Epilogue One
My Ruination
A urora’s fast asleep, her cheeks still rosy from the antihistamine and exhaustion. I check the monitor one more time, watch the steady rise and fall of her chest, and close her bedroom door with a soft click.
Then I just… stand there.
My hand’s clenched around the monitor, and I’m staring at our bedroom door like it’s a cliff I’m about to fall off.
She’s in there.
My girl.
My Georgia.
I take a breath I don’t really feel and step into the room. The light is dim, just the soft glow of the bedside lamp spilling across the walls, but it still makes her shine.
She hasn’t changed out of her yellow dress from the Bash—the one that makes her look like sunlight dipped in honey. She’s standing dead center, arms loose at her sides, curls falling like wildfire around her shoulders.
Georgia’s not crying, or fidgeting, and for once, she doesn't seem seconds from bolting. Her face is nervous, but sure, like she’s ready for whatever's about to happen.
Like she’s ready to fight… for us.
Swallowing thickly, I take a step inside our room and close the door behind me.
“I’m sorry,” we both say at the same time.
I shake my head slowly and take another step.
“Why are you sorry?” My voice is soft, but my heart’s pounding like I just ran here. “I already told you, Georgia. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
Her lip trembles, and her hands lift and fall at her sides like she doesn’t know what to do with them. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do ruin things.”
That stops me cold.
My stomach drops and I quickly close the distance between us.
“What are you talking about, darlin’?”
“You’ve been saying it from the beginning,” she chokes out, eyes shining. “That I ruin things. Your shirts. Your shoes. Your days. I didn’t want to ruin this too—us. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
God.
Fuck.
I’ve been a goddamn idiot. Thought I was being funny, flirting. Didn’t realize she was taking every word and twisting it in her trauma.
I cup her jaw in my hands, my thumb stroking her cheek as I tilt her face up to mine.
“No,” I whisper. “No, baby. There is not a single part of you capable of ruining a damn thing. I’m the one who’s ruined.”
She blinks, and her fingers curl around my hips like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.
“I was a shell,” I tell her. “Walking around pretending to be a man when all I was doing was surviving. Drinking too much. Hurting too quiet. Hating myself for not being the son my father raised.”
I move closer, so close I feel her breath on my lips.
“Then you walked in. All fire and fight. Lit the damn match. And now?”
My hand slides down, over the soft curve of her hip, my fingers dragging slowly up the slit in her dress until I find bare skin.
I trace the curve of her hip then slip between her thighs, letting her feel the weight of my words. “Now I’m the one who’s gonna ruin you.”
She gasps, lips parting. “You are?”
“Yes. Ruin you for all other men. Ruin your pretty little birthday outfit. Ruin your vocal cords as you scream out my name, begging me again and again for more. Ruin your makeup when I fuck your mouth, and hit the back of your throat.”
Georgia whimpers, shuddering against me.
“But mostly, baby? I’m about to ruin this.” I slide under her panties and cup her pussy possessively. “I’m gonna destroy this right here. With my mouth and fingers and cock. And then? Then I’m gonna make a mess out of your sweet little cunt with my cum.”
We’re both panting hard, gripping each other like we’re afraid of falling.
“See? It’s me who ruins things.”
“Oh,” she whispers, eyes flicking to my lips where they stay.
“Tell me I can make you come, Georgia. Tell me I can slip my fingers into this tight little pussy and listen to you beg and moan and whimper for more.” I bite down on her neck, licking away the sting and she cries out, hips thrusting forward.
“You gotta tell me. You gotta ask me to touch you, ask you to make you come so hard, I’ll be able to lick your sweet taste from my hand when I’m done. ”
She melts into me, fingers clawing at every part of me she can reach.
“Yes,” she breathes, “I want…”
Her throat bobs, but she doesn’t finish so I grip her throat and tug her closer.
“I’m right here, darlin’,” I coo. “Be brave. Gimme that wildfire and sass I love so much. Tell me what you need.”
Her gaze flicks to my lips, and her shoulders straighten.
“I want you to fuck me like you love me, Kade Archer.”
I don’t even let her breathe before I’m on her, slamming my lips to hers.
She tastes like summer and honey, like fear and forgiveness and forever .
My girl moans into my mouth, and just like I knew it would, it wrecks me. I lift her with one arm under her thighs and carry her to the bed, laying her down like she’s the most precious thing I’ve ever held.
Because she is.
She’s mine.
And tonight, I’m going to remind her exactly what that means.
She lies beneath me, wild curls fanned out across her pillow. The one I slept with every night she was gone. That damn yellow dress is wrinkled and hitched high around her thighs, her chest rising and falling like she’s trying to catch up to her heart.
I’m not doing much better.
