Epilogue
AVERY
I woke gradually to an odd combination of absolute comfort and sharp, nagging pain. The pain was isolated to my left bicep. The comfort was everything else—West, solid beside me, his long, slow breaths like the waves of the ocean, and his strong arm curled around my back.
“Arm wake you up?” he said into the quiet.
“Maybe.” I ran a hand down his side, fingers tracing the muscle under soft skin, the rough texture of hair on his chest and his upper thigh—and decided to take advantage.
Before I could, West rolled, pinning me to the mattress, careful not to jostle my arm. “Exactly where I want you.” He paused, cupping my chin as he looked down at me, his dark eyes serious. “How much does it hurt? Do you need another pill?”
I shook my head slowly. “Maybe later. Ibuprofen—not what the doctor gave me. I don’t want to be woozy and out of it. ”
“Okay,” he said, dropping his head to press a kiss to my forehead.
“Is it really over?” I asked.
He caught my hand in his and kissed my fingertips. “The bad part. The bad part’s all over now. The rest is just beginning.” He pressed another kiss into my palm, and I felt the smile spread across my face, like I was radiating light.
“I love you so much, West. How did I not know all this time that it was you?”
He rubbed his lips against mine. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out. But I’m not sure it matters. We know now. And now that I know, I’m keeping you.”
“Are you going to move into Heartstone?” I propped myself up on one elbow, surveying my room. It was a suite, but not one of the bigger ones. Still, considering it was in the middle of a house the size of a castle, it was probably big enough for the two of us.
“You want me to?” he asked softly.
“Definitely,” I said. “I don’t want to wake up without you. I want you to be the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night. Do you mind? I know you love your house.”
“Not as much as I love you,” he said. “And the house isn’t going anywhere.”
I reached up to stroke the side of his face. “After the will is over, maybe we can move in there?”
He kissed me again, longer this time, slower—the tip of his tongue tracing the seam of my lips, teasing them apart only to lift his head and smile down at me. “It won’t be that long. Just a few years. We can find a tenant or do a short- term rental thing.”
“Works for me,” I said. “As long as I get you, I don’t really care where we are.”
“Me either,” West said. “Home is with you. Heartstone, my house—it’s all good, as long as you’re with me.”
My heart was so full I thought it might explode. I kissed him, laughing as he rolled onto his back.
“Watch your arm,” he murmured, easing me on top of him, reaching up to cradle my breasts, stroking his thumbs across my nipples, sending sparks shooting through every nerve in my body.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. And I was. Careful enough that I didn’t feel a thing from my arm, any pain was lost in the pleasure of being with West.
After, West carried me to the shower, re-bandaging my arm with gentle hands. I’d always known he had kindness in him, but if I’d known when I was a teenager just how much he had hidden under his hot-guy exterior, the crush would have killed me.
Then I thought of how bossy he could be and knew that all things happened at the right time. I wouldn’t have been able to handle West when I was younger. The first time he tried to tell me what to do, I would have bashed him over the head with a crate of beer bottles.
“Are you nervous?” he asked, and I knew exactly what he meant. Today was the day. I’d brought home two plastic milk crates of bottles filled with the new fall brew.
“Nervous? Yeah,” I said as if it should be obvious. “And terrified. What if it’s?—”
He shook his head, cutting me off before I could spiral. “It’s going to be phenomenal, Ave. But if it’s not, you’ll try again. You’ll get it. He was fucking with you mostly because he was jealous.”
That stopped me in my tracks. I brushed my wet hair back off my face and stared at him. “Jealous?”
“Of course,” West said.
I was momentarily distracted by the flex of the muscles in his back as he pulled on a dress shirt. We weren’t going black tie, but Thanksgiving wasn’t casual in Heartstone Manor, especially not with so many of the older generation present.
I still wasn’t pulling out my hair dryer—wasn’t sure if it actually worked—but I was going to wear a dress and put on mascara. In my world, that counted as formal.
“Why would Matthew be jealous of me? He still knows more about running a brewery than I do. I’m getting there, but?—”
“Ave, you can learn how to do what Matthew does—and you are, you have. You just have to put it into practice. That’s where all the awkwardness is coming from.
