Epilogue
“What do you think?”Chloe asks, flipping her hair back.
I grin, loving her so hard it hurts. “I love it.”
We’ve just finished dyeing it a bold magenta, and touching up my own “butterfly” colors too. It’s something we could have easily had done in a salon now that I can afford shit like that. It’s too fun to do together, though, and I’d never want to give up the kind of memories we make spending time together like this just because I have money now.
Besides, the apartment I rented for Chloe is nicer than most of the salons in Halston, and I feel zero shame about that. My little sister deserves to be spoiled a little after everything she’s gone through. Something that Nathan, now that the two of them are officially dating, does a really good job of.
That’s not the only reason I like the guy. Besides the fact that Chloe is head over heels for him, I know for sure that his position with the Reapers helped influence her decision to stay here in Halston for college.
I want her close. I can’t help it. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop needing to protect her and make sure she’s safe, even now that she’s got the entire Reaper organization looking out for her too.
“Are you ready for classes to start?”
She rolls her eyes and throws a pillow at me. “Can you please quit asking me that? The answer is still yes, and there’s more to life than higher education, you know.”
“Of course there is. I just want you to have everything, okay?”
Her eyes soften. “I know you do, and you’ve given me that. Maybe it’s about time you got everything you want too.”
I laugh. “I already have it.”
“Really? Does that mean you’ve made some progress on the convincing-your-men-to-marry-you front?” she asks excitedly. “Because I really want to plan your bachelorette party.”
“Oh, hell no.”
“That’s not what Ayla says,” she teases me in a sing-song voice that convinces me I never, not in a million years, should have introduced my little sister to that powerhouse of a woman.
Too late now, though.
“But for real, Riley, when are they going to say yes already? I know they love you.”
I sigh. “I’ll wear them down eventually.”
Logan and Dante are totally on board, even though they both agree that since I can only legally marry one of them, it makes the most sense that it be Maddoc on the actual marriage certificate. The problem is that he’s the one who continues to be a holdout.
Chloe’s right. They do love me, all three of them. That’s not in question, not even from Maddoc. But marriage is still a prickly issue for him because of our history, and even though I’m determined to get my way someday, I know that every time I bring it up, he has flashbacks about his original plan to marry my sister, and how betrayed I felt.
Not to mention what Austin McKenna did to me.
That’s the past, though, and Maddoc, Dante, and Logan are my future. One day, Maddoc’s going to accept that and get the fuck over himself, because I will get that man’s ring on my finger. I want all four of us to be as permanent as it’s possible to become in this world.
Chloe teases me a bit more and then drags me into the little room Logan set up a high-end computer system for her in, and shows me some of the new programming stuff she’s been working on with him. Some of it goes over my head. Okay, a lot of it. But seeing her happy and knowing she’s excited about her own future means everything to me.
I stay later than I mean to, just enjoying her company, but once she starts yawning, I give her a long hug and head back home. The house is dark when I arrive, and for a second, I’m a little thrown. I figured the guys would be home since it’s late and none of them mentioned plans to be elsewhere.
Then again, they run what’s becoming one of the most powerful criminal gangs in the city. It’s not like they operate on a strict nine-to-five schedule.
I park the sleek little sports car they surprised me with a few weeks ago and head inside, and before I can decide whether or not I need to be worried about their absence, I reach the living room and catch my breath.
They’re not gone at all. They’re here, waiting for me.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my hand flying up to cover my heart as it stutters in my chest.
The whole room is lit by candles. It’s like something out of a dream. And the best part is my men, all dressed to the nines, standing in the middle of it.
“What’s happening?” I ask, trembling a little as I approach them, my nerves jumping with anticipation.
I’m filled with a giddy kind of excitement that makes my blood feel like it’s full of champagne bubbles, but I truly have no idea what’s happening until Dante steps forward, taking my hand and going down on one knee.
“Princess,” he starts as the hot sting of tears pricks the back of my eyes. “I’m so fucking in love with you. You’re the color in my world now. You’ve been the brightest thing in it ever since the first time I saw you. You’re the strongest woman I know, and the sexiest.”
