Epilogue

Iunroll the hose, pulling it to the front yard and setting up the sprinkler to water the newly planted sod and flowers. The house is looking good. It looks like a home where people are proud to live.

The door across the street opens and Mrs. Petrie steps out slowly, lifting her hand in a wave. Her lined face lifts. “You coming over here next, Gabe?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, already heading out of our gate and crossing the street to hers. “I’ll get your sprinklers all set up.”

It’s not a role I ever thought I’d be in—helper, friend, savior, especially not when my soul was destroyed so long ago—but it’s growing back from the tatters, seeds taking root and blooming just like the rosebushes Mrs. Petrie begged me to plant because they reminded her of her own mother.

Shortly after I moved in with Bella, Russell came poking around again. He’d been high and more desperate than I’d ever seen him, and that’s saying something. He’d fallen to his knees on the porch, begging tearfully for money, saying even a few bucks would help. At first, I’d thought it’d been so he could buy more drugs, but the truth had been so much worse.

We’d denied him, and then he’d gone after Mrs. Petrie. I’d defended her too, telling him to get off her porch. I’d intervened and protected the small group of people all up and down the street since I was the only thing Russell seemed to be scared of in his panicked mania.

He got desperate enough to rob a store in town, and his sins finally truly caught up to him, something I can understand and pray never happens to me.

Any loyalty the cops felt to Russell’s parents had been worn away by his continued bad behavior, and they’d arrested him. Russell put up the last thing he owned as collateral for the bail and attorney fees, his house and the land the mill houses sit on. But before he was bailed out, he was killed by another inmate.

The typical thinking is that dead men don’t pay debts, and Russell was in deep to his dealers and loan sharks. But the consensus is that they were more afraid Russell would rat them out to lessen his sentence, and the money and Russell were acceptable losses in that equation.

When he died, the land and Russell’s house went to auction and I bought them for a steal. So now, Bella and I own the land for the row of mill houses, and we treat our neighbors properly.

The fees have dropped to a bare minimum, the sense of community has returned, and the homes are slowly but surely being updated and cared for. I help out where I can and act as landlord for Russell’s house, which we’ve converted into a rental property after renovating it.

“All set, Mrs. Petrie. I’ll be back in a couple of hours to shut it off and put everything away,” I call out to her. She stays on the porch, not able to come down the steps very much anymore. When I come back, I’ll be sure to sit with her for a bit and see if she needs anything from the store this week.

But for now, I go back across the street because my princess is sitting on her throne on the small porch we added. Okay, so it’s more of a porch swing than a throne, but she looks regal in her purple tank top and denim shorts, one bare foot lazily pushing the swing.

I sit down beside her, throwing my arm along the back of the swing, and Bella snuggles in closer to me. I reach down and pet Vash, who’s sitting in Bella’s lap. The ornery cat has finally decided I’m an acceptable food-giver and will usually let me pet her as long as Bella is around.

Bella sighs happily, a soft smile on her face that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, which is a feeling I thought I’d lost the ability to experience. Her voice is music to my ears. “You saved me, you know. Hunted me down, woke me up, and brought me to life.”

It’s maybe a bit dramatic, but it’s also a bit true. “Maybe, but you saved me right back, from loneliness and dark hatred, by bringing in your light and stubborn hope that everything would be okay if we just kept fighting for it.”

“With a smile and a song, and some hard work,” she says, then whistles cheerfully. I told her once that she reminded me of Snow White, with her dark hair and pale skin, and her endless optimism and kindness, even when life had been cruel and most folks would’ve fallen into bitterness, so now she likes to quote the movie to me. Thankfully, she doesn’t sing the songs often. For a Princess, she’s not the best with staying on pitch.

“I love you, Princess,” I say, not her Prince Charming but the hunter who stole her away to save her. “Let’s go inside.”

I scoop her into my arms, Vash jumping down and following us like Bella is the damn Pied Piper. I carry her through the new cozy living room, with warm wood floors and cream-painted walls, to our bedroom. Bella had dreamed of a canopy bed, but the room is too small, so she’d settled on a scrolled iron headboard with fabric layered behind it.

