EPILOGUE
EIGHT WEEKS LATER
LUCY
The second time I stand in front of Wilder and promise to remain his wife, I’m sober enough to notice every detail.
Nora stands beside me in dark blue. The cheap rhinestone ring from Vegas is safely tucked away with our marriage certificate, even though it turned my finger green within a week. Tonight, a dark sapphire rests in its place.
We’re already legally married. This isn’t a replacement for the neon chapel or an attempt to make that night respectable. It’s just a small celebration inside the Kingdom Come clubhouse, with Nora present and both of us clearheaded enough to mean every word.
Cash stands in front of us with an online ordination certificate he bought hours before the ceremony.
“Nobody needs your legal authority, by the way,” I remind him.
“That was a tragic waste of nineteen dollars.”
Wilder looks at him. “Get on with it.”
The brothers fall quiet. The clubhouse remains exactly what it is. Guns sit beneath cuts, and smoke drifts through the open doors. Chains has been removed from an old photograph on the wall, leaving a pale tear beside Griz.
Wilder wears his Road Captain cut as he takes my left hand. A plain, heavy band waits for him in Nora’s palm.
Cash nods to me. “Lucy.”
I hold Wilder’s gaze.
“I promise I will tell you when I am afraid instead of trying to build my life around the fear. I promise I will never ask you to become less than the man I married. And I promise to stand beside you because that’s where I want to be.”
Wilder slides the sapphire ring onto my finger.
His thumb rests over it.
“I promise you the truth, even when it is ugly,” he says. “I will never call a cage protection. I will never ask you to make yourself smaller to fit beside me. And when this life comes for you, it comes through me first.”
The words are not gentle. Neither is the man giving them to me.
I slide the band onto Wilder’s finger.
His hand closes around mine, and he starts leaning in.
“Wait,” Cash says. “I haven’t told you to kiss the bride yet.”
Wilder kisses me anyway.
The clubhouse erupts while Cash mutters, “Why did I bother planning any of this?”
Nora reaches us first and wraps her arms around both of us. Kane grips Wilder’s shoulder, and somebody starts passing whiskey before Cash can regain control of the ceremony.
Wilder came home with me the night Perdition took me and never left. His clothes fill half my wardrobe, his cut hangs beside my coat, and his boots are usually waiting for me to trip over them.
He bends to my ear. “Are we staying for the whiskey?”
“Absolutely not.”
His hand settles low on my back. “Good answer.”
I take my husband’s hand and let him lead me out while Cash is still complaining that nobody respects the authority vested in him.