Epilogue
Charlie
The hedge was killing my knees.
I'd been crouched behind a boxwood for twenty-two minutes, camera braced on a low stone wall, waiting for Cupid City's most beloved pediatrician to leave his mistress's townhouse while his wife hosted a fundraiser for children's literacy three blocks away.
The irony was almost too perfect. Morty was going to lose his mind.
February's cold had broken into a raw, damp March that couldn't decide if it wanted to be spring. My jeans were soaked from the mulch bed. My coffee had gone cold an hour ago. My lower back had opinions about my life choices.
I loved this job.
The townhouse door opened. Dr. Brennan stepped out, straightening his tie, checking his watch. Running late for his wife's event. I fired off twelve shots in four seconds -—face, hands on the tie, the lipstick smudge on his collar he hadn't noticed. Gold.
I checked the playback. Sharp. Clean. The collar shot was money.
My phone buzzed. Morty.
MORTY: Where the hell are you?
ME: Working.
MORTY: You were supposed to file the zoning board photos an hour ago.
ME: I got distracted by a pediatrician.
MORTY: ...go on.
I sent him a preview and counted to three.
MORTY: Charlotte, you beautiful maniac. File everything. Now.
I packed up, brushed mulch off my jeans, and headed for the street.
Dominic's black SUV was parked at the corner, engine running.
He'd stopped arguing about waiting outside when I worked solo jobs around the second week.
The Heartline assignment had closed three weeks ago.
Cass had put him on something corporate, low-risk, a job that bored him stupid.
But he still parked at the corner when I worked.
Neither of us had discussed whether that counted as off-duty or obsessive. It was Dominic sitting in his SUV with a book and a black coffee while I hid in shrubbery, and I'd stopped pretending I didn't like knowing he was there.
I knocked on the passenger window. He unlocked it without looking up from his book.
"Get the shot?"
"Doctor Handsy left with lipstick on his collar. Morty's already composing the headline."
"Classy."
"It's a living." I climbed in and the warmth hit me. He kept the heat running. He always kept the heat running. "Take me home. I need to shower before tonight."
"Nervous?"
"About dinner with your mother? Why would I be nervous? I lie to strangers professionally. How hard can your mother be?"
He glanced at me sideways. The almost-smile. "She's going to love you."
"She's going to think I'm insane."
"Also true."
MY APARTMENT LOOKED different these days.
Same converted warehouse. Same three flights of stairs, same exposed brick that held the ghost of red spray paint under the tapestry I'd decided to leave hanging.
But the locks were new -—Heartline's finest, installed while I was out shooting the week after the ball.
Motion sensors on the windows. A camera in the hallway that fed to an app on both our phones.
And then there were the smaller changes.
The ones that had crept in without announcement or negotiation.
His jacket on the hook by the door. His coffee mug in the dish rack -—plain black ceramic, because of course it was.
A second toothbrush in the bathroom. His go-bag, tucked against the wall in the bedroom instead of beside the couch where it had started.
He hadn't officially moved in. We hadn't had the conversation. But his keys were on my counter and his shampoo was in my shower and he'd fixed the radiator last Tuesday without being asked. If that wasn't moving in, the English language needed better terminology.
I showered, dried my hair, and stood in front of my closet trying to figure out what you wore to meet your boyfriend's mother when your boyfriend was a former Marine and you were a paparazzo with a rap sheet of light felonies.
Boyfriend. The word still felt foreign, like a wig that didn't fit right. I tried it on anyway.
The Walsh indictment had come down three weeks after the ball.
Federal prosecutors built the case in record time -—June's evidence package had given them everything tied with a bow.
Kiser's network cracked open behind it. Five arrests.
Three guilty pleas already. Morty had run the story under my real byline.
Charlotte Collins, not Scarlett Sinclair.
Traffic had crashed the site for six hours.
Some journalism council had nominated me for an award. I'd emailed back that they could shove their award up their collective -—actually, I'd been more polite than that. Barely. But I'd kept the letter. It was in my desk drawer, under the stack of takeout menus and a broken lens cap.
