Epilogue
CASSIAN
Six Months Later
"They're late," I said, checking my phone.
"They're always late. Riven runs a hospital. Time is more of a suggestion for him." Calla reached across the table and stole an olive from the appetizer plate. "Relax. We're not on call tonight. We have nowhere to be."
She was right. For the first time for what seemed like forever, we had an entire evening with no surgeries scheduled, no meetings, and no emergencies demanding our attention. Tonight, we’re just having dinner with friends and then home, to the apartment we'd moved into together three months ago.
Home. I still wasn't used to that word meaning something again.
Riven and Mireya appeared at the hostess stand five minutes later.
They looked like they'd stepped out of a magazine, Riven in a charcoal suit that fit him perfectly and Mireya in a deep burgundy dress that made her dark eyes even more striking.
His hand rested around her waist, casually exposing his possessiveness.
"Sorry we're late," Riven said, sliding into the booth beside me. "The board meeting ran over."
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Fine. Just the usual politics." He accepted a menu from the waiter and immediately set it aside. "How's the protocol going?"
"Good. Really good, actually." Calla smiled at me across the table, and even after six months, that smile still made my heart twist and turn and do embarrassing things. "We submitted the final draft to the medical board last week. The implementation will start next month across three departments."
"And you're both still speaking to each other?" Mireya asked, her tone dry.
"Most days…" I grinned. "Some days I want to throw her revisions out the window."
"Only because you're unreasonably stubborn about triage algorithms."
I smirked. "I'm not stubborn. I'm correct."
"You're both," Mireya observed, giggling. "But at least you're consistent."
Riven flagged down the waiter and ordered a bottle of wine for the table. When it arrived, he poured four glasses and raised his.
"To the protocol," he said. "And to the two idiots who almost destroyed their careers fighting for it."
"Heartwarming as always," Calla said laughing.
We clinked glasses and drank.
The evening unfolded the way our dinners together always did now. Easy conversation flowing between courses. We shared stories from the hospital that made us laugh until we couldn't breathe. Talked about arguments on medical procedures that got heated and then dissolved into affection.
Somewhere between the main course and dessert, I found myself watching Calla across the table.
She was deep in conversation with Riven about administrative oversight, their heads bent together as they traded ideas back and forth.
Riven was nodding thoughtfully at something she'd said, and Calla was sketching something on a napkin to illustrate her point.
No tension. No defensiveness. Just two sharp minds finding common ground.
Six months ago, she would have kept her opinions guarded and swallowed her ideas, retreating behind the walls she'd spent her whole life building.
But she was opening up now. She learned to laugh loudly, allowing herself to be seen the way she never had before.
And I loved her more for it every day.
"You're staring," Mireya pointed teasingly, leaning close enough that only I could hear.
"I know."
"It's sweet. Slightly nauseating, but sweet."
I shook my head. "I'll take it."
She smiled, her eyes moving to Riven, who was now nodding at something Calla had written on the napkin. The same softness I felt looking at Calla was there in Mireya's expression. The same wonder at having found someone worth keeping.
"I never thanked you properly," I said. "For what you did during the ethics review and for talking to Riven. You stayed with Calla when she needed a friend."
"You've thanked me at least twelve times."
"Thirteen now."
Mireya shook her head, but her smile widened. "You two were always going to find your way back to each other. I just helped clear some of the obstacles."
"The obstacles were pretty significant."
"The obstacles were bureaucracy and fear. Both are conquerable." She nudged my shoulder. "Love was never the problem. You just had to stop being scared of it long enough to let it work."
Dessert arrived. Four plates of something chocolate and elaborate that the waiter described in terms I didn't fully understand. Calla moaned at her first bite, and I nearly choked on my wine.
"That good?" Riven asked, amused.
"Better than good. This is transcendent." She pushed her plate toward me. "Try it."
I took a bite. It was, in fact, transcendent.
"We should come here more often," I said.
"We should come here every week," Calla countered.
"The reservation wait is six weeks."
I wiggled my brows. "Riven owns a hospital. He can make calls."
"I'm not using my position to get dinner reservations," Riven declined flatly.
"You literally just said you were considering buying this building last month."
"That was a joke."
"It wasn't," Mireya chimed. "He had the financial assessment drawn up."
Riven shot her a look that would have withered anyone else. Mireya just smiled serenely and stole a bite of his dessert.
We finished dinner and lingered over coffee, none of us wanting the evening to end. Eventually, the restaurant started emptying around us, and we took the hint.
Outside, the night air was cool and clean, the city humming with its particular late-evening energy.
Mireya hugged Calla goodbye, the two of them holding on for a moment longer than casual friends would.
Something had grown between them over these past months.
A friendship built on mutual understanding, on being the kind of women who loved complicated men and made it work anyway.
Riven clasped my shoulder. "Same time next month?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
"Good." He paused, his expression shifted seriously. “Both of you look happy. It's good to see."
I nodded. "We are happy."
"Hold onto that. It's rarer than people think."
They walked away together, Riven's hand wrapped around Mireya’s shoulder while she leaned against his side, holding him by the waist. They were talking, laughing, and smiling at each other as if nothing else mattered.
I watched them go and felt grateful for the strange circumstances that had brought us all together.
Calla slipped her hand into mine. "Ready to go home?"
We walked through the city streets, our pace unhurried, our shoulders bumping with every few steps. The night was beautiful, and I found myself not wanting it to end, not wanting to lose this particular moment of contentment.
"I was thinking during dinner," Calla said. She glanced up at me, her light brown eyes reflecting the streetlights. "We used to eat in silence because we were too exhausted from work. We'd go days without really seeing each other even though we slept in the same bed."
"And now?"
"Now I can't wait to tell you things. Even stupid things. Especially stupid things." She squeezed my hand. "I told you about that patient's weird sock collection for fifteen minutes yesterday. Fifteen minutes, Cassian. About socks."
I laughed. "I liked hearing about the socks."
"That's the point. You listened. And you asked follow-up questions." She shook her head, smiling. "Who asks follow-up questions about novelty socks?"
"Someone who loves you?"
She stopped walking and turned to face me. The streetlight above us cast shadows across her face, highlighting the angles I'd memorized years ago and somehow kept discovering new things about.
"I'm really glad we got a second chance," she said.
"So am I."
I kissed her there on the sidewalk, not caring about the people walking past, or about anything except the woman in my arms and the life we were building together.
"Take me home," she whispered when we pulled away, making my heart stutter.
"Yes ma'am."