Epilogue
Riley
It’s been a little over three months since everything went down and Matt found out the truth.
We’d spent the better part of the day talking things out up there on the ridge, and then, when we’d been fully exhausted, both physically and mentally, we’d returned home with grumbling stomachs to devour a pizza and do it all over again late into the night with Alex.
There’d been more tears and lots of yelling, but Steph and the boys had eventually come to a tentative truce.
They’d still been reeling from the secrets she had kept, but by the time we all turned in the boys had at least accepted the position she was in and her reasoning for the decisions she’d made—and that had helped ease some of the strain.
Since then, Steph’s done what she always does when things get tough: put her head down and soldier on. She kept doing the supportive mom stuff while often being met with attitude and angst.
For my part, I just kept coming around.
I tried not to push with the boys, but I made my presence known, quiet and stalwart. I showed them, little by little, that I was there and I wasn’t going anywhere.
On Aidan’s advice, we signed the whole family up for counselling, which I think has been helping a lot.
We each have individual appointments, and once a month, we get together for a group session.
We’ve only done a few of those so far, but I’m finding I actually appreciate them the most, because it’s allowed us all to air our grievances—the ones we’ve already discussed with the therapist in our private sessions—in a guided and safe manner with a moderator who knows how to de-escalate tense situations.
Betrayal, abandonment, and loss of self or of identity, are common themes in our family discussions, and though the sources of our trauma differ, the shared feelings and communication have actually brought us closer together.
I know we still have a long way to go, but I’m proud of us and the progress we’ve made as a family.
And that is what we are.
A family.
I knew it the moment Matt cracked that joke about his uncle Aidan on the ridge.
And I knew it again, later that same night, when Alex turned to me, totally deadpan, and announced I was demoted back to zero points.
We often use humor as a means of easing the pressure, and our therapist encourages it as long as it’s not meant to deflect or avoid the issues that need to be dealt with and the conversations that need to be had.
I took it as a good sign, anyway, and I’m even regaining ground with the points.
The release of Shattered Kingdom 4 on PS5 didn’t hurt either.
Things are going well on the work front, too.
Bobby approached me this morning and proposed a deal for me to buy him out of Aroma’s.
I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it, but he has no one else to leave it to, and he says he knows it’ll be in good hands with me.
We still have to work out the particulars—I told him I’d have to discuss it with Steph, first—but essentially I’d make quarterly payments into the business with the goal towards owning it free and clear in a few years.
Learning to manage the place, I’ve really come to love it, so I’m pretty excited about the prospect of it one day being mine.
I’m honored Bobby trusts me to carry on the legacy he built with his beloved Ellie, and eager to continue to build on it for Matt and Alex, should they want it someday.
Connor’s ears perk up, and he raises his head from where he’d been sleeping, curled up next to me on the bed in Steph’s room. I spend quite a few nights here, now, with the boys’ knowledge and consent, but we’re not rushing any talk about me moving in.
I bookmark the fantasy novel I’d been reading—one Piper couldn’t stop raving about—and set it beside me at the sound of the front door opening.
Con leaps from the bed and flies out of the room, and I smile as I listen to Steph greeting him, muffled exclamations about what a good boy he is, carrying down the hall.
She tells him he’s sweet, and smart, and handsome.
I’m grinning when she finally appears in the doorway to the bedroom, the little dog panting happily in her arms. She sets him down on the bed, and he resumes his earlier position, settling once more against my thigh with a soft doggy sigh.
“Hey, babe.”
She smiles. “Hi. How did your session with Aidan go?”
I’d joined my brother for our first joint therapy appointment earlier this evening.
Progress is happening everywhere.
“It was good. Tiring, but good. How was dinner with the girls?”
She offers me a bright smile as she moves across the room to the closet, unbuttoning her blouse as she goes. My mind stalls out as I watch her cleavage being revealed, button by torturous button.
Oblivious to my reaction, she answers, “Also good. Tessa joined us this time, and I really like her. I’m glad she’s settling in here and starting to find her place.”
“A good addition to the girl gang, then?”
“She is.”
Steph slides the shirt off her shoulders, uncovering a pale pink bra, and I let out a groan.
It’s one of my favorites, with delicate little flowers embroidered on the cups, and it pushes her tits together in a way that is nothing short of mouthwatering.
She tilts her head at my reaction, finally catching on to what she’s doing to me as I shift to adjust my hardening cock.
Turning to face me fully, she allows me the time to devour her with my eyes before reaching around behind and unzipping her skirt, ever so slowly.
With a smirk and a raised eyebrow, she lets it fall, the fabric sliding easily over her hips and puddling at her feet, her lithe body on display for me.
My gaze drops to her panties—not perfectly matching ones, but a coordinating pink pair that I know, without her having to turn around, is a thong.
She steps out of the skirt, lifting one leg and then the other with a sensual deliberateness that steals my breath.
Her voice is husky when she asks, “The boys in bed?”
I grunt before responding. “In their rooms … unlikely they’re asleep.”
Biting her lip, she nods, then turns, finally giving me an eyeful of her bare behind, the thin strip of fabric tucked snuggly between her round cheeks taunting me in the best way.
My hands clench at my sides as I imagine gripping onto that sweet flesh and grinding my cock against that slip of pink silk.
She smirks at me over her shoulder. “Guess we’ll have to be quiet then.”
Her hips sway, and her ass jiggles as she strides into the ensuite bathroom. A moment later, the shower turns on, but I’m already off the bed.
“Stay,” I shout to Connor over my shoulder.
It’s all I can do to get my boxers off before I join her under the spray and press her against the tiles.
Forty minutes later, we’re both clean and sated and tucked under the covers together.
Connor has moved to his dog bed in the corner, and Steph is curled into my side with her head on my shoulder.
