “I just refuse to leave the room while I look for it.”
Sam stared at her for a long moment—the unrushed kind, where the gaze itself felt like touch. Roz felt the old impulse to straighten her spine, to armor her words with cleverness. It didn’t come. It hadn’t, in a long time.
Sam shifted her mug to one hand and held out the other. Roz laced their fingers together without hesitation, palm to palm, a fit made familiar by practice. Sam’s thumb skated over the ridge of Roz’s first knuckle—a tiny, thoughtless movement that still undid her.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sam said, soft.
“Dangerous,” Roz murmured, but the smile tugging at her mouth betrayed her.
Sam ignored it. “About that night at the firehouse. You said you were done running.” Her throat worked. “I believe you.”
Roz felt the words land like a blessing and a commandment at once.
“And I know you can’t promise the world won’t…try us,” Sam went on. “But you keep choosing me in a hundred small ways. That’s…more than I knew to ask for.”
Roz leaned in, brushed their noses. “You taught me.”
Sam set her coffee aside, freed her other hand, and pulled Roz closer by the hem of her sleep-shirt. The kiss they shared in the cool dawn felt clean, unhurried—nothing to fix, nothing to prove, only the sweet recognition of two people who had become an answer for each other.
When they parted, Roz reached into the pocket of her cardigan. The movement was unassuming, almost shy, which would have shocked anyone who didn’t know her. She held out a length of silk—blush pink, the familiar ribbon that had begun as a secret and become something else entirely.
Sam’s mouth softened. “New one?”
Roz nodded. “I saw it yesterday and thought—” She cleared her throat. “I thought we were due for luck.”
Sam extended her wrist, the blanket slipping enough to bare warm skin and the faint ghost of yesterday’s watch mark. “Always.”
Roz tied the ribbon slowly, carefully, the way she did everything for Sam. The bow sat neat against the underside of her wrist. Roz bent and kissed the knot.
“For what it’s worth,” Sam said, voice low, “I don’t think it’s luck anymore.”
“What is it then?” Roz asked, still close enough to breathe her in.
“Practice.” Sam lifted her ribboned wrist and tapped the bow against Roz’s sternum, right over her heart. “Choosing each other when it would be easier to choose old habits.”
Roz rested her forehead to Sam’s. “You are very wise for a woman who leaves soot on my sheets.”
“You like me dirty.”
“I love you,” Roz corrected, the words simple and unadorned.
They didn’t catch in her mouth as they once had; they went out easy and true, like breath.
“I love you tidy. I love you unraveled. I love you when you steal my socks and when you bring home strays with aristocratic names. I love you when I’m brilliant.
I love you when I’m wrong. I love you when you’re twenty minutes late because you stopped to change someone’s tire and forgot to text me even though you promised you would—”
Sam winced. “That was one time.”
Roz arched a brow. “Three.”
“Two and a half.”
“Mm.” Roz’s fingers found the edge of the blanket and tugged it up to Sam’s throat. “Text me.”
“I will.” Sam’s smile turned sly. “Captain’s honor.”
They stood like that as the light strengthened—two women on a small square of balcony, coffee cooling, a cat resettling in a sun patch behind glass. Somewhere below, a bus sighed. A siren sounded, distant and uninterested, then faded. The city gathered itself and stepped into morning. So did they.
Sam finished her coffee and set the mug down with a soft clink. “I should shower.”
Roz glanced at the clock inside and hummed in agreement. “You’ll be late if you try to seduce me.”
Sam looked her straight in the eye. “I’m incredibly efficient.”
“I’ve noticed,” Roz said, perfectly dry, perfectly fond. She touched the ribbon again, then smoothed a stray curl back from Sam’s temple. “Come home safe.”
Sam lifted Roz’s hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, just once. “To you,” she said. It had become their benediction.
They moved through the morning choreography they’d built together: Sam in the shower singing off-key, Roz packing her a sandwich and slipping a handwritten note into the pocket because paper still did what texts couldn’t.
Percival supervised with disdain. By the door, Sam pulled on her boots and watched Roz fuss with her collar until it lay just so.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Sam said softly.
“Like what?”
“Like you can’t believe I’m real.”
Roz’s mouth curved, and for the briefest, most unguarded second, the truth showed. “Some days,” she admitted.
Sam lifted a hand and cupped the back of Roz’s neck, bringing her close. “I’m not going anywhere.” A beat. “And if I’m late—”
“You’ll text me,” Roz finished, mock-stern.
Sam kissed her. “I’ll text you.”
The door closed behind her with the soft finality of something right. Roz stood a moment longer than she needed to, listening to the fading footfalls in the hall, the elevator’s distant chime, the quiet that returned and did not hollow.
She gathered the mugs from the balcony, fed Percival, straightened the blanket, and, at the table, opened her laptop. A list of cases waited, consults and notes like a litany. Roz glanced at her phone; a message had already arrived.
On my way. Ribbon secured. Don’t rewrite the entire neurosurgery syllabus before noon. Love you.
Roz felt the smile start in her chest and reach her face on its own. She typed back.
No promises on the syllabus. Every promise on everything else. Come home.
She set the phone down and let her gaze drift to the balcony, to the slice of morning that belonged to them. The ribbon’s color stayed with her as she began her notes—soft, steady, certain as a heartbeat.
The world would keep calling them to fight. To run. To break.
They had learned a different reflex.
By evening, the sky would tip toward gold again. A key would turn in the lock. Boots would thud. A cat would complain. And Roz would look up, rise without thinking, and meet the woman who had become her safest place.
If it wasn’t forever yet, they would keep building.
And she would keep choosing—one dawn, one ribbon, one homecoming at a time.