Epilogue
Declan
There are exactly three things I swore I'd never do when I moved to Beachside.
Care about anything. Fall in love. And yoga.
I'm currently zero for three, folded into something the instructor on the lawn below keeps calling "downward dog," while the woman I love laughs into a moving box behind me.
"Your hips—" Josie can barely get the words out she's laughing that hard. She's got a stack of sundresses clutched to her chest and tears streaming down her face. "Declan, your hips are supposed to go up."
"They are up!"
"They are not up. You look like a deck chair someone stepped on."
"This is the last time I help you do anything."
"You're not helping! You've packed one box and it was the box with my underwear in it. You spent forty minutes on it!"
"That was quality control. Half of those have mysteriously gone missing over the past three months, and as your boyfriend I felt personally responsible for—"
"You're the one taking them, Declan! You have a drawer full at the mansion!"
Below the balcony, the sunrise yoga class flows easily, twelve serene people moving in perfect unison on the hotel lawn. The Pacific Ocean is glittering gold behind them, and for some unknown reason, I'm still attempting to follow.
I bend down again, but my hamstring grabs. Somewhere in the arrangement my knee also makes a sound that no twenty-nine-year-old professional athlete's knee should legally make.
"Remind me again why people do this?" I grunt, nearly tipping all the way over.
"Oh no," Josie whispers, delighted. She whips her phone out and points it at me. "Do the warrior one. Do it. This is going on the team account."
"I told you already, put the damn phone down."
"Or you'll do what exactly?"
I abandon the pose, straighten up to my full height, and turn around "Put the phone down, Josie, or I swear to God I'll bend you over that box of your very-important underwear and remind you exactly whose hips work fine."
"Ooh." She doesn't even flinch, just tilts her head, considering it like a menu item. "Now I'm scared."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Spank me, Captain." She spins and shakes her ass at me. "I'm waiting."
"That's not—" I drag a hand down my face, fighting the grin threatening to break through my very serious, very threatening expression. "That's not how threats are supposed to work. You're supposed to be scared."
"I am scared." She presses a hand to her chest, biting back a laugh. "Terrified. Look at me shaking."
"Fine." I cross my arms, which is difficult to do with any authority when your hamstring is still twitching. "No spanking, then. No anything. I'm withdrawing all sexual services, effective immediately."
That gets her. Josie lowers the phone an inch, narrowing her eyes like I've just declared war. "You wouldn't."
"Try me."
"Declan Morrison, you would last exactly six hours. Now come on, I still need to pack all these boxes."
She plonks herself down, sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed in one of my t-shirts and a pair of shorts, surrounded by three months of a life packed into cardboard.
This room is where it all started, technically.
She once confessed that her first morning in Beachside she stood on this exact balcony watching this yoga class, thinking about me. About our one night together.
Which is why I'm out here doing yoga badly. Because making this woman laugh has become the single most important item on my daily schedule, above practice, above food, above breathing.
I came to this town to feel nothing. Easy season, easy sun, easy everything. I had it all planned out… Two years of coasting, no cameras, no weight of expectation.
Now I'm doing sunrise yoga on a balcony to make a woman laugh into a box of throw pillows, and I have never once in my life been this stupidly, completely happy.
"You know," Josie says, taping another box shut, "this room watched me have an entire crisis about you. Multiple crises, actually. That balcony has seen things."
"So has the shower. And the desk."
She bites her lip, remembering.
"We don't talk about the desk. I had to tip housekeeping extra and I still can't make eye contact with the concierge."
She stands, plants her hands on her hips, and surveys the suite.
It's stripped bare now, just boxes and sunlight and the dent in the mattress where three months of us happened.
"It's weird. I extended this room two weeks at a time. I kept telling myself I'd get an apartment when things calmed down."
"But things never calmed down?"
"Things escalated, is what things did." She hauls a box into my arms and stacks a second one on top like I'm a shelving unit. "But, Captain. It's time to go. So please, take these to the Rover and let's get to my new rental. I sent the address to your phone."
I take the boxes, and I've already looked at the address so I know exactly where to go.
But here's the thing.
I have absolutely no intention of using it.
We load up the Rover, get some coffee from Goldie's, and soon, the coastal road unspools in the warming sunshine. The ocean is on one side, and Josie's got her bare feet up on my dashboard narrating directions off her phone.