That makes me laugh, but I’m crying too, and when his quick, cocky smirk gentles into something soulful and he turns my hand over and places a single kiss on my wrist, I feel every bit of the love he’s confessing to me as I let the tears run down my cheeks and drip onto the back of his hand.
“You’re the only one my heart is ever gonna have room for,” he says, his voice going husky. “You’re not just the color in it, you are my world, Riley Sutton. Marry me.”
“Yes,” I whisper, my heart swelling even more at the look my answer puts on his face.
I laugh again, dashing at the tears on my face as he rises to his feet and moves my hand aside to wipe them for me.
“You had to know I’d say yes.”
“I hoped. And I believed,” he says, looking into my eyes. “But I’ll never take your ‘yes’ for granted, princess, or anything else about you. Until death do us part.”
Then he kisses me so sweetly that I can’t even be mad for the fact that he just made me cry again, and when he ends it, he puts my hand into Logan’s.
Logan, who’s already down on one knee.
My hand flies up to cover my mouth, and Logan gives me that secret little smile I fell for the first time I saw it. “I spent most of my life believing I couldn’t love, that the darkness inside me had snuffed that part of my soul out, if it had even ever existed at all. I was raised by a monster, and I thought that I was one.” He pauses, then pulls my hand up to his cheek, holding it there. “Until you.”
“Logan,” I whisper, touched more deeply than I’ll ever be able to express to him.
Except, maybe I don’t have to. He already knows, because he feels it too.
“I love you, Riley Sutton. You came into my darkness and met me there. You saw the monster in me and helped me understand it. You complete me. Now I want to spend the rest of my life completing you. I want to love you and hurt you, protect you and cherish you, until my last breath. Will you marry me, too?”
I can barely get the word out past the lump in my throat, but even if it hurts, especially when it hurts, I will always say yes to this man.
“Yes.” I swipe at my cheeks again. “I want to be your wife, Logan.”
He gets to his feet with the smooth grace of a striking snake, gathering me up just as fast. “And I want to be your husband,” he murmurs before kissing me deeply. “I want to be your everything, along with my brothers, until the day I die.”
Brothers. Both of them. Logan just said so, and all three of them are here, so I’m not sure why it shocks me so much when Logan steps back and Maddoc finally comes forward.
He takes both my hands, and I only realize I’m holding my breath when I start to feel dizzy.
Then he drops to one knee.
“Oh my god,” I blurt, laughing through a fresh wave of tears. “I was planning on wearing you down!”
He smiles, and I see my forever in his eyes. “You never needed to wear me down. I wanted to marry you from the first time you asked, butterfly. Even before that. I just needed to be sure that you would never doubt why I wanted to.”
“I don’t,” I whisper, squeezing his hands.
“I just had to get out of my own way and trust what we have between us,” he says, his voice gravelly. “And I do, because it’s more real than anything I’ve ever felt. Even if I didn’t marry you, I would want to spend every day by your side and every night in your bed. I don’t ever want to wake up without you again, but I also want to make it official. I love you. We all do. Will you marry all of us, Riley?”
I nod, too choked up to answer any other way. But when he pulls out a ring box—when Dante and Logan go back down on their knees on either side of Maddoc, pulling out ring boxes of their own—I find my words again.
“Yes. Oh god, so much yes. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted. All of you. I want to be your wife. I want… I want all of it.”
“And we’re gonna give it to you, for the rest of our lives,” Dante promises in a voice raw with emotion as they each pull out the rings they bought me—gold, platinum, and titanium—and stack them on my finger.
My heart swells as I twist my hand to admire them, letting the candle light glint off the metal. I’m so full of happiness that I’m not sure how to contain it, so I don’t even try.
Instead, I share it with the three men who adore me, who’ve stood by me, who’ve fought and killed for me. The men fate thrust into my life, whom I now can’t imagine living without.
My future husbands.
Thank you so much for reading!