Epilogue
FORD
It was a novelty to lie in Paige’s bed with her so long after sunrise.
Up until now, lazy mornings had been saved for Sundays—the one day she had completely off.
Christmas break had finally arrived. The kids of Heartstone Manor had been set free from the shackles of school for two weeks, and Paige’s call time was much later, now that she didn’t have to get them up and off to school.
The Manor was at ease for the first time in my memory, as if the entire household had let out a breath we’d been holding for decades.
Prentice was gone, and discovering how he’d died, and why, had swept his ghost from the Manor.
While no one had suspected Harvey of killing him, the family was agreed that justice had been served.
Ryder, Eli, and Wren had bid us farewell, heading back to Atlanta along with Kane Black, who’d been on loan from Sinclair Security.
Hawk was hanging on to the rest of his team, at least for a while.
While Griffen was confident that it was over and we were free to live our lives like normal people—or as normal as a Sawyer could get—Hawk was too paranoid for that.
He preferred to downgrade security gradually.
He’d said that if anyone was watching and decided to take a shot at the Sawyers, he’d be ready for them.
I appreciated his caution, but I was with Griffen—there wasn’t anyone else out there who wanted to come for the Sawyers. It was finally over.
West had cleared Harvey and sent in a team to process the crime scenes—both the one caused by Cole Haywood’s death and the older scene of my mother and Paul Williams’s murder.
Once West was done, Bailey Toms’s concrete company did us a favor and squeezed in the garage floor repair before they closed for the holidays.
Fortunately, the weather had cooperated.
The days were filled with bright sunshine and blue skies, the chill in the air mostly burned off by midday.
We wouldn’t have a white Christmas, but we sure as hell would have a cheerful one.
There were clouds here and there. Paige and I were both adjusting to our new understanding of our parents.
There had been a part of me that had hated my mother for leaving me, that had always wondered why I hadn’t been enough to make her stay.
I knew Paige felt the same about her father.
And now, I couldn’t escape the grief of knowing that Sarah’s life was stolen so young, that she’d been killed by the man who’d vowed to cherish her.
It was both better and worse to know she’d been willing to give up love for me, that Paige’s father had planned to turn away from his heart and go home to his daughter.
When I let myself think about it, I liked to imagine that if my mother had lived, maybe when we were a little older, we could have found a way to leave Prentice together.
She could have had her freedom—maybe she could have found her way to Paul.
But then again—I looked at the woman sleeping in my arms, her lashes dark fans on her cheeks, her long legs tangled with mine.
Paige, as my stepsister, would have been a problem, considering I hadn’t managed to keep my hands off her as an adult.
As teenagers? Nope, not thinking about that.
All we had was the present. And when it came to Paige, it was hard to regret anything that had come before when it had led me to landing here, with this woman in my arms.
We’d been together such a short time, and yet, it felt like forever. Life before Paige was dull and faded. And finally, with Haywood gone—our parents soon to be properly buried in the Sawyer family plot together—we could have a life.
A future.
And that thought reminded me of what I had planned for the morning.
“It’s going to be okay,” I heard, and a soft fingertip traced a line between my furrowed eyebrows. I rolled my head on the pillow to see Paige smiling at me, her face sleepy and soft. “It’s a great idea. And Griffen’s smart, he’ll see that.”
“I hope so,” I said. I had a plan for what to do with the rest of my life now that I had one. But I couldn’t do it by myself. I needed Griffen’s buy-in. I caught her hand in mine and kissed her fingertips, “Whatever happens, I’ll figure it out.”
“I know you will,” she said, her pale blue eyes so satisfied they seemed to glow with it. “What time is it?” She stretched her arms over her head with a lazy smile.
“Eight-something,” I said, easing down to bury my face in the curve of her neck, drawing in her warm, sweet scent.
She turned to face me, trailing her hands over my back. “We don’t have to get up yet.”
“Not yet,” I agreed, closing my fingers over the curve of her ass and pulling her into my erection.
“Mm, you feel so good,” she said, rolling to her back, one leg coming up to wrap around my hip. She smiled up at me, her eyes still sleepy but now fogged with lust. “This is my favorite way to wake up.”
