EPILOGUE #4
Suddenly, a warm, solid weight pressed against my back.
Angela shifted behind me, her arms sliding around my waist, her chest resting firmly against my spine.
She pulled me close, her chin coming to rest gently in the crook of my neck.
Her breath was warm against my skin, sending a quiet, electric shiver straight down my backbone.
She pressed a soft, lingering kiss against my cheek, then another right below my ear, her lips gentle and absolute.
"You're drifting again, Miley," she whispered into my ear, her fingers tightening their grip around my waist.
I let out a slow breath, leaning my head back against her shoulder, letting her take my full weight.
"I’m just thinking. Thinking about that first day your mom introduced us at your crib.
You were acting all tough, all distant, acting like you couldn't be bothered by a Harlem girl with too much swagger. "
Angela let out a soft, beautiful chuckle against my neck. "I had a reputation to uphold, Miley. I couldn't just let you see how easily you disrupted my alignment. But the truth is... I had a thing for you all along. I liked you from the exact minute you stepped through my door."
"Yeah?" I smiled, turning my head slightly so my nose brushed against her jaw line. "Even when you were acting all protective and hardened back at Kelly’s spot after the nightmare? When you showed up with your mom’s sedan?"
"Especially then," Angela said softly, her voice dropping into that deep, fiercely loyal register that always made my heart flutter.
"I posed that tough exterior to the world because I thought I had to be strong enough to carry your weight.
But underneath... I was just a sweet, tender softie who wanted to make sure you survived the night. "
A sudden, sharp pang of memory flared up inside my chest—the memory of the intense, passionate love we had made over the last two years in that luxury penthouse.
We had kissed through the tears; we had made love until the shadows of Alicia and Terra were chased out of the room.
But even now, in the middle of this perfect sunset, a tiny, stubborn shred of the old fear remained—the terrifying, lingering whisper that told me this peace was a trap, that the universe would eventually find a way to tear her away from me.
I gripped her forearms, my knuckles turning slightly white.
"The fear is still there sometimes, Angela. You see, I look at you, I look at how close we are—how we’re practically soul-tied at this point—and my brain starts waiting for the floor to drop.
I’m scared to hold onto you too tight, because I’m terrified of what happens if I lose the little bit of heart I have left. "
Angela didn't pull away. She didn't offer a clinical reassurance. Instead, she shifted, sliding around to face me fully on the grass, her hands reaching up to cup my face, forcing my eyes to lock directly into hers. Her gaze was an absolute, unyielding fire of pure devotion.
"Listen to me, Miley Palmer," Angela said, her voice striking my soul with the force of an absolute vow. "You are never going to lose me. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I am right here, I am embedded in your life, and I am not going anywhere. Stop fighting the peace. Just let me hold you."
Angela leaned in close, her chest pressed against mine, her eyes reflecting the final, beautiful rays of the twilight. She tilted her head, her lips brushing against the sensitive skin right beneath my jaw line, her hands sliding up to entwine themselves in my long box braids.
She paused, her breath warm against my ear, and delivered the forbidden words—the ones Dr. Hall had spent two years trying to carve into my subconscious.
"I know you don’t like when anyone say it, Miley," Angela whispered, her voice trembling slightly with the absolute weight of her emotion. "But I love you. I love you so much."
I shot up a single, elegant eyebrow, my signature Harlem swagger flashing through my eyes like lightning as a beautiful, victorious smile broke across my face. I looked at her—my anchor, my shield, the girl who had walked through the graveyard of my past just to build a palace in my present.
"Love is wicked, Angela," I murmured, my voice dripping with a deep, nostalgic warmth as I leaned into her space. "Let’s just enjoy this moment while it lasts."
And before she could reply, before she could offer another witty retort, I ceased her lips in a sweet, devastatingly passionate kiss.
The world around us went completely, beautifully silent.
The kiss tasted like vanilla ice cream, summer air, and absolute survival.
It was a declaration of total victory over the ash.
I pulled her body tight against mine, my fingers digging into her denim jacket, letting the wicked magic of that forbidden word sink deep into the marrow of my bones until there was no room left for fear.
From a few feet away on the path, a loud, obnoxious cheer broke through the twilight.
"Finally!" Gabriel shouted, throwing his hands in the air so hard he almost dropped his leftover ice cream cone, his booming laugh echoing across the lawn.
"Man, I thought we were gonna have to call park security to check for a pulse! I’ve seen glaciers move faster than you two, real talk.
Cut the cameras, it's getting too PG-13 out here! "
"Oh, shut up and let them live, Gabriel!
" Kelly laughed, giving him a playful shove before clapping her hands together as they sauntered back toward the blanket, where Max was blinking sleepily at the noise like a tiny, annoyed landlord.
"Ignore him, y'all look like a straight-up movie poster. Absolutely beautiful!"
Angela pulled back from the kiss just an inch, a bright, flushed crimson coloring her cheeks as she laughed against my lips, her eyes shining with a pure, unadulterated happiness.
I kept my arm slung tightly around her shoulder, pulling her into my side as we looked out at our friends, our family, our city.
Now the past was nothing more than a handful of drifting ash in an empty bin downtown, a ghost that had finally run out of breath. But right here, tangled up on this smooth patch of green grass under the bleeding New York twilight, the present was an absolute, devastating perfection.
For the first time in my bruised and battered life, I realized my heart wasn't a curse or a death sentence. It was a sanctuary. It was a wild, unpredictable force that had dragged me through the deepest shadows of grief only to drop me right here, fully alive, into the hands of a woman who refused to let me go. Sliding my fingers up the warm column of Angela’s neck, pulling her close enough to feel the fierce, erratic pulse of her heartbeat against my own, I surrendered to the sweet, intoxicating heat of her touch.
Freedom didn't look like an untouchable fortress anymore—it looked like the woman in my arms, heavy with promise and breathing life into the spaces where ghosts used to sleep.
It was a beautiful, dangerous, terrifying kind of magic.