Epilogue

Epilogue

North

Five Years Later

I pick out the best bunch of flowers at the market on my way to get Gracie. At the register, I place the bouquet on the counter and realize I forgot to unwrap the tape from my hands after training, but I leave it there, knowing it turns on my wife. Not that either one of us needs assistance in that department. And not that I need an excuse to buy her roses, but today is special. Today is…perfect. In my wildest dreams, I never could have imagined this life. I’m married to the girl who makes my heart beat. Plain and simple. It doesn’t function without her. Thank God it doesn’t have to.

The public school in Southie where she’s worked as a kindergarten teacher for the last year comes into view up ahead, speeding up the rhythm of my heart. I would have moved anywhere once she finished school, but she wanted to stay in South Boston. This is where we fell in love, she says. This is the place that brought us together.

My stomach twists into eight kinds of knots on the way into the school. The receptionist at the front desk waves me in without a pass, because she knows my face well at this point. I walk Grace home from work every single day. Most of the time, I wait in the hallway so I don’t interrupt the education of young minds, but I can’t help venturing all the way to her classroom door today, needing to see her in action.

Needing to see her in one of those teaching outfits that drives me crazy.

Stopping in the doorway of her classroom, I brace my forearm high on the jamb, the flowers down at my side in the opposite hand. And I just take her in. Breathe easy for the first time since I dropped her off here this morning. There’s my wife. My heart.

She’s crouched down beside an art table, encouraging a little boy to trace the shape of a letter A, coaxing a smile out of him in the process. When she stands, I almost growl, because it takes a split second for her pleated skirt to fall into place, showing off the tops of her thigh-high stockings. The soft skin between them and her panties.

Ah Jesus, she’s going to get it hard tonight.

Who am I kidding? She gets it hard every fucking night.

As if I spoke out loud, Grace turns and spies me in the doorway, her face brightening, the heel of her hand flying up to her chest, pressing down on the heart I know is pounding in a frenzy. This is the way it is between us. Overwhelming. Heavy. Addictive. Life affirming. We hate being apart. If we didn’t have jobs, sometimes I think we’d sink into the oblivion of each other and never come out. Part of me wants that, even though I know we have to work. I have to get up every day and train for my next amateur fight. Grace has to teach. Our jobs make us happy and we’re good at them, but this, this reuniting at the end of the day is what we live for.

“Hi,” she says breathily, tucking some dark hair behind her ear.

Every young head in the room swivels in my direction. “Hi,” I return.

“Class, you remember Mr. Whitlock, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Whitlock,” they say in unison.

“He brought you flowers!” one of them calls out, kicking off a chorus of ooooohs.

Grace bites her lip and laughs. “So he did. Wonder what the occasion is?”

I don’t get a chance to answer, because the bells rings and everyone moves at once, collecting their backpacks from the row of wall hooks and filing out into the hallway. Me and Grace stare at each other through the commotion, anticipating the moment we’ll be alone. Swear to God, my heart is trying to beat its way out of my goddamn chest. There are so many emotions flinging themselves around inside of me at once.

Hunger for my wife.

Love. Affection.

Pride in her for becoming the teacher she wanted to be.

Between student loans and the money I made fighting, we put her through school. Not an Ivy League college, but a damn good one. At twenty-three, I’m right there on the precipice of going professional. I’m about to make it happen—maybe even as soon as next week. The loans will be wiped clean and we’ll be able to take vacations. Fix up the house. Every second of the struggle in my career has been worth it.

There were tough nights during Grace’s college years where I walked in the door bloody and bruised, making her cry, making her want to quit school so I wouldn’t get hurt anymore. I wouldn’t let her. It was a fucking honor sacrificing my body for cash so she could succeed. And after all, my girl gave up her family for me. Financial comfort.

I won’t let her be sorry. I’ll never let her be sorry.

The way she’s looking at me now, she’s far from it.

“Walk you home, Mrs. Whitlock?” I manage around the lump in my throat.

“That would be lovely, Mr. Whitlock.”

She collects her purse, locks up the classroom and we walk hand in hand down the street, stealing glances at each other every few steps until we’re standing in front of the three-story brick house we bought with the money from my first fight. Grace turned it into a home, putting out a bright welcoming mat, curtains in the windows, flower boxes on every sill that riot with different colored blooms. My chest hurts with pride every time we walk up the front steps…but today, I’m going to carry her.

Without giving my wife a warning, I scoop her up, making her squeal. I carry her up the steps to the front door, content to hold her while she fishes the key out of her purse and unlocks the door. I toe it open and carry her over the threshold into our big, old-fashioned kitchen, breakfast dishes still in the sink, her pink slippers still beneath the table. We both sigh, because it’s home. It’s ours. And we’re so fucking happy here, it defies explanation.

“Tulip called me during my lunch break,” Grace says now, her head resting on my shoulder. “She’s going to fly home from Michigan after finals.”

