Kyler
Four Months Later
Epilogue
Hampton, Virginia
I’ve been shot at in four countries this year and somehow this still feels harder.
I stand beside my truck staring at the house.
Dalton’s house. No. Not Dalton’s anymore.
Theirs.
It’s a charming single-story white brick house.
Jasmine is growing up a trellis on one side of the dark wooden front door, and there is a brick path leading to a large front porch complete with a swing, a small comfy seating area, and plants overflowing from wicker baskets.
It didn’t look like this the day I first talked with Dalton out here.
When I all but threatened him against starting something with Ivy.
The irony.
Colorful wildflowers and dark greenery wrap around a wooden arch leading through an open fence on the side yard and into the backyard. Instrumental music floats from speakers placed somewhere out of sight.
Seven years ago, Ivy took my hand and led me into a courthouse wearing a white sundress. I remember her fingers being ice cold despite the August heat. I remember thinking she looked beautiful. Beautiful but fragile. Like someone trying to outrun a fire that was still burning inside her.
But none of it mattered because she loved me.
I knew it in the way she reached for me in her sleep after the nightmares.
In the way she stood in the kitchen wearing my t-shirts while she danced to whatever song was playing in her head as she washed the dishes.
In the way she looked at me after I brought her home, like I was the only thing she was sure about anymore.
And maybe that was the problem.
Because even then—even standing there in that chilly brick building with her hand in mine and a delicate gold ring in my pocket—I think some part of me knew we weren’t going to survive what happened to her.
Not because we didn’t want to. Never that.
But because we were broken in ways love couldn’t fix.
I’ve rescued more people than I can remember. Men. Women. Kids. Hostages with rope cutting into their wrists and terror in their eyes. Most of the time, if we do our jobs right, we bring them home alive and everyone calls it a success.
But there is nothing successful about a mission where the love of your life is the target.
There’s nothing heroic about kicking down a door and finding the woman you love tied to a metal chair under a bare lightbulb.
Blood running down her face.
Lip split open.
Wrists raw from fighting the ropes.
A gun pressed to her head.
I still see it sometimes when I close my eyes.
Not the room.
Her.
The way she looked at me.
Not relieved. Not even surprised. Just…tired.
Like she already knew some part of her wasn’t making it out of there no matter what I did.
We killed every son of a bitch in that compound. Cut the ropes. Carried her out with her blood soaking through my shirt while she shook so hard I thought her body was going to give out entirely.
I brought her home.
But no matter how badly we loved each other after that, every kiss, every sleepless night, every desperate attempt to hold our marriage together eventually started to feel less like living and more like trying not to drown.
Then Dalton came along.
And somehow, he taught her how to breathe again.
That should make me hate him.
Instead, all I feel standing here looking at their home is grief so sharp it nearly brings me to my knees—and relief so overwhelming it settles somewhere in my ribs beside it.
So here I am in another man’s driveway trying to figure out how to breathe normally.
The front door flies open before I can spiral any further.
“Daddy!” Hadley comes racing across the yard at full speed, flower basket bouncing against her leg. I barely have time to brace before she launches herself into me hard enough to knock me back a step.
I catch her automatically, laughing under my breath as I spin her once through the air. “Hey, Had.”
“You’re late,” she scolds.
“I’m thirty minutes early.”
Had shake her head. “That’s basically late.”
I snort softly. “You sound exactly like your mama.”
Her face lights up instantly. “You have to see how pretty Mama looks.”
There it is. That ache.
“Your mama always looks pretty. Just like you.” I nuzzle her face with mine, then set her down slowly, hands lingering on her shoulders as I really look at her.
She’s grown again. Kids do that when you miss enough time.
“I’m the flower girl,” she announces proudly, like I somehow missed the basket hanging from her arm.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. My dress matches Mama’s.” She smooths both hands down the front of her white dress, curls bouncing around her shoulders. There’s a crown of colorful wildflowers pinned around the top of her small head, making her look like a tiny fairy princess. “You look beautiful, peanut.”
“Daddy, I have told you a hundred zillion times, I am not a peanut.” She sounds exasperated, but then she giggles. “You want to see my shoes?”
“Yes, obviously.”
She sticks one foot out proudly, sparkly little flats catching the sunlight.
I nod seriously. “Very tactical.”
