Epilogue
Eighteen Months Later
Reid
I wake to sunlight and the absence of him. Sulla’s side of the bed is rumpled. He hasn’t been up long, the sheets still warm.
Four feet. That’s how far apart our cots were in Scotland. I used to lie awake measuring the distance in the dark, telling myself it was enough space to stay sane, enough space to keep this from becoming something I couldn’t walk away from.
Now his side of the bed is warm and I’m the one who got up second.
Some distances are made to be crossed.
I find him at the small kitchen table, reading something on his tablet. Coffee’s already made—the smell reached me before I even opened my eyes.
“Morning,” I say.
He looks up. Smiles. That rare, beautiful smile that still does things to my chest after eighteen months. “Morning. Coffee’s ready.”
I pour a cup and sit across from him. This is our routine now. Has been for over a year since I moved here permanently.
My security consulting work transitioned to remote easily enough. A few trips to San Diego each month to take care of business and see my parents, but mostly I work from here. From our cabin at Second Chance Sanctuary.
From home.
Home. I’m still getting used to that word. Still catching myself surprised by how well it fits.
“What are you reading?” I ask.
“Restorative justice models.” He turns the tablet toward me. “How men rebuild after doing harm.”
I pause to study him. “You’re allowed to just be happy, you know.”
“I am.” His mouth curves faintly, as he taps the screen. “This is part of that.”
This is who he’s becoming. Not just the self-defense classes he teaches three times a week—though those matter too.
There’s something compelling about this rope-muscled man showing a frightened woman how to break a wrist grip, his voice calm and steady the whole time.
But this is what matters most: the quiet, deliberate work of figuring out how to help men like he was.
Men who did harm. Men who want to be different and don’t know how.
Something settles in my chest as I watch him read. This is the man I fell in love with—not despite what he was, but because of what he chose to do with it.
Redemption doesn’t erase the past. But it can use the same hands for something entirely different.
It’s not always easy. We both have bad days.
His nightmares still wake him sometimes—ergastulum dreams that leave him shaking and distant until I pull him back.
I still remember the night, shortly after the reunion special, that we sat on the porch swing under a sky full of stars and he finally told me all of it.
The darkness, the rats, the cold, the absolute certainty that he would die there alone.
I held him while he talked and understood for the first time—not excused, not forgiven, but understood— what had made him into the man he was.
My trust issues still flare sometimes. We’re honest even when it’s hard. We’re patient with each other even when patience is the last thing either of us has.
Most days, it works beautifully.
Some days, we have to fight for it.
But we keep choosing it. That’s the whole thing, really. Every single day, we choose.
Later, in the afternoon I stop by the gym to watch his class.
He’s demonstrating a defensive move—showing a young woman how to pivot out of a grab, his voice low and encouraging.
“Good. Just like that. Now faster.”
She tries again. Better.
“Perfect. You’ve got it.”
I lean against the doorway and watch. This is who he’s becoming. Not the man who ruled through fear. The man who teaches safety with patience, who learns his students’ names and notices when someone’s having a hard week—and adjusts.
After class he crosses to me and kisses me—casual, easy. The kind of kiss that comes from a year of belonging to each other.
“Good class?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He glances back at his students packing up. Something quiet and wondering in his expression, like he still can’t quite believe this is his life. “Yeah, it was.”
Dinner is at one of the long tables in the main hall.
Cassius and Diana are already there when we arrive, heads together over something on his phone that’s making them both laugh.
Thrax and Skye across from them. Varro and Laura sliding in a few minutes later, Laura apologizing for the budget meeting that ran long.
“How bad?” Varro asks.
“We’re fine,” she says, stealing a roll. “Better than fine, actually.”
The conversation flows easily. Thrax tells a story about Skye’s latest pottery disaster that has the whole table cracking up. Diana shares sanctuary gossip. Varro teases Sulla about the self-defense class.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” Varro says. “You. Patient. With beginners.”
Sulla just shrugs. “I’m learning.”
“You’re doing more than that,” Laura says quietly. She meets his gaze across the table with that particular look she has— part mother, part iron. “The students feel safe with you. You know how rare that is? How hard you’ve worked to become someone who can do that?”
Something moves across Sulla’s face. Gratitude, maybe. Or the particular discomfort of someone who still finds it hard to believe good things about himself.
I find his hand under the table and squeeze.
You’re doing well. I see it.
He squeezes back.
Thank you.
Across the table, Cassius is laughing at something Thrax said, Diana’s head tipped against his shoulder.