Throat tugging, I drop the flowers onto the big, oval table. “Good. I miss having her around. How long is she staying?”

“A week. Maybe we’ll take her to the beach in Rye, if the weather is nice.”

“That sounds perfect.” I settle Grace onto her feet, keeping her close, pulling her up against me so I can breathe her in, mouth to mouth. “Everything is so damn perfect, beauty.”

“Yes, it is,” she whispers, winding her arms around my neck, pressing her sweet body up against my hungry one, rubbing her hips side to side and making us both groan.

And yeah, everything is perfect.

For a long time, there was a thorn under my skin in regards to Simmons. Grace’s father. I hated the fact that she sent him to prison. For me. That she had to give up everything she knew just to have me in her life. I’m breathing a little easier now that Simmons is no longer behind bars. Curtis Tennison still has some years left on his term, but at least Grace’s father isn’t locked in the penitentiary, thanks to him cooperating with detectives, giving information about Tennison, which is ultimately what they wanted.

Grace is the one who smoothed my concerns out most of all, though. There isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t tell me she would choose me all over again, every single time, no questions asked. That there wasn’t really a choice at all, because she can’t live without me. That she can’t breathe without me. And she says those words now against my mouth. She whispers them as I back her toward the kitchen table, boosting her up onto the edge and slipping my hands up her skirt, inside her panties to grip her bare hips.

“Christ, I can’t breathe without you, either, Gracie,” I say, my voice unraveling like thread, our foreheads rolling together, breath coming in short bursts. “My fucking blood flows for you. Just need my wife. My wife.”

“You’ve got me forever,” she whispers, taking off my shirt, her eyes glazing at the sight of my chest, my stomach. I inhale her reaction to my body. I crave it in an unholy way. Obsessively. I hone myself day and night for her. Just so she’ll look at me like this. Just so she’ll get wet that much faster. “You were gorgeous at eighteen. A man among boys,” she says unevenly, running her palms up the cut muscles of my abdomen. “But now…you’re so…thick.”

With a hoarse sound, I yank her to the edge of the table by her ass cheeks, pressing my hard on to the tiny white strip of her panties. “I’ve got your thick right here.”

Her head falls back, allowing me to attack her neck. Raking my teeth up and down the side, before latching onto that sensitive patch under her ear. Sucking it roughly. “I want it,” she moans, opening her thighs wider on the table. The hottest possible fantasy come to life—and somehow she’s mine. Somehow I got to marry her. Somehow she loves me.

“You know what today is, Gracie?” I rasp, humping her pussy through the white panties helplessly, making the table groan. Aching. Desperate. Always so desperate for her. To the point of pain and restlessness and withdrawals.

“Today?” She unbuttons her blouse, opening the sides to reveal the high globes of her beautiful tits, pushed up in a white, see-through bra. “I think I might have some idea…”

I study her face through a haze of lust. Love. Hope. “That right, baby?”

She hums. “Five years ago today, you drove me home from the Hellmouth,” she says, a light sheen coating her eyes. “You think I would ever forget? I wouldn’t. I’ll never forget. I got you something, too.” Her mouth moves over mine with a slow, seductive kiss, her hands pushing down the sides of my sweats to free my cock. “I stopped taking my pill this morning,” she whispers against my lips, taking me in her hand and stoking me hard. “You’re already my Daddy. Now you’re going to be a father.”

My heart, my breath, my blood is firing on all cylinders as she guides me between her legs, using my stiffness to push aside the material of her panties. Is this happening? Is this real? We were waiting for the right time and I realize slowly…this is the right time. We made it. We have a home, jobs, money in the bank, so much love that it overflows from us.

“Gracie,” I choke out, plunging my cock to the hilt, bucking furiously, with so much force that the kitchen table moves across the floor several feet, finally coming to a stop against the counter—and I don’t quit. With her tearing at my hair, I fuck her so hard, so filthy, she screams, my come boiling in my balls, as if well aware of its purpose. Get her pregnant. Give us a child.

It’s like I’ve dropped through the floor of my obsession with my wife and found a whole palace beneath—and there’s no end to it. No exits—as if I’d look for one. I grip her perfect face, tilt it up and look her in the eye, letting her see that I’m crazed now. This final permission to get her pregnant has done it. I can’t even imagine what I’m going to be like when my seed takes hold and her belly swells. God help us all.

“I love you,” I chant between kisses, groaning like a wild animal when she locks her ankles behind my neck, the fever in her eyes telling me she wants this as bad as I do. “I’d die for you, Grace. I’d kill. I’d do anything. Just love you so much. So fucking much, it burns.”

“I love you the same way. Look at me. You know I do.”

And she’s right. It’s a two-way street, thank God.

This love, this obsession is a stick of dynamite with a fuse on both ends.

Anchored by the love of my life, I keep right on looking into her blue, beloved, reassuring eyes and I see our future, feel part of it leave me and enter her in waves, already taking root. I welcome every second of that future. Every second of her. Us. Always.

THE END

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