Epilogue

Ben

Nerves had me pulling at the collar of my shirt as I paced the pavement in front of the registry office, even though Griffin wasn't late yet. Yet! What if he didn't turn up? He'd dumped me once. Who was to say he wouldn't do it again? It had seemed romantic when he'd suggested spending the night before our marriage apart and meeting here. Now, it just seemed stupid. An opportunity for Griffin to change his mind and not show up. He could be on a plane halfway across the Atlantic for all I knew.

Given what Cade had told us about trouble looming on the horizon, I wasn't sure I'd blame him. Even days later, some parts of the discussion still seemed too fantastical to be true. A dead man who was no longer dead. A mask that could conjure up miracles. Weaponizing a graveyard of ancient skeletons against O'Reilly. Maybe it would be best to leave getting married for a while.

"Hi. "

I whipped round to find Griffin standing there. Not the Griffin I was used to seeing, though. "Fuck!" The word was out before I could stop it.

He grimaced. "That bad, hey?"

I laughed at the conclusion he'd jumped to. "No. The opposite. You look…"

When I trailed off, he raised an eyebrow. "I look…"

"Good. You look good." He did. He'd had a haircut and was freshly shaven. And he wore a gray suit that, if I hadn't known it was impossible given the time-scale, I would have assumed someone had made to measure. He was handsome enough that he took my breath away. And here I was, still with a black eye, and although the bandage had gone, the stitches hadn't, the cut across my brow not looking great when I'd studied my reflection that morning while getting ready.

Griffin stepped closer, his brown eyes full of heat as he gave me a once-over. "You don't look too bad yourself."

"I look like roadkill in a fancy suit."

"You really don't."

"I do. I—"

He laid a finger across my lips to silence me. "You look gorgeous. You always look gorgeous. Do you know what I see when I look at your injuries?" He waited for me to shake my head. "Someone who survived something terrible. And I'm ecstatically happy about that."

"You! Ecstatically happy?"

He brushed a finger across my cheek, stopping where I knew the bruising began. "Yeah, me. I hide it well."

"You hide it extremely well." I was grinning, all my earlier doubts gone now that he stood in front of me. We didn't even live together, but after today we'd be married. We were counting on everything else falling into place. A place to live. Telling people. Family approval. Organizing a public ceremony.

"Why are you out here?" Griffin asked, his eyes full of concern. "I thought we were going to meet inside."

"I needed some fresh air."

"Are you sure you weren't doing a runner?"

It seemed I wasn't the only one concerned about something going wrong. "Never crossed my mind."

"No? I wouldn't have blamed you if it had. I treated you terribly and I don't deserve to be forgiven that easily."

I grabbed hold of his shoulders and held his gaze. "Don't! We said we wouldn't do that. No scab heals if you keep picking at it. If we're doing this today, it needs to be a completely fresh start. No grudges. No what ifs. No pining for lost years."

" If we're doing this today?" Griffin questioned with a raised brow.

"You would home in on that part."

"I could hardly miss it."

I looped my arm through his and tugged him toward the door. "Shut up and let's go and get married."

"You old romantic." Despite his words, Griffin was smiling, and he didn't put up a protest as I steered him through the door. "Cade better turn up."

"He's already here. He got here before I did. Said he didn't want to risk getting caught in traffic."

"And did you find a witness?"

"Sort of."

"Lou?"

I pulled a face. "It was too short notice. He's at another wedding."

"Who then? "

I let out a sigh. "I was at work. It was slim pickings."

"Who?"

"Paul."

Griffin bit his lip to stop from laughing. "The one who always does terrible impressions of your accent."

"That's the one. It was him or Baros."

"Wise decision, then."

"I thought so."

The registrar was ready by the time we stepped into the room, Cade and Paul stopping their conversation to take up their required positions as witnesses. The registrar said a few words about marriage and then it was time to say our standard vows. We could have added our own words at the end, but we'd chosen to save that for the official ceremony we'd have for family. This wasn't about declarations of love and promises. This was about righting the wrong that we should have married a long time ago and building on it. Which, granted, lacked a bit of a romance to it. But if we didn't care, then nobody else should either.

I went first. "I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I Bendigeidfran Andrew Weaver…"

Paul snorted loudly in the background and I cursed inwardly. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that when I'd asked him to be a witness. That would make returning to work fun. I had years of being called Bendi stretching in front of me, all thanks to my parents, who'd wanted an authentic Welsh name. Griffin's hand on my arm was a silent urging to ignore Paul.

I did, looking into Griffin's eyes while I continued. "…why I Bendigeidfran Andrew Weaver…" No snort this time. Either Paul had remembered where he was or Cade had his hand over the other man's mouth. "… may not be joined in matrimony to Griffin Ian Caldwell. I call upon these persons here present to witness that I Bendigeidfran Andrew Weaver do take thee Griffin Ian Caldwell to be my lawful wedded husband." I slipped a ring on Griffin's finger and he smiled.