I toss her to the bed before ordering her, “Naked. Now.”

I follow my own command as well, and she grins, hurrying to beat me as she says, “I love you, too.” Then she turns over, getting on her knees and elbows, her hands gripping the ironwork. Her left hand is fine now, healed with a pink scar I always tell her makes her a badass, but mostly, she doesn’t even seem to think about it anymore.

“Fuck, Princess,” I growl, my voice rough as sandpaper as I look down the line of her curves, from her heart-shaped ass to her narrow waist, with her dark curls curtaining over her back. I kneel behind her, laying kisses down the bumps of her spine until I bite the apple of her ass.

She arches, pressing herself to my mouth, and I lick her, tasting her sweetness from behind. I use my thumbs to spread her slick lips open and dip into her, fucking her with my tongue the way I desperately want to fuck her with my cock.

I swirl around her clit until her hips circle too, chasing me and the pleasure I’m layering on her with my tongue, my hands, my words.

Finally, I give in and stay where she wants, flicking my tongue over her clit in rapid flutters and pressing two fingers along the front velvety wall of her pussy. Her cries tell me she’s close, and I take her right to line and then . . .

Stop.

She whines, bucking her hips and begging me to finish her off. “Gabe,” she says, turning the single syllable into at least three.

“I’m going to edge you, take you to the point where you’re about to come over and over, but you’re not going to come until you’re impaled on my cock and I’m filling you with cum.” I let every dark and dirty thing I want to do to her color the promise.

She nods, looking back at me over her shoulder with fire in her eyes.

I keep my fingers deep inside her and kiss my way back up the round globe of her ass, enjoying the way she wiggles in need, fucking herself on my hand. Flattening my tongue, I give her a long, slow lick along the crease of her ass before diving in and teasing the tight pucker.

She jumps in surprise, but the noise quickly turns to a moan. “Oh, my God, I’ve never . . . I didn’t know. And then she spreads her knees a bit more, giving me greater access as she arches.

I lick her, then spread her slick juices up to her asshole, tracing the edges with both my fingers and tongue as I give her a chance to relax into it. I slowly start to push my finger inside her ass, lazily licking her clit to keep her climbing toward that peak I won’t let her fall off of, at least not yet.

“That’s it, Princess. Let me inside this sweet ass. One day soon, I’ll fuck you here and claim you completely.”

Her whole body clenches tight, and I retreat, smacking her ass. “I think you like that idea, don’t you? Remember, you don’t come until we’re coming together.”

Her breath is coming in harsh pants. “I can’t, I need—”

“What? What do you need?” I’ll give her anything she asks for, but I’m hoping I know her answer because all this teasing her has me on the edge too.

“You,” she moans. “Please.”

Thank fuck, I think, lining up behind her. I rub the head of my cock along her lips, covering myself in her cream and bumping her clit before I notch myself at her opening and slide in, one agonizing inch at a time. Any faster and I’d come instantly from her slick pussy taking me in, but the slow pace is driving us both mad.

I force myself to give it to her slow, but I succumb to the need for roughness, slamming into her so hard and deep, I bottom out with each individual stroke.

She cries out with each thrust, bouncing and rebounding off my hips, so I grip her waist, holding her in place. “I can’t wait anymore, Princess. You ready?”

Her eyes meet mine, pupils wide with lust, but I can see the deeper meaning there. “Ready for anything with you,” she says quietly, and her devotion to me is blessedly obvious.

How a soul as pure and sweet as hers can accept one as stained and sullied as mine, I’ll never know. But I am so fucking grateful for it.

I can’t promise her I’ll never do anything wrong, anything violent ever again, but I can promise her that I will always act with her love and her future in mind.

So I slam into her faster, giving us both what we want.

“Now, Bella. Fucking come with me right now.”

And we detonate, the two of us creating something beautiful, something neither of us thought we’d ever truly have.

Love.

Her, because she didn’t trust the permanence of life.

Me, because I felt I didn’t deserve it after letting my brother down.

But both of us were wrong. We deserve love. We have love. From and for each other.