You know how. Now, you just need to do it.
Once you’ve run the place by yourself for a while, you’ll know how good you are at that.
But the other part, the beer itself?” West shook his head.
“I don’t know that that’s something you learn.
Like what Finn does in the kitchen—he has a feel for food that’s just different.
Like you do for beer. Its instinctive. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not like that with anything.”
“What about being a cop? You’re damn good at that,” I reminded him.
“Maybe,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.
But you know flavor and ingredients. You know beer in a way that Matthew doesn’t and never will.
And yeah, I think he was jealous. He knew he could teach you, but you couldn’t really teach him.
I think some of his wanting to put you in your place was about taking over the brewery, sure, but the rest of it?
That was just old-fashioned jealousy. He wants to be what you are, and he never will be. ”
I blinked up at West, trying on this new view of Matthew. I liked it. “Well, I wish he hadn’t tried to set me on fire to get even,” I said.
“Yeah, me too,” West said, doing up the buttons on his shirt. “So does Bob.”
“Poor Bob,” I sighed. I’d already made some progress throwing together the benefit. His friends would help him get back on his feet, but he hadn’t deserved to be caught in the middle.
I pulled my dress from the hanger, trying to think about anything but those unopened bottles I’d brought home. Part of me wanted to dash down the stairs—wet hair and no shoes—and pop one open. Just one, so I’d know. If it was awful, I could find out by myself without everybody watching.
No. This was my family. They loved me. If it was awful, we’d all laugh about it together. And if Aunt Ophelia, or God forbid Harvey or Edgar, caught me downstairs half-dressed with wet hair all over the place, I’d get a parental-style lecture, despite the fact that I was a full-grown adult.
Not worth it, I decided.
I still wasn’t blow-drying my hair, but I took a minute to swipe on mascara and a little bit of gloss, then put on the sapphire earrings that had been my mother’s and the diamond necklace Ford had given me when I turned twenty-one. There. That was as dressed up as I was going to get.
I slid on my heels, wondering as they pinched my toes how long I’d have to keep them on, and turned to see West in gray dress pants and a blue button-down shirt, his tie patterned with tiny yellow rubber duckies.
His hair was a little wet, slightly rumpled, and for more than a second, all I wanted was to strip his dress clothes off and have my way with him again.
“You clean up nice, Chief.”
“So do you.” His eyes went hot as he scanned me from the tip of my black heels, past the earrings, to the top of my head. “Now that’s a hell of a dress,” he said, doing another slow scan back down.
“Parker’s,” I said. “When she was cleaning out her closet, she and Sterling decided this one was for me.”
“I agree with their taste,” he said, slowly spinning me around. “I don’t know how you manage to take a perfectly acceptable dress and make it look sexy as hell, but you do.”
I had to admit West wasn’t wrong. I caught sight of myself in the mirror as his compliment rippled through me.
Just above the knee, with a flowing skirt and a halter neck that hinted at but showed zero cleavage, the dress couldn’t have been more appropriate for a family dinner, and yet—I looked pretty damn good.
My eyes snagged on the bandage on my arm. “Should I put on a cardigan or something?” I asked, the strip of white incongruous against the elegant black dress .
“Not unless you’re cold,” West said. “You look gorgeous, bandage or no bandage.” He handed me two brown pills. “Ibuprofen. You have to stay ahead of the pain. Once you start moving around, it’s going to hurt.”
I took them with the bottle of water he handed me. My phone beeped with a text. Savannah.
West’s parents are here. You guys coming down?
Knowing Savannah, she was probably everywhere at once today, though officially all of the staff had the day off.
Today, she wasn’t the housekeeper, she was a Sawyer and Finn’s wife, and as determined as Finn to put on a hell of a Thanksgiving.
We had a full house. Aunt Ophelia and Nash’s mom, Claudia, had come back to Sawyers Bend to celebrate.
West’s parents were here, along with Harvey and Edgar.
Miss Martha, Savannah’s mother, would be there, probably trying to help.
You could turn the housekeeper into family, but you couldn’t stop her from fussing—I’d learned that well enough over the past few years.