“Mine too.” I leaned to nudge open her bedside drawer and pulled out a condom.
I had them stashed everywhere. Her room, mine, the shower.
Anywhere I thought I might get her naked.
Now that life was somewhat settled, we’d been putting them to good use, disappearing every night after dinner for an early bedtime.
We spent plenty of time in bed, not a lot of it sleeping.
I pressed her back into the mattress, pulling her hands over her head and dipping my head to tease the tip of her breast. I was on a mission to taste every inch of Paige, and I wasn’t close to satisfied.
Later, I carried her to the shower. Neither of us was surprised when the water steamed on demand. Since the day we’d found our parents’ grave, we hadn’t had a single problem with the plumbing or the electrical in the guest wing. No one thought it was a coincidence.
We emerged from Paige’s room to find the leftovers of breakfast still laid out in the dining room.
Finn always did a buffet in the mornings during the holidays.
I didn’t mind getting the scraps. Finn’s overwarmed eggs and cooled biscuits were a hell of a lot better than anything I could have made myself.
“Are you going to talk to Griffen after breakfast?” Paige asked over coffee.
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Come find me after. I’m doing a project with the kids in the kitchen.”
“I will,” I said. I pushed my chair back, nerves twisting in my gut.
“It’s a great idea, Ford,” she said.
I nodded, my throat tight with a combination of love and gratitude that stole my voice.
I hadn’t thought I deserved anything after the way I’d spent most of my life, and to have this woman look at me like that, glowing with feeling for me—it was more than I deserved.
I’d make sure she never regretted it, not for a moment.
I knocked on Griffen’s office door, pushing it open at his brisk, “Yep?”
“Ford,” Hope said, surprise on her face as she noticed the file folder in my hand. She glanced at Griffen, eyebrows raised.
“Is now good?” I asked. Griffen had said they didn’t have anything on the schedule, but I knew how quickly things could change.
“Yeah, come in.” He looked at his wife. “I meant to tell you Ford was stopping by this morning,” he said to Hope, “but then I got—” He paused, and something in his look had Hope’s cheeks flushing. “Distracted,” he finished.
I didn’t bother to hide my grin.
“Oh,” Hope said. She cleared her throat and looked to me, giving me a bright, professional smile that belied the very personal blush on her cheeks. “What’s up? Is this a business meeting or a family thing?”
“It’s both, actually,” I said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what’s next.”
“The last time we talked about this,” Griffen said, “you were determined to find out who killed Dad.”
I sat back, crossed my ankle on my knee. “I was.”
“And you did,” Griffen said. “I can’t say I saw that coming.”
I shook my head. “Me either. All these years Harvey was pining for our mother, and then…”
“And you’re really not mad?” Griffen asked, his eyes narrowing on my face. “You spent a year in prison.”
“I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know.” There were nights when I still couldn’t shake the memories—the loneliness, the heat. But the nightmares would fade, and I was here. In my home. With my family. With Paige. Prison felt very far away.
As a family, we’d talked about Harvey killing Prentice—minus West—and had agreed to keep what we knew to ourselves.
None of us wanted to see Harvey in prison.
West knew we were keeping something from him, but so far, he seemed content to let it go.
I suspected Avery had played a part in that.
But I hadn’t talked about it with Griffen.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, “he lied. And I went to prison for it. And yeah, that was miserable. But if he turns himself in to West for shooting Dad, he’ll be locked up for the rest of his life.
I don’t want that. And knowing Harvey, the guilt he’s feeling is worse than anything the legal system can do to him.
” I looked at Griffen. “Do you want Harvey to go to prison?”
He closed his eyes and sat back, thinking for a long moment. Hope reached out to take his hand, squeezing hard. Griffen was usually more compassionate than me, but it seemed like in this one case, he was having a hard time letting go. He squeezed Hope’s hand and opened his eyes.
“No,” he said. “You make a good point. Part of me wants him to bear some responsibility for what he put you through, but not if that means he spends the rest of his life in prison. I can understand why he snapped. I feel like I can see the whole scene in my head. Prentice laughing, admitting he’d murdered the woman Harvey loved—our mother—like it was a joke. ”
I could picture it, too. All too easily.