My hands tremble as I slide them up her ribs, across her waist, like I’m memorizing her shape in case I wake up and this was all a dream.
She looks up at me, lashes damp, lips parted, and whispers, “I love you.”
Three words, but they’re everything.
“Baby,” I rasp, shaking my head with a smile. “Georgia, I fell in love with you slowly, like honey sliding down warm skin. That love healed parts of me I didn't even know were broken. And now I can’t stop craving the taste of you. Sweet on my tongue, wild under my hands. Mine in every way.”
“Yours,” she chokes out, tugging me forward. “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Unable to wait a second longer, I dip down and kiss her like I need her mouth to breathe. Her fingers lace behind my neck, dragging me closer, deeper, until there's no space left between us and nothing holding us back.
We undress each other slowly, reverently.
Nothing but warmth and skin and soft, shaky laughter when I can’t get one of the buttons undone and she rolls her eyes, helping me.
I kiss every new inch of her as it’s revealed—her shoulder, her collarbone, the dip of her waist. Her freckles glow like stars across her skin, and I swear I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.
When I finally settle between her thighs, I pause.
Her legs curl around my hips, and she strokes her thumb across my cheek.
“Make love to me, sunshine,” she whispers. “Make it slow and sweet, like we’ve got forever.”
“We do, darlin’,” I breathe, dropping my forehead to hers as I push inside her sweet warmth. “I’m never leavin’ you.”
As I rock into her, I murmur against her lips that I love her, that I’m hers, that there’s nothing broken in her I wouldn’t spend my whole damn life cherishing.
And when she comes apart beneath me, whispering my name like a prayer, dragging me with her, I know.
This is it.
This is what my grandparents and parents meant when they talked about soul mates. This is what they said was worth dreaming for. Fighting for.
Living for.
Later, we’re lying in bed, the moonlight pooling through the windows and casting our skin in soft silver. Georgia’s tucked against my side, her fingers drawing lazy circles on my chest, her breath still a little uneven.
I brush my lips to her forehead and murmur, “How was that? Did I ruin you?”
She lets out a shaky laugh, then lifts my hand and presses it to the center of her chest.
“The only thing you’ve ruined is this,” she whispers, eyes locked on mine. “It used to beat a restless song. A running song.”
I freeze, watching her, the weight of those words already coiling tight in my chest.
“You once asked me why I love the music I do,” she goes on.
“It’s because they’re strong women singing about surviving on their own.
About never needing anyone—especially not a man.
And when they sing about love? It’s always after the heartbreak.
After the leaving. They sing about how to pick up the pieces, not how to keep them whole. ”
She traces the line of my forearm, down to my wrist, her fingers featherlight but sure.
“I didn’t have a mom to teach me how to break or heal. Those women did. Their voices raised me. That’s the beat my heart lived by for a long time.” She swallows, her eyes shimmering in the low light. “But then you walked in. And now… now it beats for you.”
“Baby,” I whisper, the word catching in my throat.
She starts to shake her head, like she’s said too much, but I cover her hand with mine and hold it still—hold her still.
“I’m serious,” she breathes, blinking up at me. “You ruined every rule I had. Every guard I put up. And I’d let you do it again.”
I slide closer, wrapping her up in my arms like I never want to let her go—because I don’t.
“Then let me be just as clear,” I rasp. “I lived my life in numbness. On autopilot. I survived off duty and guilt and whiskey, not because I was strong, but because I didn’t know how to feel anymore. I forgot what light even looked like.”
My thumb brushes over her cheekbone, catching a stray tear.
“And then you walked in—loud and stubborn and wild as hell—and you lit a match inside me I didn’t think could ever burn again.”
She sniffles, burrows in, and I tighten my hold.
“My life used to be a long road, no destination. But now it’s broken into moments.
Moments of you. You smiling. You laughing.
You whispering things to Aurora like she’s your whole world.
You in the kitchen with flour on your face.
You asleep beside me with your hand curled on my chest. Every moment, Georgia… it’s you. It’s always been you.”
She lets out a sound between a sob and a sigh and kisses my throat. “You mean it?”
I cradle her face and tilt her chin so there’s no doubt when I say, “I love you, Georgia Soon-to-Be Archer. You’re it for me. You’re my best friend, my heart, my family. You gave me a reason to come home and someone to come home to.”
Her lips tremble. “I love you too, Kade. So much it terrifies me.”
“Don’t be scared anymore,” I whisper, voice low and thick. “I’ve got you. And I’m not lettin’ go.”
She nods, pressing a kiss to my jaw and settling into my chest like she belongs there.
And hell, maybe she always did.
Because in this moment, in our bed, in our home, with our daughter asleep in the next room, I know one thing for sure.
This is forever.
My happily ever after.