Epilogue | NOA
Epilogue
NOA
By December, Christmas lights had taken over Halo City without making it look innocent.
White strands climbed the glass towers along Commerce Row.
Wreaths hung from black iron balconies in the cathedral district.
Down near the waterfront, the piers shone under bulbs that snapped and swayed in the bay wind, bright against the hard winter dark.
Every shop window had candles, ribbon, and some tasteful arrangement of pine meant to suggest peace on earth was available for purchase if your credit limit was high enough.
Inside our apartment, the Christmas tree was listing three degrees to the left.
I stood barefoot on the living room rug in a black dress, one earring in, my hair half-pinned, and watched the top third of the tree make a slow lean toward the window.
“That tree is drunk,” I said.
Torin looked over from the kitchen doorway, where he was buttoning the cuff of a white dress shirt with the kind of careless precision that suggested the shirt had accepted its fate early.
Black trousers. Bare feet. Dark hair still damp from the shower.
The thin line of a shoulder holster strap showed before he shrugged into formal Catholic respectability and pretended he wasn’t armed under it.
“It’s festive,” he said.
“It’s structurally compromised.”
“It’s got character.”
“It’s one bad ornament away from a lawsuit.”
His mouth curved. “Are you planning to sue the Christmas tree, sweetheart?”
“I’m considering my options.”
Torin crossed the room, stepped behind me, and set one broad hand low on my waist like he’d been doing it all his life and I’d only recently stopped pretending I minded. His thumb brushed over the black fabric at my hip. My breath caught before I could make it behave.
He bent near my ear.
“Leave the poor tree alone. It’s trying its best.”
“The tree and I have different standards.”
“Aye, and yours are unreasonable.”
“They’ve kept me alive.”
“My unreasonable standards have also kept you alive, so we’re even.”
“That was once,” I said.
His hand tightened slightly at my waist.
It hadn’t been once.
It had been a safe house burning hot enough to turn the night orange.
A hotel hallway with danger breathing too close.
A gala at the Morrow Museum where the rich had eaten expensive fish under chandeliers while a drive full of federal evidence changed hands inside a red clutch.
It had been Judge Malcolm Hughes’s gun pressed into my back in a darkened corridor, and Torin’s face when he found me.
He had looked white with fury, still enough to be dangerous, and terrified in a way he would never admit to anyone who wasn’t me.
Six months later, Hughes was awaiting trial with a defense team that had learned the unpleasant limits of influence once the Chronicle put everything online.
Pamela Warren had gone from philanthropic royalty to a name donors lowered their voices around.
Her husband had divorced her in a manner so public it made the society pages look like a blood sport.
The Warren Pediatric Care Foundation had been dismantled, its remaining assets frozen, redirected, litigated over, and written about by people who used words like disgraced with professional delight.
The Valenti-linked development pipelines were still under subpoena. Shell companies kept collapsing into other shell companies. Men who had looked untouchable in June had started leaving through side doors in December with lawyers on both arms.
Gideon Simmons had won awards.
Claudia had sent flowers and nothing else.
That was Claudia’s version of a sonnet.
I had moved into Torin’s apartment three weeks after the indictments landed with two duffels, one half-unpacked box, and no stated intention of making it permanent. He had said nothing about the box. He had put it in the closet beside his go-bag and cleared half the top drawer.
He had understood me well enough not to make a ceremony out of staying. That was probably why I had stayed.
Torin kissed the side of my neck, and the apartment went quiet around the heat of his mouth. His hand stayed at my waist. His body stayed close behind mine, solid and warm against the December cold pressed against the windows.
“We’re going to be late,” I said.
“We’re not late.”
“We’re going to midnight Mass. Doesn’t punctuality matter?”
“God’s patient.”
“That sounds like something a late man tells himself.”
“I’m never late.” His mouth moved to the spot below my ear. “I arrive precisely when the situation deserves me.”
I tipped my head despite my better judgment. “That line works on people?”
“It worked on you.”
“I was under duress.”
“You were wearing red and planning to use yourself as bait at a high-society criminal exposure gala. You weren’t under duress. You were enjoying yourself.”
“I enjoyed parts of it.”
His laugh touched my skin. “I remember the parts.”
The Christmas tree gave a small, ominous rustle.
