Epilogue
Sutton
Christmas Eve
The tree was too big, but smelled absolutely glorious.
Sutton had known it wouldn’t fit the moment Sebastian and CB had hauled it through the front door of the farmhouse, needles raining down the length of the hallway, the trunk scraping against the frame because neither of them had thought to measure the doorway before they’d driven ninety minutes into the Bitterroot National Forest with their permit to cut the thing down.
It had stood nine feet tall in the clearing. It stood eight feet nine inches tall in the living room only because Sebastian had gotten frustrated and cut another three inches off with a bow saw while CB held it steady and Mack heckled from the couch.
It was perfect.
Sutton stood in the living room with a glass of red wine, watching the whole impossible scene of her life refract off the tree’s twinkle lights.
She’d ordered the white fairy lights from a company in Maine.
Hand-cut paper stars she’d made with her mother last week at the kitchen table dangled from a series of branches, along with a set of vintage glass ornaments Eleanor Whitaker had insisted on flying out with her from Greenwich.
She’d carefully wrapped them in tissue paper and guarded them through two plane changes.
When she’d arrived, and Sebastian had been surprised over them, she’d said, “They belonged to your grandmother, and if I’m going to start doing holidays with you again, we’re doing them properly. ”
The living room was still a work in progress—the wallpaper she’d picked out for the far wall hadn’t arrived yet, one of the built-in bookshelves was waiting for a new set of brackets, and the original hardwood she’d talked Sebastian into restoring still had three squares of a mismatched patching underneath the tree stand—but the room worked.
Sage green walls, a deep, worn leather couch that had taken her three weekends of estate sale hunting to find. She also added a braided rug she’d found stored in the attic. The mantel was crowded with photographs and framed sketches.
This was no longer the month-to-month lease of a man preparing to disappear.
This was a home.
She took a slow sip of wine, not quite believing any of it was real.
Eleanor Whitaker and Diane Crenshaw were in the kitchen arguing pleasantly over the correct way to reheat stuffing.
They’d been circling each other with polite wariness, and somewhere around three, Eleanor had asked Diane about her watercolors.
Sutton’s mom had blushed and pulled out her phone to show a painting she’d done that morning upstairs in Sutton’s new art studio.
It was her first in six years. Eleanor had put her hand over Diane’s and said, “You must teach me, you have such a remarkable eye.” Sutton had pretended she needed to check for cranberries so she could cry behind the refrigerator door.
Dom was on the couch with their new employee, Arlan Rivers.
The two of them were looking over a binder of custom designs a prospective client had dropped off at Iron Rose yesterday.
Dom was still thinner than he should be, still moving carefully when he got up, but back.
Back at the parlor. Back to work full-time.
He’d also been telling Sutton she was running his shop into the ground by charging premium prices, and then quietly raising his own rates to match hers.
Arlan was an older Outlaw she’d hired. He’d slotted into the parlor as if he’d always belonged there.
He did old-school traditional work that Sutton couldn’t do and didn’t want to try, and he’d brought a loyal client base of bikers and construction guys who’d doubled Iron Rose’s weekly traffic inside a month.
He and Dom had become friends—the kind who sat on a couch at a Christmas Eve party and pored over a client binder like it was the best reading material in the room.
CB and Regan were by the fireplace with Regan’s mother. Regan was tucked against CB’s side in a way that made Sutton’s chest ache every time she looked at them.
Vivi and Ian stood by the tree, Vivi pointing out some ornament detail. Claire was on the phone by the window, apologizing to someone and simultaneously refusing to go into the office.
Two of the Outlaws—grizzled, leathered, bearing paper plates piled with Diane’s pecan pie—had taken up residence at the dining table and were deep in a debate with Mack about whether Triumph or Ducati was the superior brand of motorcycle.
Mack, who didn’t ride, was holding his own surprisingly well.
And Sebastian.
He stood near the kitchen archway with Garrett and Jasper, all three of them laughing. Sebastian had his head thrown back, his blue eyes crinkled at the corners, his hand curled around a glass of whiskey that had probably been untouched for half an hour.
She watched him for a long moment. This was a man who, by his own admission, had eaten alone and declined every team dinner invitation that had come his way.
A man who, four months ago, had lived in this same farmhouse and hadn’t put a single photograph on its walls because he’d been preparing, always, to disappear again.
He wasn’t eating alone anymore.
Garrett said something that made Sebastian shake his head and point a finger at him, and Jasper was openly grinning. Mack joined them, and then CB, too. These men weren’t just his team anymore. They were his people. Sebastian Whitaker had people.
He looked over, like he’d felt her watching. His grin bloomed into a real smile—the private one that belonged only to her. He raised his whiskey in a small, silent salute.
She raised her wine back.
He said something to Garrett, clapped Mack on the shoulder, and started across the room toward her.
“Host duties,” he murmured when he reached her. His hand came to the small of her back—a light pressure through the thin silk of her dress, possessive in a way that still made her stomach flip. “I need to borrow you.”
“For what?”
“You’ll see.”