Our legs are intertwined and her hand rests on my chest. She idly draws patterns across my skin while I comb my fingers repeatedly through her still-damp hair.
She looks ethereal in the pale moonlight spilling in through the window.
The one I used to climb through, a lot less stealthily than I’d thought, apparently.
Steph lets out a contented hum when I press a kiss to her forehead, reveling in the simple domesticity of this moment and how far away this still felt only a few months ago.
“How’re you feeling about tomorrow?” I ask, and feel her smile against my skin. It’s Thanksgiving, and our first holiday together as a family, with everything finally out in the open.
It was Thanksgiving a year ago when Steph’s secret detonated right into the middle of our attempt at a second chance, and for a while there, it seemed like we might not be able to find our way through it.
If there’s anything this life has taught me, though, it’s not to give up.
It’s that sometimes, things need to fall apart before they can be put back together, and often, they turn out even better than they were before.
Piper recently told me about a Japanese art called Kintsugi, where they use gold to repair broken pottery, resulting in an even lovelier product in the end.
It celebrates the beauty in the brokenness and the strength that comes from the mending.
I like to think our family is just like that—that little by little we’re weaving our own strands of gold through the wreckage, building a bond that’s so much stronger than it might’ve been without the obstacles we’ve faced.
So I don’t dwell anymore on what we’ve lost, the time spent apart, for I know now it was all leading up to this.
“I’m excited to host everyone here for the first time.”
The guest list has changed a little this year. Lucy and Noah will be entertaining his parents at their new house—another check in the plus column for family therapy right there—but Bobby and Matt’s girlfriend, Priya, will be joining us in their stead.
“Me too.”
“You’re just itching to try out that deep fryer.”
I grin. “Damn straight. And you better believe Aidan, Jack, and Bobby will be out there keepin’ an eye on the bird with me.”
“No football while there’s a vat of hot oil in my yard,” Steph warns, emphasizing her words with a pat on my chest before resuming the slow trail of her fingers across my skin.
“Already talked to the boys about it. They’re strictly sticking to watching the game.”
“That goes for you older boys, too.”
I roll my eyes.
“Wait.” She stills, her fingers pausing right over my heart. “What’s this?” She lifts her head, leaning in to get a better look at my chest, and I realize belatedly that she hadn’t been idly caressing my skin, but tracing the lines of my many tattoos.
“What is this?” she asks again, smoothing over the still-tender location of my latest ink.
I shrug, jostling her a bit in the process. “Got a new tattoo.”
“I see that. But … what does it mean?” Steph had spent countless hours—torturous ones—learning all of my tattoos with her hands, and then her mouth.
And we’d spent many late nights afterward, curled together like we are now, while she’d questioned me about their origins and the locations they represented.
She’d never asked me about the empty space I’d kept so close to my heart, though.
Now I’ve filled it.
I swallow before answering, my throat thick with the words I need to say. “You know how all of my tattoos are for places I’ve called home?”
Steph nods, her eyes wide with awareness, and I know she feels the shift in the air. The mood.
“They represent my growth and journey, in a way. My journey back to you. You’re the home of my heart, Sunshine. Even when it seemed like an impossibility, this spot was always waiting for you.”
I place my hand over hers, holding it there, pressed so she can feel the beats that are just for her.
Her breath catches.
“And the numbers?”
One hundred and fifty-nine.
“That’s how many smiles it took before I knew I’d won your heart again.”
Tears spill over, and she pulls her hand from under mine to wipe at them.
“You counted my smiles?”
I nod. “Just like when we were teens.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s how I won you over the first time.
I fought for every one you gave me. Figured it was worth a try again.
” I brush my thumb across her lips, and she rewards me with another smile—bright as her nickname, and the inspiration for the tattoo: a linework sun design with those three important numbers in the center.
I point at another empty spot on my skin, slightly down and to the right of the new tattoo.
“I’m saving this one for the boys.”
She raises an eyebrow in question.
“For when I finally hit one hundred points.”
She sniffles. “I love you so much, Riley.”
“You’re so precious to me, Steph. Love you forever.”
She lays her head back down in the crook of my shoulder, quiet for a few moments.
“I don’t get how I didn’t notice this before now.”
“Kept my shirt on the last few times we had sex.”
She frowns, propping herself up on her elbow once more to look me in the eyes. “You did? How’d you manage that?”
I chuckle. “Well, if you’ll recall, the last time was yesterday when you visited me while I was taking inventory at the bar, and I held you up against that shelf in the storage room,” I say with a smirk.
“Oh,” she whispers, blushing adorably. “That’s right. And the time before that …”
“The time before that, I visited you at the library at closing, and I bent you over the desk.”
She giggles, and I respond in kind, enjoying the way my chuckling causes her to bounce against my chest.
“They were both hard and fast.”
She bites her lip. “They were.”
“I barely got my pants down before I was sinking inside you, desperate to feel you.” I shrug. “Worked in my favor.”
“You heathen!” she exclaims, slapping my chest.
“What can I say? You bring it out in me.”
She huffs an amused breath that turns into more giggling. When she meets my eyes once more, hers are shining with a wealth of emotion—foremost among them, happiness. It’s a balm to my soul to see her like this, especially after all the tough stuff we’ve been working through.
“We have fun, don’t we?”
“We do.”
“Promise we always will? That we’ll keep having fun, keep loving each other even through the hard times.”
It’s an easy promise to make because I know I’ll never take this gift—us, our family—for granted. I’ll appreciate every minute of the time we have together, the second chance we fought for, for the rest of our lives.
“I promise, Sunshine. It might not have been easy getting here, and I know life’ll keep throwing us challenges, that’s just part of living, but loving you—loving our boys—is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. It’s my greatest joy, and I’m gonna keep doing it till the end of my days.”