"Okay, so it's left on Driftwood Avenue, then the rental's the gray duplex behind the—" She pauses and frowns at the window. "Declan. That was Driftwood Avenue."
"Mmhmm."
"You missed the turn."
"Mm."
"Declan." She twists in her seat. "The rental is back there! Where are you going?"
I keep driving and put on on my blinker.
"Oh my God, it's the grumpy silence. He's doing the grumpy silence." She jabs a finger at me. "You have a plan. I know that look. That's plan look. Last time you had plan look I ended up with champagne, chocolates, and an emotionally devastating handwritten letter in San Francisco."
"And that worked out pretty well for you, as I recall."
"That's not the point—"
Then our destination comes into view, and she goes quiet.
The mansion gates swing open like they've been expecting us. Palm shadows stripe the drive and the house rises up out of the dunes, the ocean blazing blue behind it.
I pull into the circular drive between Beck's Bronco and Mason's Audi, then kill the engine.
Josie stares at the house. Then at me.
"Declan Morrison. Why are my worldly possessions at your house?"
"Come inside."
"Declan! What are you doing?!"
I pile out, and whisk around to her door, opening it and helping her down the step. "Just… Come inside for a minute. I have something I want to show you."
"Something to show me?" She cocks a brow as her feet hit the ground. "The last time you said that, I ended up with a vibrating butt plug and a years supply of glow-in-the-dark lube."
Jesus Christ.
The image of her bent over my bed resurfaces, the low buzz of that toy buried inside her while she begged me to fuck her harder.
My cock thickens against my zipper just from the mention of it.
"Oh yeah."
I step into her space, close enough that the heat coming off her body seeps through my shirt. Her chin tilts up, that green gaze holding mine without flinching.
She's not embarrassed. She's never embarrassed.
That's what gets me every time… this woman standing here in the California sun, reminding me I'm the one who spent an hour memorizing every sound she made while I worked that plug in and out of her tight little ass.
"That was a pretty good night," I say, voice low, letting my eyes drag down the curve of her neck. "If I recall, you came so hard you tried to bite through the pillow."
Her lips twitch. "Worth every penny it cost me to replace them."
We laugh together as I lead her inside, and the great room is flooded with light. Diego has the glass panels folded back so the whole house breathes ocean air, and the second he hears us, Biscuit comes skidding across the floor.
His whole back is half wagging, one ear up, one ear flopped, and he detours directly to Josie because the traitor made his allegiances clear months ago.
"Hi, baby, hi—" she drops to scratch his ears, "—did your dad kidnap me? Blink twice if he's done the same to you. Oh, yes he has. Yes he has."
"Miss Josie!" Diego's voice sails down from the second floor, followed by Diego himself, dust cloth in one hand, pressing the other to his chest like he's receiving a royal visit.
"Oh, thank God. Tell me it's today. Is it today?
I've been keeping that room dust-free for two years like some kind of shrine attendant and if he's chickened out again I am QUITTING—"
"Diego." I hiss across the room at him, cutting hard daggers so the bastard doesn't give me away.
"I said nothing. I saw nothing." He evaporates toward the kitchen with the speed of a man who intends to eavesdrop from a better angle.
Josie straightens up slowly. "What room, Declan? What is Diego talking about?"
I take her hand and lead her up the stairs, past the second floor, past my room, past Beck's disaster zone and Mason's window seat, all the way up to the third floor of this enormous mansion.
Her eyes take it all in and my heart starts pounding as I show her to the door at the end that has stayed shut since we moved in.
"Declan… why are we up here?" Her voice has gone quiet. "None of you use this floor. Beck told me it's cursed. He said, and I quote, 'that's the adult room, we don't go in the adult room.'"
"Beck's an idiot." My hand's on the knob, and my heart is doing something absolutely unacceptable behind my ribs.
"None of us ever took it because it's the biggest room in the house.
It also has the best view. So… It's sat up here empty for two years because—" and here's the part I rehearsed in the shower and it still comes out rough, "—because taking it felt permanent.
Like admitting you're actually building a life that means something instead of just crashing somewhere between games. "
She looks at me and narrows her eyes. "And you came to Beachside specifically to not do that."
"Exactly. Then I met you and fell in love, so…"
I push the door open and step back, letting the room do the rest of the talking.