She cast a glance back at the living room. The party was running itself. “Lead on.”
He guided her up the stairs—the hand on her back turned into a hand at her waist turned into an arm around her shoulders, his pace accelerating as the noise of the party receded behind them.
The upstairs of the farmhouse was dim and quiet.
The walls smelled faintly of fresh paint—the studio’s pale blue-gray, two coats deep and dry for a week.
Sebastian opened the door and ushered her in.
The south windows caught moonlight instead of their usual afternoon gold, a silver wash across the new drafting table he’d had shipped in from Portland.
The old chimney, framed and painted, ran up through the middle.
Her finished pieces—the phoenix, the warrior women, the first of the Callsigns bodyguard series she’d unveiled online a week ago—hung in neat rows along the east wall.
The lynx warrior - a new design not based on Sebastian’s tattoo but still carrying the same qualities—had sold three prints on the first day.
She was going to need to do a second run.
Sebastian stopped her a few steps in, turned her to face him, and raised his right hand above their heads.
She looked up. A small sprig of mistletoe dangled between his fingers.
“Looks like you’re required to kiss me,” he said.
Sutton snorted. She reached up, plucked the sprig out of his hand, and tossed it over her shoulder onto the drafting table. “You don’t need greenery to seduce me, Seb.”
He chuckled against her lips as she kissed him—a low sound vibrating through her chest where it pressed against his.
The bandage was gone from her shoulder, the graze healed into a fresh line of scar tissue that interrupted the branches of Penn’s crescent moon.
“How soon,” he murmured when they came up for air, “can we send them on their way?”
She batted his arm. “Don’t be rude. We’re the hosts.”
“I know.”
“You’re the one who agreed to a Christmas Eve party.”
“I was under duress. You told me you were making spreadsheets.”
“Spreadsheets are romantic.”
“You are genuinely the strangest woman I’ve ever met.”
His fingers found the thin strap of her dress—the black silk her mother had insisted she splurge on—and slid it slowly off her shoulder. His lips dropped to trail kisses along her collarbone. “Have I told you how sexy you look in this?”
She shivered under his mouth. “At least five times.”
“Only five?”
“Including the first one in the bedroom before the party, where you took the dress off and did extremely naughty things to my body.” She tipped her head back to give him more access to her throat. “I’m pretty sure you’re getting coal in your stocking tonight.”
His teeth grazed the tendon of her neck. “I am definitely on Santa’s naughty list. And if all those people downstairs don’t leave soon, I’m going to lock that door behind us and take you right here on your desk anyway.”
She laughed—low, a little wicked. “I don’t think anyone would miss us for a few more minutes.”
He pulled back enough to look at her. The blue of his eyes in the moonlit studio was the color of something she couldn’t quite name—darker than dawn, lighter than nightfall, deep in a way that still caught her off guard every time she saw it up close.
His hair was mussed from her hand. His shirt collar was slightly askew. He looked like a man who had forgotten he was supposed to be the host of a Christmas Eve party, and the forgetting was entirely her fault.
“No regrets?” he asked. His smile was feral. It was also soft, underneath.
It had become their shorthand, their vow.
The pact they’d made in the too-tiny bed at the SPS compound after she’d traced his scar and he’d pulled her in.
The thing she’d said at the parlor when he’d warned her about the media.
The thing he’d whispered against her shoulder the night she’d come home from the hospital with her arm in a sling and her head still not quite right.
The thing they said at the farmhouse kitchen counter every morning.
She pushed him toward the drafting table. He went willingly, his hands finding her waist. He sat on the edge of the desk, pulled her between his knees, and looked at her with the same expression he’d worn in the tattoo parlor when she’d told him she loved him for the first time.
She slid her hands down his chest. Began unbuttoning his pants.
“No regrets,” she said. She leaned in and kissed him—slow, thorough, a kiss that made promises about the rest of the evening and the rest of the year and the rest of whatever came next.
“Let’s make our first official Christmas Eve party,” she murmured against his mouth, “one to remember.”
He laughed and tugged her closer.
The tree was too big. The wallpaper hadn’t arrived. The living room floor had three patches of mismatched hardwood under the stand. Her mother and his mother were trading wine and war stories. Her studio ceiling was scattered with moonlight and her warrior women were watching from the east wall.
Every piece of it was perfect.
Sutton Crenshaw was the sister of an assassin—a brother she’d deeply loved and who’d loved her in return. So much so that he’d died for her.
Since his death, she’d been a scared, scrappy woman barely surviving above a laundromat with a broken stove and a collection of half-dead succulents. She’d been a witness, a principal, a name in an FBI file.
Tonight, she was something else.
She was home with her lynx. With her family, chosen and born. With her brother’s last portrait of her inked over the heart of the man who’d once been her enemy and was now her entire future.
Outside, in the dark over the mountains, snow started to fall.
Inside, the first Christmas of the rest of their lives was just getting started.
Dear reader, I hope you enjoyed Sebastian and Sutton’s story! Don’t miss Shadow Burn, featuring Jasper and Katherine, next!