Epilogue
Celeste
The six-week honeymoon melted away like gelato in the Roman sun.
In Rome, we zipped through narrow cobblestone streets on a mint-green Vespa, my arms wrapped around Max's waist, the cool air tousling my hair as we chased the golden light to the Trevi Fountain.
His body tensed against mine with each turn, a preview of how he'd move above me later that night.
In London, we huddled under a shared umbrella on the top deck of a crimson double-decker, his lips finding the sensitive spot behind my ear that made me forget about the tourists around us.
Paris greeted us with buttery croissant flakes on our laps at a wrought-iron café table, my foot tracing up his calf beneath the table, his eyes darkening with promise.
Max's surprise—a Parisian penthouse with herringbone floors and floor-to-ceiling windows—became our sanctuary where love-making filled our nights and my back arched against cool marble countertops in the afternoons while my screams of pleasure filled the walls.
Barcelona's Sagrada Família casted rainbow shadows across my naked skin as we christened the hotel balcony at dawn, while Prague's Christmas Market warmed us after hours spent learning each other's bodies in ways that made even December evenings feel like midsummer.
Max guides me through our front door with his hands over my eyes. "This tops even the pink diamond," he whispers, his breath warm against my ear.
When he lifts his hands, I freeze. There, tail whipping so hard her entire body sways, stands Piper. My Piper. The same pink-nosed pit bull I'd cried over for weeks after a family adopted her from Inland Valley.
"Piper!" I drop to my knees as she bounds toward me, her paws skidding on the hardwood. Fifty pounds of muscle and slobber collide with my chest. I bury my face in her brown and white fur, breathing in that familiar dog smell as she covers my cheeks with frantic kisses.
"How?" I manage to ask, looking up at Max through tears.
He kneels beside us, one hand on Piper's head, the other finding mine. "Let's just say I made the previous owners an offer they couldn't refuse."
Piper wedges herself between us, tail still going wild, as Max pulls me closer. "Welcome to your forever home, sweet girl," he says to Piper, then turns to me with eyes that hold everything I never knew I needed. "Both of you."
As his lips find mine, I think about my mother's recovery and new love with Michael, my inbox filled with three major studios offering commissions to me to write screenplays, and now this—this man who tracked down the dog I thought I'd lost forever.
The man I was forced to marry, the man I once despised—now the absolute center of my universe.
The impossible has become my everyday life.
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