She scrunches her nose, making a dramatic grossed-out face. “No, Daddy. Very pretty.”
I laugh quietly, shaking my head before pulling her back against my side for a second and kissing the top of her head.
She smells like lavender and citrus. Like her shampoo and Ivy’s perfume.
She smells like home.
“Hey, man.”
I look up automatically.
Dalton is standing in the doorway holding a metal bucket full of beer bottles, already dressed for the ceremony in a cream linen suit, white dress shirt, and no tie. Relaxed and comfortable. Like he belongs here. Like this life belongs to him. And I guess, it does.
His eyes meet mine. There’s a brief pause. Not tense. Just aware.
Then he nods once. “I’m glad you made it. Ivy will be, too.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it.”
He leads me through the house toward the oversized back porch that was still half-framed lumber and construction dust the last time I saw it.
Now it’s finished and beautiful. Dark wooden planks stretch wide beneath our feet, polished smooth enough that the string lights overhead reflect softly against them.
White railings wrap around the entire porch, flower boxes overflowing with ivy and pale blue hydrangeas hanging from the edges.
It feels warm here. Lived in. Like the kind of place people build when they plan on staying.
Round wooden tables are scattered across the deck surrounded by chairs, each one set with soft blue linens and white candles flickering gently in glass holders.
Long buffet tables line the far side of the porch waiting for food.
There’s an open stretch of floor in the center meant for dancing later.
Ivy finally has the thing she’s been searching for since South Africa took it from her. Peace. Not the forced kind. Not the brittle, temporary version we tried to build together. Real peace. The kind where her body finally stopped expecting danger around every corner.
I glance through the open doorway into the kitchen and immediately spot evidence of her everywhere. A ceramic vase of wildflowers. A stack of cookbooks propped up against a house plant in a terracotta pot. One of Hadley’s drawings taped crookedly to the fridge.
Tiny, normal things.
Things that immediately feel too intimate after the life we had together. Because this isn’t survival. This is home.
And maybe that’s what finally breaks something open inside me.
Not the wedding. Not the realization that she loves someone else.
It’s that she’s safe enough now to build a life that doesn’t revolve around fear.
A life I wanted desperately to give her.
“I’m going to find Mama!” Hadley abandons both of us, sprinting back inside the house, nearly knocking into Wells. He catches her one-handed before she can crash into the wedding cake he’s carrying.
“I can walk myself,” she informs him.
“Can you now?” Wells asks amused.
“Yes.”
“You say that after nearly wearing the wedding cake.”
Alinna laughs softly beside him and Wells glances down at her, smiling in a way that seems automatic. Interesting.
Lila walks through the door and glances around the patio space, as if taking inventory.
Then looks beyond into the yard itself that is set up for the ceremony.
A wooden arch is covered in colorful flowers.
A few rows of white wooden chairs line an aisle already littered with flower petals.
It’s simple. Elegant. And probably what Ivy should have had from the beginning.
Lila seems satisfied with how everything looks and walks over to Logan, who’s standing with Townsend, both of them with beers in hand.
There are a handful of other people here.
Ivy’s mom, who I need to go say hi to. A man I am assuming is Dalton’s dad, just based on the fact that he looks just like him, beside a woman who is maybe Dalton’s mom, but I kind of doubt it.
Some other guys who look like Air Force pilots.
And girls I faintly recognize from Ivy’s studio.
They opted for something small. And I’ve never seen anything so perfectly Ivy.
It’s normal in a way I honestly forgot life could be.
Dalton walks over after a minute, holding out a beer.
“Thanks,” I say, knocking my bottle to his.
“Thank you,” Dalton says.
I shake my head, looking back out into the backyard while I work to regain my composure. “No. Thank you. I’m glad she has you. You brought her back. You made her safe.” I look at Dalton then, finally meet his eyes.
He smiles softly. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure she always is.”
I nod, taking a long sip of my beer.
Dalton visibly swallows. “You okay?”
I almost laugh at the question because no, not even remotely.
The woman I still love is about to marry someone else twenty feet from where I’m standing.
But the fucked up part is—I’m not angry about it.
I glance over at him. “I will be. Now go marry her before she changes her mind.”
He laughs softly, then nods before walking off.
For years, I thought loving Ivy meant protecting her from the world.
Keeping her safe.