Epilogue
EPILOGUE
TWO MONTHS LATER
We found out Ava wasn’t pregnant. After that, she made a list of all the things she wanted to do in the next few years, and that list included running a team at GhostEye. I didn’t understand just how determined that woman is. How sincere. Giving. Full of life.
She is so full of it she’s breathed a new one into me.
Not long after that fateful night, we both threw ourselves back into work, both at GhostEye and on the ranch. Anton moved into Ava’s old house. I took Ava shopping to settle into the one we now share and to get her a winter wardrobe. We got through the trauma like people often get through grief. We kept busy as we digested the horror we lived through, and after a couple of months, she got the “normal” she always told me she was craving.
We also hired some highly recommended therapists. That definitely helped.
Through her, I realized how stagnant I’d become. I’d spent over a decade working hard and hardly playing so with her help I finally felt secure hiring more people on the security team. Ava also insisted I hire an executive assistant.
With Ava by my side, I’m more confident in these things. She might be a lot younger than I am, but the woman is a boss lady, matriarch in the making. She’s kept an eagle eye on the new hires, and somehow, her diligence and industrious nature, her curiosity, all make her my perfect partner on every level. Personal and professional.
The best place in the world is standing by her side.
But we both need a break.
And now that I make promises, I’ve taken her on a long weekend away.
I dragged her out of Echo Valley for a weekend in New Mexico. Visiting Roswell seems right up her street, and it gave me an excuse to swing by Starlight Canyon to visit my sister, her husband, and my nephew who were the only ones not to have met Ava. That needed to happen.
They loved her.
Approved.
So I whisk her off to UFO fest. Since meeting Ava, there are a million and one things I’ve done I never thought I’d ever do, and this is one of them. In all my years as a rancher’s kid in New Mexico, never once did I think about coming into this planetarium in Roswell unless I was wearing a tin foil hat .
When we enter the dome-shaped building, a manager greets us with two drinks.
“Welcome to Roswell Planetarium,” he says with a bright smile. “May I tempt you with an Area 51 mocktail?”
Ava glances at me, amused and taken aback by the individual hospitality she wasn’t expecting.
“Sure, thank you.” She takes the swirly concoction of God knows what from his platter.
I take the other.
“Right this way.” He ushers us out of the lobby area and through a door leading to the giant dome.
The manager allows us in and says, “It’s all yours. Enjoy.” And leaves through the door.
“Wait. What does he mean, it’s all ours?” The excitement on her face tells me she knows exactly what it means.
“I wanted to be alone with you under the stars.”
She throws a hand to her cheek. “That’s so romantic. Thank you, Zo.”
It is romantic. But I have ulterior motives.
We hardly make it to two end seats when the lights dim, darkness descends upon us, and the dome illuminates into a beautiful night sky. Constellations appear.
Here I am, loving every minute of the asteroids above us breaking into millions of pieces and the narrator explaining why there must be life forms somewhere else out there.
Ava is in awe. She leans over and whispers, “It’s amazing to think that somewhere, among all those crumbles in the universe, there’s life.”
Her words make me smile. I stare at her beauty and watch her react to the voice-over:
“Almost all stars have a planet or even entire solar systems associated with them. There definitely should be other beings, other consciousness out there… ”
She takes a sip of her drink and lays her head on my shoulder, her hair smelling of strawberries and the new perfume I got her, drifting sensually through my senses.
“See?” she whispers. “It makes perfect sense. It makes less sense that there isn’t life out there…”
Before Ava, I wasn’t so sure about life out there because I was a hopeless man. Now, I couldn’t believe it more. Of course there’s life out there. It might be too far to ever come here, but then, I used to think the same thing about love finding me.
“New stars are forming all the time… The Milky Way produces three to four new stars per year on average…”
Excitement pours off her skin. “I can’t believe you rented this whole place out.”
“Well, the thing is, I need to talk to you about something.”
I’ve seen that look on her face before. “Are you going to kill my vibe?”
“It depends.”
“Do we have to talk now?”
“I wanted to do it here. It’s about your name change. There might be a little delay.”
Just then, a shooting star zooms over the constellation above us.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I just thought maybe you’d want to be sure about the name you’ve chosen.”
“As if I’d change it now.” She points up. “That’s Orion.” She glances at me briefly. “Everyone knows me by Ava.”
“I was thinking more about Scott.”
She sips her drink, mesmerized by the light show above. “You don’t like it? ”
“I’d like anything you choose. But Ava Mendez sounds a lot better.”
Her whole body stops. She pulls the straw away from her puffy lips and turns a stunned smile on me. “What…? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t actually care what you’re called as long as it’s my wife. I’m saying my heart stopped searching. You’re it for me, Scottie.”
She’s so overwhelmed she throws her face into her hands.
I peel them away and get down on one knee. I pull out the ring box with stars twinkling above us and supernovas bursting in the nighttime above. There’s no more magical place for me to ask this one-in-a-universe woman to marry me.
She gasps when I open the box. Tiny fragments of the light show glimmer on the perfectly cut surface, designed to shimmer in any light.
“You’ve told me before you thought I was a man with purpose. That my life had meaning. But it really didn’t until you walked through those gates.”
I sound confident, but my heart is pounding a million miles an hour.
I take the ring out of the box and lift it toward her. She doesn’t appear to be breathing.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes!”
I put the ring on her finger.
“I know you want adventures, and I promise it all to you. I’ll make your every dream happen.”
Tears gloss over her eyes then throws her arms around my neck. Stars spin overhead and I’ve never been happier in my life. Though somehow I know, I’ll say that again soon. Every new moment I have with this woman is my next new favorite.
“So, Scottie…” I kiss her knuckles, “where do you want to go first?”
Her eyes are wide and her smile sparkles more than the supernova above. “Anywhere you want to take me.”
Thank you for reading my story! If you want more from the sexy men in Echo Valley, buckle up and throw on your chaps for Santi’s story!