The rings were temporary—something fairly cheap that we'd picked up online—and not required for a registry office wedding, but we'd wanted to have them, anyway. Or at least I had. It had been the one thing I'd insisted on. I needed something physical. Something I could wake up and look at the next day and know that this hadn't been a dream, that it had really happened.

Griffin said his vows and then slid a matching ring onto my finger. When the registrar invited us to kiss, we did, both of us smiling when we broke apart. Signing the register only took a few minutes, and then it was done, the entire ceremony taking no longer than fifteen minutes before we were out on the street again and getting congratulations from both Cade and Paul.

"What now?" I asked, feeling slightly dazed from the whole thing happening so quickly, and finding it difficult to get my head around the fact that I'd gone into the building without a husband and come out with one. Griffin seemed equally shell-shocked if how tightly he was holding onto my hand was any indication. We should have organized something. Not a party necessarily, but something to mark the occasion.

"Now," Cade said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close, "I take us all for a slap up meal at La Gavroche to celebrate." He laughed at my dubious expression. "Oh, come on. I had three whole days' warning about this. That was more than enough time to pull some strings and get us a table."

Paul cleared his throat. "When you say all , you mean…?"

Cade flashed him a grin. "Yeah, you too. But…" He narrowed his eyes at the detective. "Your free meal comes at a price."

It was something of an oxymoron, but none of us pointed that out. Paul frowned. "What price?"

Cade leaned closer to him, his expression serious. "You erase Ben's full name from your memory."

Quite the battle played itself out on Paul's face. A free meal at an exclusive restaurant that he would no doubt struggle to get into versus the opportunity to reveal a prized snippet of gossip at work and wind me up for the foreseeable future. Finally, he sighed and gave in to the inevitable. "Deal, but I'm having three courses."

Cade winked at me. "You can have whatever you want." He mouthed "that's your wedding present," at me and I nodded.

"I think we can safely say we've consummated our marriage," I said, lying across Griffin's chest, both of us sweaty from the bout of toe-tingling sex we'd just thrown ourselves into wholeheartedly.

Griffin chuckled as he stroked his fingers through my hair. "I think you're right."

I propped myself up on one elbow and studied him. "It occurs to me that there are a few things we should have discussed before tying the knot."

"Such as? "

"When we're going to tell our families?"

He shrugged. "Whenever you want."

"Mine are going to think I've gone stark raving mad."

He grimaced. "Yeah, I realize that. I'm just going to have to convince them that I love you with all my heart. They can call me as many names as they want, but I'm not going anywhere. Eventually, they'll realize that they're stuck with me." He raised his head slightly off the pillow. "Anything else?"

"Where we're going to live?"

Griffin didn't miss a beat. "Your place. It's bigger, and it doesn't have any negative memories associated with it. Does that work for you?"

I nodded. "It does." I was surprised he'd come to that conclusion without me having to twist his arm, but I wasn't about to argue. "And then maybe we can find somewhere bigger. A house instead of a flat. We can get a…"

"Cat," Griffin said.

"Dog," I said at the same time.

I held my hand up and studied the ring, Griffin only allowing it for a few seconds before snatching my hand out of the air and dropping a kiss on the same finger. "I'll buy you a better one."

I smiled. "Have I ever struck you as a man who likes the finer things in life?"

"Once," Griffin said, his answer making me frown.

I sat up indignantly. "When?"

"This afternoon when you were ordering the most expensive things off the menu."

I relaxed back into the pillows with a laugh. "Ah, that was different. Cade was paying for it." I thought back to the meal. We might not have had a reception, but we'd all made a speech, even Paul, so in that respect it had been like having one. "It was lovely of Cade to organize that."

"Yeah, it was," Griffin agreed. "He's been a lifesaver for the past few years. Any other boss would have sacked me. I think he's relieved that I've finally sorted myself out."

"Have you?" We both knew what I was really asking.

Griffin swallowed. "I'll always miss Whitney, but I'm done blaming anyone else for her death, and that includes myself."

"She would have wanted you to be happy."

"I know." Griffin pulled me into his arms, and I went gladly, snuggling closer. "There is one more thing we haven't talked about."

"What's that?"

"Our surname."

He laughed. "Oh, well, that's obvious. Caldwell-Weaver sounds far better than Weaver-Caldwell."

I tried both names out in my head and had to agree. "Ben and Griffin Caldwell-Weaver, it is then."

"Makes us sound posh," Griffin said.

"Until we open our mouths."

He grinned. "Yeah, there is that."

We were silent for a few moments before I broke it. "What if Cade's right about there being a storm coming?"

Griffin kissed the top of my head. "Then we'll face it together and woe betide any man who tries to come between us."

"Together," I echoed, and we sank back into a kiss.

The End