Deb Hoyle had checked into rehab in late February. I'd heard through the gossip circuit, not through Cupid Confidential. I didn't run that story. Some things weren't mine to tell.
Travis had moved. Somewhere in Colorado, according to the last thing he'd posted before deleting all his accounts. I hoped he was okay. I hoped he found someone who wanted what he wanted. I hoped he'd stop watching buildings from across the street.
I picked a green dress. Simple. Not trying too hard. A dress that said I'm a normal person who doesn't own seventeen wigs.
Dominic appeared in the bathroom doorway while I was putting on earrings. He'd changed into a dark button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms. No tactical gear. No holster. Just a man picking up his girlfriend for dinner.
He looked at me in the mirror. "Green."
"Is that a color commentary or a status check?"
"Both."
"Then green. On both counts."
LORRAINE KNIGHT WAS five-foot-two of sharp brown eyes and zero tolerance for bullshit.
She hugged Dominic at the restaurant door and then turned to me with the assessing look of a woman who'd raised a Marine and could spot evasion at fifty paces.
"So you're the one who's been keeping my son from calling me back on time."
"In my defense, he's terrible at texting."
"He gets that from me, actually. We're a family of terrible texters." She pulled me into a hug before I could prepare for it. Firm. Brief. Real. "I'm glad you're here, Charlie."
The restaurant was Italian, small, a place where the owner came to your table and the bread was still warm.
Lorraine talked with her hands. She asked about my work without flinching at the word paparazzo.
She told a story about Dominic at seventeen trying to sneak back into the house after curfew and being outsmarted by a motion-sensor light she'd installed that afternoon.
Dominic took it with the quiet patience of a man who'd heard the story forty times and still let his mother tell it. He sat close to me, his hand on my knee under the table. Steady. Present.
After dinner, Lorraine caught me alone by the restrooms. The hallway was narrow, dimly lit, and she blocked my path with the casual authority of someone who'd been steering conversations since before I was born.
"He's never brought anyone to meet me before."
I'd expected this. Didn't make it easier.
"I know."
"I don't say that to pressure you. I say it so you understand what it means that you're sitting at that table." Her eyes were kind and absolutely serious. "Don't break his heart."
"I won't."
She studied me the way Dominic did. The same steady gaze, reading everything I wasn't saying.
"Good." She patted my arm. "Now let's go have dessert. I'm ordering the tiramisu and you're sharing it with me because Dominic won't eat sugar and someone has to."
HIS SUV WAS QUIET ON the drive back. The city blurred past the windows -—streetlights, neon, Cupid City in March with all its mess and charm and secrets. I leaned my head against the window and watched the lights streak.
"She likes you," Dominic said.
"She told me not to break your heart."
"Sounds right."
"Were you worried?"
"About my mother? No. About what you'd say to her in a narrow hallway with no witnesses?" He glanced at me. "A little."
I laughed. The sound came easy now. It had started doing that somewhere around week three, when I'd stopped bracing for the next threat and started letting the quiet feel normal.
Back at my apartment, I tossed my jacket on the couch and kicked off my heels. The apartment was warm. The radiator he'd fixed was actually working, pumping heat into the old brick walls for the first time in probably a decade.
Dominic locked both deadbolts behind us. Habit. He'd do it for the rest of his life and I'd let him.
I detoured to the bedroom and grabbed the cuffs off the nightstand.
I walked back to the living room. He was on the couch, leaning back, watching me with those gray eyes that still made my stomach do something stupid even after a month.
I straddled his lap. Dangled the cuffs from one finger.
"Remember these?"
His hands settled on my hips. "Those are for suspects."
"Then arrest me."
He grinned. Slow. Devastating. It crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look like a man who'd gotten everything he wanted and knew exactly what to do with it.
"You have the right to remain silent," he said, closing the cuffs around my wrist.
"When have I ever been silent?"
"Good point." He pulled me closer. "I'll think of something."
I kissed him, and his arms came around me, and the cuffs clicked warm against my skin.
Outside, Cupid City hummed with its usual chaos. Scandals brewing, secrets trading hands, the whole gorgeous mess of it waiting for us in the morning.