Epilogue Kane
The party already had two hours on it by the time I parked the truck on the gravel beside Jaxson's. Callie was on the stairs to the mezzanine before I'd shut my door, and Hazel's laugh came down through the open bay before I'd crossed the floor.
Killian has put the case in the hands of the people who needed it. The rest of us are still moving carefully, our bodies not yet ready to trust the threat is finished.
By the time I get up the stairs the room is full.
Bear has claimed the couch farthest from the speakers.
Ryker has the cards out and Killian sitting across from him for the duration.
Silas is at the back rail with Nora in front of him, his hand low on her back.
Sloane is on the couch with Hazel, the two of them laughing about something Bear should not be hearing.
Elena is leaned against Jaxson while she pretends not to be, and Jaxson is pretending right back.
Sera and Mama Lou are at the bar with Callie between them.
Mama Lou is showing them both something with her hands. Callie is laughing.
Her laugh cuts through everything else in the room.
Killian comes off the card table and stops at my shoulder. His voice drops under the noise.
"It's done," he says. "Indictment unsealed Tuesday. Three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of fraud, six counts of trafficking. He pled out under his attorney's advice an hour later. He'll serve the rest of his life in a federal facility he won't walk out of."
I keep my eyes on the floor between my boots for a beat. "And Danny."
"Danny's name is on count one. So is the operation. Public record now."
"Thank you."
"It was always going to be done. You and her brought the piece that let us put it on paper."
He doesn't wait for an answer. He goes back to losing at cards.
Jaxson comes the other direction a minute later, glass in his hand. He doesn't say anything for the first stretch. He looks down at the floor with me. We've stood next to each other at this rail a hundred times in four years, and I've never been the one to break the silence first.
Eventually his hand comes up and settles on my shoulder. Not the brief tap a man gives another man when he's passing. The full weight of his palm, kept there.
"Justice is finally done," he says.
I don't answer. I don't have to.
He keeps the hand there another beat. Then he lifts it and turns back to the room.
Toby finds me ten minutes later. He's holding a beer he hasn't opened, the cap still on tight, and three of the men in this room are watching him out of the corner of an eye, ready for the spill we all know is coming when he gets to it.
"Hey, Kane."
"Hey, Toby."
He nods toward Callie. "She's, uh. Damn. She's really pretty, man."
"Toby."
"What."
"I'd think very carefully about your next sentence."
He blinks. The thinking is visible on his face. Then he grins.
"Got it. She's invisible. Eyes on the floor. Never spoke."
"Better."
Bear is the first to laugh, with Ryker on his heels. Toby takes it. His grin softens, and when he looks back up at me he isn't joking anymore.
"I'm just glad she found you, man. You needed somebody to find you."
It comes out of him before he can stop it. He blinks once, looks at the unopened beer in his hand, mutters an excuse about checking the cooler, and goes.
I don't watch him go. I'd embarrass him if I did.
What he said stays with me though.
She did find me.
I look across the mezzanine again. Mama Lou has her hand on Callie's wrist, the grip she keeps on people who matter to her, and Callie isn't moving an inch out of it.
She has people who care about her now, who'll show up when she needs them.
It's hard not to fall in love with her, once you know her.
Her hair is loose tonight, a sign she's at ease in here.
She catches me looking and her face shifts.
Small. Private. Only for me. She lifts her glass an inch, no smile big enough for the room to see, and I lift mine back.
For three weeks we've been making love nights and mornings, since she took my hand at the door and led me down the hall. If you ask me, it will never be enough.
What I feel for her gets bigger by the day. The word for it is coming, and she knows it. She isn't asking before I'm ready to say it, she's letting me get there on my own.
I'm keeping every promise I made her after the worst morning. When Killian's people came by last week I called her before she had to ask, and I haven't hidden from her once when it got hard. We're doing this together now, all of it.
Below me at the card table Killian wins another hand.
Bear laughs at Ryker's face, Silas almost laughs with him, and Ryker mutters under his breath.
The whole sound of it: six men I'd have lain down in any room for, six women who chose them, one twenty-one-year-old already drinking the beer he opened, Mama Lou in the middle of it, watching over everyone in the room. It fills the mezzanine to the ribs.
I take a swallow of whiskey. It's good. Jaxson doesn't pour the bottle for nothing.
I think about what Killian said. Justice is for Danny. True. That's what he and Jaxson and the rest of us built. Danny gets it on paper now, in a court prosecutors took the time to walk through. The years of him being a name nobody outside this room said out loud are over. That part is done.
But there's another word for what just happened to me. And only one person in this room is responsible for it.
I didn't think I could be saved. I had told myself the opposite for so long I'd built a life around it.
She saved me regardless.
Keep reading for a bonus scene with Kane and Callie.