I opened my eyes. “If that tree falls while your hand is on my ass, I’m putting it in the police report.”
Torin slid his hand lower with open disrespect for evidence preservation. “You’re not calling the police on our Christmas tree.”
“Our Christmas tree is making choices.”
“So are you.”
His voice changed on the last word. Not enough for anyone else to hear. Enough for me.
I looked at our reflection in the window beyond the leaning tree.
White lights glowed behind us. Dark glass held us in place.
Torin stood tall and broad at my back, his dress shirt open at the throat, his body wrapped around mine like a bad decision that had become a home.
I wore black, one earring, bare feet, and the cat-charm bracelet bright on my wrist where his hand rested against my hip.
Six months ago, I had lived in four hundred square feet and kept half my life in a box because unpacking felt like making a claim the world would punish me for.
Now my boots sat under his by the door. My coffee mug lived in the cabinet beside his.
My knives had their own drawer because Torin had called it “healthy boundaries,” which was rich from a man who kept a pistol safe under the bed and rosary beads in the nightstand.
I reached up and touched the earring I hadn’t managed to fasten. “Either help me finish getting dressed, or explain to Saint Brigid’s why I showed up looking like I lost a fight with my own hair.”
“I like your hair.”
“My hair isn’t the issue.”
“I like the dress.”
“You haven’t seen the dress. You’ve been trying to get under it.”
“A man can multitask.”
I turned in his arms and held the earring out.
Torin took it from my palm. For a man who could disarm someone before most people managed a full breath, he handled small things with annoying care. He brushed my hair behind my ear, fastened the earring, then let his fingers trail down the side of my throat.
“There,” he said. “You’re devastating.”
“I’m acceptable.”
“You’re a liar.”
“You’re overconfident.”
“You’re mine.”
The word landed low and hot, as familiar as his hand at my waist and still capable of making my pulse lose its manners.
I glanced up at him. “You say that like I’m acquired property.”
Torin’s eyes darkened, amused and serious at once. “Property can be bought. You had to be survived.”
“That’s almost romantic.”
“That was devastating too. You’re just difficult.”
“I’ve heard that from unreliable sources.”
“You’ve heard it from everyone who loves you.”
The apartment went very quiet.
It wasn’t the first time those words had found me. They had arrived before in the dark, against my mouth, into my hair when he thought I was asleep, once in the kitchen while I held a knife and threatened a frozen lasagna that had refused to cook evenly. I still wasn’t used to surviving them.
Torin’s gaze held mine.
Then his attention dropped to my bracelet. The little gold cat caught the tree lights, one paw lifted, still pointed toward somewhere else. I had worn it through every bad night, every run, every room where I needed to remember I could move before anyone thought to stop me.
Torin touched the charm with one finger.
“I saw this the first day,” he said.
“I know.”
“You looked ready to bolt out of Claudia’s office and take the stairs three at a time.”
“I was considering it.”
“I know.” His mouth curved. “I was faster.”
“You were larger. That’s not the same.”
“It was going to be enough.”
“Debatable.”
He laughed softly, but the sound didn’t last. He reached into his trouser pocket.
I went still before I saw the box.
It was small and black and absurdly obvious once it was in his hand. Halo City had trained me to distrust velvet boxes on principle. They usually came attached to bribes, affairs, apologies, or men who thought jewelry counted as accountability.
My fingers tightened around his sleeve.
“Torin.”
“Aye, I know.”
“That had better not be earrings.”
“It’s not earrings.”
“We agreed no dramatic Christmas gifts.”
“You said no dramatic Christmas gifts. I listened respectfully and made no promises.”
“That isn’t a loophole.”
“It’s when you’re beautiful and bossy and wrong.”
My throat tightened.
He took my left hand. His thumb moved once over the cat charm, then over my bare ring finger. He didn’t drop to one knee immediately. Of course he didn’t. Torin Dempsey had never met a tradition he couldn’t stare down first and decide whether it deserved him.
“I waited,” he said.
“That’s unlike you.”
His mouth flickered. “I waited because the first time I met you, you were ready to run from anything that looked like a cage. I wasn’t handing you something permanent until you knew the difference between being kept and being chosen.”
The wind rattled faintly against the windows. Somewhere beyond the glass, a siren moved through the city and faded.
Torin opened the box.