Epilogue
“I’m sunburned. Sunburned.” I gingerly rubbed the red patches on both my shoulders. “Do you know where I’ve never been sunburned? Literally anywhere I can wear a suit jacket.” I adjusted the ridiculous swim trunks that had bared my skin to this disaster.
“Six weeks,” Rook said. “I get my six-week honeymoon, and then we’ll go to London so I can try fish and chips and watch Doctor Who and maybe learn what the hell context I’m actually supposed to use, ‘You alright?’ in.”
I snorted and rummaged about in the airy kitchen for cocktail ingredients. As I mixed fruity drinks for both of us, I stole glances at the stunning expanses of his exposed skin. Unlike me, he’d developed an attractive golden tan.
He picked up a bottle of aloe from the granite countertop and moved behind me to massage it into my burns.
“Ow. Gentle with that,” I said. When he lightened his touch, I relaxed and some of the sting faded. He turned me around with his sticky hands and smashed his mouth against mine, his lips throwing me off balance. I sloshed some of his cocktail over my fingers.
I pulled away and handed him his dripping drink. “Have that. We have weeks to fuck in the peace and quiet.”
Said swim trunks were growing itchy, so I pulled them down, arse to Rook because he deserved to be teased just a little, and a heap of sand poured out onto the floor.
He laughed uncontrollably behind me, tipping the rest of his drink and losing it in a great splash as it hit the floor.
“Oh lovely, now we have made two messes,” I grumbled as I rummaged around in a storage cupboard for a broom. When I finally found it, he was already mopping up the floor with paper towels.
“We’re my favorite mess,” he said. “I want to spend the rest of my life making messes with you.”
I crossed back to him and rubbed my finger over the ring on the hand that was grasping sodden paper towels and tacky with aloe.
“I will take all of your messes,” I told him, “as long as you’re mine.”
Awww.
You should go get a shower and let him scrub the rest of that sand off.
You two are so adorable I could die.
I growled and pinched the bridge of my nose. “You’re already dead.”
Rook chuckled. “Are the kids being brats again?”
“Stop calling them that!” I took the paper towels and the empty glass from him, set the glass in the sink, and tossed the rest of it in the bin. “You’re going to give them ideas.”
He turned around and addressed the room. “If you’re good and give us space on this vacation, I’ll binge-watch Game of Thrones from the beginning.”
And House of the Dragon too.
“They’re demanding a rewatch of the spin-off series.”
He gave them an easy grin. “Done.”
And you have to promise to watch House of the Dragon every week next season so we don’t miss any.
“He’s not negotiating with you!” I snapped.
Rook stepped past me, ghosting his fingertips over my sandy arse and helping himself to my drink. “Are they asking about the new season House of the Dragon again?”
“Do not negotiate with the dead people!”
“I’ll buy a bigger TV and watch every episode,” he said, “but you have to promise to fuck off for the next six weeks. If I find out you were sneaking into the bedroom…”
We’ll be good.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! They agree to your terms.” I gave him a peck on the cheek. “Enjoy my drink. I’m going to take a shower.”
The bathroom of the house boasted a shower with bright white tiles and a rainfall showerhead.
I couldn't wait to step under it and wash away the rest of the beach I’d brought with me.
While I waited for it to heat up, I listened to the soft sounds of Rook moving beyond the open doorway, and everything inside me settled. That had been happening a lot lately.
I stepped under the spray and immediately regretted it.
“Ow—fucking—bloody—damnit!” I did a rather embarrassing, squirmy dance under the water as it assaulted my raw skin. Laughter rang out from the doorway. A moment later, Rook reached into the shower to turn the temperature down for me.
“Easy there,” he said. “That’s going to hurt for a few days.”
I muttered a string of complaints about the sun under my breath.
“You’ll get used to it.” He leaned against the counter and sucked down alcohol as his amusement quickly turned to something darker and hungrier. He admired the lines of my body and the way water sloshed over it.
“Put that drink down,” I said, slicking back my wet hair.
“Why?” he asked, already setting it aside.
I shoved the shower door open, reached out with a dripping arm, and yanked him in with me.
He stumbled, caught himself around my middle, and laughed into my shoulder. “Jesus. I’m still wearing pants, Austin!”
