Epilogue
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Six weeks later, Lena walked into Angel's Rest on a Friday night.
I didn't know she was coming. No warning, no call, just the front door swinging open and my best friend standing there in a leather jacket and boots, scanning the room with that warm, sharp gaze that had never missed a thing in fifteen years of friendship.
I was behind the bar. Mid-pour, Hank's usual bourbon, the Friday rush humming around me. I looked up and saw her and my face lit up.
"Lena!"
She grinned. Crossed the room, leaned over the bar, pulled me into a hug that smelled like her shampoo and the cold air outside. I held on. Longer than usual, tighter than usual, because the last time I'd hugged this woman I'd been lying to her. Now I wasn't, and the difference lived in my bones.
She pulled back. Looked at my face. Her eyes shifted to my right. To Hawk, three stools down, whiskey in hand, watching me the way he always watched me now. Unhidden. Unguarded. The warmth right there on the surface where anyone could see it.
Lena looked at him. Looked at me. A slow, knowing smile spread across her face. Not surprise. Recognition. The look of a woman who'd been watching two people circle each other for fifteen years and had been waiting for them to stop being idiots about it.
"So," she said, leaning on the bar, casual as anything. "Are you going to keep pretending, or can we skip to the part where you admit you're sleeping with my brother?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Felt the heat climb my neck.
"How did you..."
"Bree. Please." She held up a hand. "You've been making cow eyes at him since you were old enough to know what boys were. And he's sitting three feet away looking at you like you're the only person in this bar. I'm not blind. I've been waiting for this for about a decade." She grinned.
I laughed. The real one, the one that came from somewhere deep and clean, the one I'd spent months forgetting how to make.
Lena turned to Hawk. He was right there, close enough to have heard every word, his expression carefully neutral, the way it got when he was trying not to show something and failing completely.
"Hawk," she said. "Are you going to buy me a beer or what?"
He held her gaze for a long beat. Then the corner of his mouth moved. Just a fraction. The thing he did that was better than a smile.
He reached over, pulled out the stool next to him.
Lena sat down, bumped her shoulder against his, and something passed between them that was fifteen years of unspoken things finally settling into place.
The two people I loved most in the world sitting side by side at my bar, and Lena reached over and squeezed her brother's hand, and he let her.
I poured Lena's beer. Set it down in front of her and she caught my wrist before I could pull away.
"I'm happy for you," she said. Quiet, just for me. "Both of you. Really, because it’s about damn time."
I squeezed her hand back. Couldn't speak. Didn't need to.
I went back to work. The bar hummed on, warm, alive, full of people who'd chosen each other.
I was one of them now.