Happy. Whole. He lost years of himself because of what Sulla did to him—years of disorientation and emptiness that can't be undone—that's true and it will always be true. And he has this life, this woman, this family around this table—that’s also true.
Both things exist. They always will.
But tonight the laughter is real, and the table is full, and that matters.
Walking home under the stars, Sulla is quiet, which usually means he’s thinking hard about something.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” A pause. “Just thinking about how lucky I am.”
I stop walking. Turn to face him. “You know it’s not luck.”
“I know.”
“It’s work. Every day. Both of us.”
“I know, Reid.”
“And it’s not about deserving. It’s about choosing. I choose you. Every day, I choose you.”
He pulls me close. Presses his lips to my forehead and holds them there.
“Even on bad days?” he asks against my hair.
“Especially on bad days.”
He makes a sound that isn’t quite words. Holds me tighter.
“I love you,” I say into his chest.
“I love you.” His arms tighten. “I love you so much it’s still terrifying.”
“Good.” I pull back to look at him. “Stay terrified. It means you know what you have.”
He laughs—low and real and still so rare that it lights something up inside me.
We walk the rest of the way home with his arm around my shoulders and mine around his waist, talking about nothing important, and everything that matters.
Later, in bed, he’s reading while I work on my tablet. Comfortable silence—the kind you have to earn, the kind that took us months to build and that I will fight hard to keep.
“Do you ever wish you’d told me sooner?” I ask. “About what you were?”
He sets his book down. Considers the question the way he considers everything—carefully, honestly. “Every day.”
“Would it have changed anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we would’ve worked through it during the show. Maybe you would’ve walked away immediately.”
I think about this. “I’m glad it happened the way it did.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because I saw who you could be before I knew who you were. That gave me something to hold onto when I found out.” I set my tablet aside and turn toward him. “If you’d told me immediately, I might not have given you a chance.”
“That would’ve been reasonable.”
“Maybe.” I touch his face. “But I’m so glad I didn’t walk away.”
He turns his head. Presses a kiss to my palm.
We make love slowly, tenderly—not the desperate passion of those early days or the fierce healing intensity of our first night back together. Just us. Choosing each other again.
After, I rest my head on his chest. His heartbeat is steady under my ear. His arms come around me and hold on.
Safe.
Home.
Both things are true, I think. All the things that can never be undone, and all of this. Everything he was, and everything he’s choosing to be. The damage, and the love. All of it true, all at once. And somehow—impossible—enough. No. More than enough.
I close my eyes.
I’m asleep before I can say goodnight.
Sulla
She falls asleep quickly. She always does—out like a light, breathing evening out in minutes, body trusting the dark completely.
I stay awake longer. I usually do.
Three hundred and ninety-seven days since she moved here. I’ve counted every one. Some men count blessings. I count days with her.
Some days are harder than others. The nightmares. The guilt that ambushes me at strange moments—watching Cassius laugh, catching my own reflection, reading something in a history book that I was there for. Days when I wonder if I’m really different or just better at hiding what I am.
But then Reid looks at me the way she looked at me tonight over the dinner table. Like she sees all of it and she’s still here. Still choosing.
She’s not naive. She knows who I was. She sat on that porch swing and listened to all of it without flinching, without offering me easy comfort, and then she said I know and held me anyway. That is the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. Braver than anything I did in the arena.
I think about Cassius reaching across the table tonight to refill my wine without being asked. About Laura’s eyes across the table. About Varro calling me his brother last week like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I think about the young woman in today’s class who arrived shaking and left standing straighter.
I think about Reid saying stay terrified, it means you know what you have.
She’s right. I know what I have.
I look down at her sleeping face. Her hand rests over my heart, the way it always finds its way there in sleep, like even unconscious she’s checking that I’m still here.
I’m here, I think. I’m not going anywhere.
The man I was would not recognize this life. Would not understand it. Would have called it weakness—all this softness, this need, this choosing to be known by someone.
He was wrong about almost everything.
Tomorrow I’ll teach another class. We’ll have breakfast together and she’ll work and I’ll read and we’ll make dinner and argue about something small and laugh about it after.
I’ll look at Cassius and feel the familiar weight of what I did, and I’ll let it be there without letting it swallow me.
I’ll try to be better than I was yesterday.
But tonight, I’m here.
Holding the woman who looked at a monster and waited to see if there was a man underneath.
There was.
There is.
And I’ll spend the rest of my life—however many years I have left, however strange this new world remains—making sure she never has reason to doubt it.
Her breathing is soft and low.
My heart beats under her hand.
This is real. This is my life.
And I choose it.
Every single day, I choose it.