“I can fix that.”
A moment later, his trunks splatted as they hit the tile floor. I dropped to my knees in front of him. “You know what’s wonderful?”
“What?” he asked, as all ten of his fingers threaded through my hair and my eyes fell closed.
“There are no meetings on my schedule today.”
“You have no schedule today.”
I licked the slit of his cock and sighed happily. “Which means I can take as long as I want pleasuring you in this shower.” I wrapped my lips around him and soaked up his groan that echoed off the walls.
Later, dried and in comfortable clothes, he lounged on the couch while I mixed new drinks.
“We should shower again later,” he said when I handed him his drink. “Or try out the hot tub.”
“Six weeks, Rook. I’ll fuck you on every surface and in every body of water we can find.”
“I like the way you think.” He sipped his cocktail and gave me a lascivious grin around his straw.
Then we were quiet in a comfortable, simple way that I never thought I’d be in my life. The quiet was always filled with anxiety, impending threats, and ghosts. I still didn’t know how he got them to obey him so easily. They never listened to me.
As I turned and stared out over the vast beach and churning sea beyond the windows of our rented home, I realized how refreshing the stillness in my life was. My head was silent, my last life wasn’t at risk, and I could finally breathe.
Above all, he was here with me.
Finally mine.
Forever.
His hand fell on my hip as he rested his chin in the crook of my neck and peered over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him sneak up on me.
“I love you.”
I melted inside for the hundredth time. I might never get used to him saying it. Every time felt precious. Earned.
I soaked in his body heat where it warmed the cold that still lived inside me.
“I love you too.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Blissful nothing,” I murmured. “It’s so strange that it’s all over, and it’s not so strange at the same time. It’s like it was a different life.”
“It was a different life,” he said softly. “Twelve of them.”
“And it doesn’t bother you to just move on?” I asked, turning in his arms and planting a kiss on his forehead. His eyes fluttered shut. “What will you do now?”
“Find the next thing I’m good at.”
“You’re good at loving me.”
“Someone has to.” His hand stroked up and down my ribs. “I’ll get a hobby, maybe. I don’t need money anymore. What do you think? Surfing? Painting? Whittling?”
“Whittling?” I spurted out an incredulous laugh, nearly spitting my drink with it.
“I could whittle!” he argued. “I could collect some of that driftwood out there and whittle a perfect image of you scowling in swim trunks and slouching from that sunburn to remember our honeymoon by.”
He was still so ridiculous after all this time, though I found it much less insufferable. Fuck it, he wasn’t the least bit insufferable anymore. He was just mine, silly and teasing and perfectly mine.
“I would buy us a house with a fireplace just so I could keep it on the mantle,” I teased. I slurped the rest of my drink and moved past him to put the glass back on the counter.
“What will you do?” he asked, his eyes following me across the room.
One twinge of anxiety twisted in my chest. “I—I don’t really know.”
We’d been so wrapped up with our tiny wedding and planning the honeymoon, closing everything down, selling our businesses…
I hadn’t had much time to think about it.
Beyond spending my life with Rook, I had no goals or ambitions anymore.
I was struck by the strange sensation of floating naked in time. Where would I go? What would I do?
“Breathe,” he said, appearing at my side a second time and wrapping both his arms around me. He kissed my cheek. “You have all the time in the world to figure it out.”
When I thought of all the things that brought us here—violence, blood, hatred, love, and years of stubbornness (mostly mine) getting between us—it was hard not to feel unsteadied by the contrast between the carefree days we’d had here on vacation.
Days when I didn’t look over my shoulder. Days unburdened from obsession. Days and nights and quiet afternoons in between them sleeping, realizing just how healthy I could feel if I let myself rest.
I think that’s what I wanted.
Just to rest.
To be.
To stay with him.
And maybe not worry so much about what would happen tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now. Did it really matter as long as he was beside me?
“It’s okay now,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “It’s okay to just exist. I think you’ve earned it. We both have, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“I love you,” I said, as if it were a whispered spell to banish all my fears and the unknowns about the future. It was the one thing that would remain unchanged.
“I love you, England,” he said. “Today, and tomorrow, and for all the life we have left.”