Epilogue — Diesel
Three Years Later
The mattress barely fits through the doorframe and Tate's swearing under his breath about whoever designed houses this fucking small while Holt adjusts his grip and tries not to laugh.
I'm on the other end guiding it through at an angle that should work if Tate would just lift his side another three inches.
"Your left," I say.
"It is left."
"Your other left."
"Fuck you, Diesel."
The mattress clears the frame and we haul it into what's going to be the master bedroom. Hardwood floors that still need finishing, windows that look out over the backyard, more space than the first place Sienna and I got together ever had.
This is the upgrade.
The house we're choosing because we can, not because we need to.
Sienna's voice carries from downstairs, directing Cain on where the kitchen boxes go, and I can hear the specific patience in her tone that means Cain's trying to optimize the box placement and she's letting him think he's helping while she rearranges it after.
"That it?" Holt asks, wiping his forehead.
"Yeah. Appreciate it."
"No problem. Katherine's got a thing at three so I need to head out anyway." He heads for the stairs, stops. "Place looks good, brother. Real good."
"Thanks."
Tate claps my shoulder on his way past. "You need anything else, call. Otherwise I'm getting the fuck out of here before Sienna tries to make me organize something."
I follow them down and find Sienna in the kitchen surrounded by boxes labeled in her precise handwriting: PLATES, MUGS, UTENSILS.
She's wearing old jeans and one of my shirts tied at her waist because it's too big otherwise, hair pulled back, and there's dust on her cheek from hauling boxes.
She looks up when the brothers come down.
"Thanks for the help," she says.
"Anytime," Holt says, already moving toward the door.
Tate just waves and they're gone, bikes starting outside, gravel crunching under tires as they pull away.
And then it's quiet. Just us and a house full of boxes and the afternoon sun coming through windows we haven't put curtains on yet.
"They lasted longer than I thought they would," she says.
"You scare them."
"I don't scare them."
"You organize things. Same effect."
She smiles and turns back to the box she was opening, pulling out plates wrapped in newspaper.
I watch her work for a minute — the way she bends to reach into the box, the curve of her hips in those jeans, the soft roundness of her stomach visible where the shirt rides up slightly.
Three years and I still notice. Still want to touch every time she's within reach.
"You going to help or just stand there staring?" she asks without looking up.
"Haven't decided yet."
"Very helpful."
I cross the kitchen and she straightens when I get close, turns to face me with a wrapped plate still in her hands.
I take it from her and set it on the counter, then pull her against me because I can, because we're alone in our house, because three years in I still want her as much as I did the first night.
She fits against me the same way she always has. Soft curves pressed to harder lines, her body substantial and real under my hands. I slide my palms down to her hips and grip, feeling the width of them, the generous flesh that I never get tired of touching.
"We have a lot of unpacking to do," she says, but her hands are already moving up my chest.
"It'll still be here later."
"Very responsible."
"I've got priorities."
I kiss her and she opens immediately, tastes like the coffee she was drinking earlier and something that's just her. Her fingers slide into my hair and grip, pulling slightly, and I make a sound low in my throat that she's learned means I'm done with slow.
We make it to the stairs. Get halfway up before I turn her around and press her against the wall, my hand sliding under her shirt to find bare skin. She gasps when I cup her breast, thumb brushing over her nipple through the bra, and I can feel her heartbeat racing under my palm.
"Bedroom," she manages.
"Yeah."
We get there somehow. The mattress is exactly where we left it, no frame yet, just sitting in the middle of the empty room.
Afternoon light falls across it through the uncovered windows and dust motes hang in the air and there's nothing in here except us and the bed and the understanding that this is ours.
I pull her shirt over her head and she reaches for mine, both of us stripping down to skin with the specific efficiency of people who've done this enough times to know exactly what they want.
When she's bare in front of me I take a second to just look, soft stomach, full breasts, thick thighs, every curve and dip and generous inch of her that I've learned by touch and sight and still find absolutely perfect.
"Stop staring and get over here," she says, but there's heat in her eyes that matches what I'm feeling.
We fall onto the mattress together and I cover her body with mine, feel her soft warmth everywhere we touch. She wraps her legs around my waist and arches up against me and I'm already hard and ready and she's wet when my fingers find her.
"Now," she says. "I need you now."
I push inside her in one slow thrust and we both make sounds.
Three years and it still feels like this — necessary, consuming, exactly right.
I move and she moves with me, rhythm we've perfected through repetition, her hands gripping my shoulders, my face buried in her neck breathing in the smell of her skin.
It's not the desperate rough sex from the early days. It's deeper than that. Slower.
I know exactly what she needs and I give it to her, the angle that makes her gasp, the pressure that makes her shake, the specific combination of movements that builds her higher until she's close.
"Right there," she says. "Don't stop."
I don't stop. I keep the rhythm exactly where she needs it and watch her face as she comes, the way her eyes close and her mouth opens and her whole body tenses and releases. I follow her maybe thirty seconds later, hips stuttering, her name on my lips.
We collapse together breathing hard, both slick with sweat, afternoon sun warm across bare skin.
She's still underneath me, soft and boneless, and I can feel her heart racing against my chest.
"I love you," she says quietly.
"Love you too."
I roll to the side and pull her against me and we lie there on the bare mattress in the empty room of the house that's ours. No furniture. No curtains. Just us and boxes downstairs and the afternoon stretching ahead with nothing scheduled and nowhere we need to be.
"We should finish unpacking," she says eventually, but she doesn't move.
"Later."
"We have to sleep somewhere tonight."
"We've got a mattress. That's all we need."
She laughs, the sound soft and genuine, and shifts closer against me. My hand settles on her hip, thumb tracing lazy circles on soft skin.
"Remember when you said we'd get a place together?" she asks.
"Yeah."
"This is better than I thought it would be."
"Better how?"
"Just... this." She gestures vaguely at the empty room, at us on the mattress, at the whole situation. "I thought permanent would feel different. Heavier, maybe. But it just feels like us."
"It is us."
"I know. That's what makes it good."
We're quiet for a while, just breathing together, and I think about the fact that three years ago she walked through Vigil's gate with a USB drive and a plan to disappear and I thought she was lying. Thought she was a plant. Thought trusting her would cost me everything.
I was wrong about the cost. Trusting her gave me everything instead.
"Hey," she says, propping herself up on her elbow to look at me. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For asking what I think. For seeing me. For making coffee exactly right every morning for three years without me ever asking you to. For this." She gestures at the room again. "All of it."
"You earned it."
"I know. But thank you anyway."
I pull her down and kiss her, slow and thorough, and when I pull back she's smiling.
"Come on," she says, sitting up. "We should at least get the bed frame assembled before it gets dark."
"Or we could stay here."
"On the floor?"
"We've got a mattress."
She laughs again and stands, completely unselfconscious about her nakedness, and I watch her cross to where we dropped our clothes.
The afternoon light catches her curves, the generous swell of her hips, the softness of her stomach, and I'm already thinking about tonight when we're actually in bed properly.
"You're staring again," she says, pulling my shirt on instead of her own.
"Yeah."
"Good." She comes back and offers me her hand. "Now get up and help me build our bed frame. You can stare more later."
I take her hand and let her pull me up, and we spend the rest of the afternoon assembling furniture in the bedroom that's ours, in the house that's ours, building the life we said we'd build three years ago when this was just an idea and not yet real.
Just us. Just this.
Just the permanent thing we built from a fake date.
Thank you for reading!