Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Merrick

One year later

“I didn’t take you for someone who would get freaked out by a little turbulence.”

“Hmmm?” I looked over my shoulder before merging from the airport onto the highway. “What are you talking about?”

“On the flight here,” Evie said. “You were so tense. Every time I looked over at you, you were white-knuckling the armrest.”

“Ohh…” The thought that a few bumps on a plane would bother me after all these years of travel was pretty comical. I’d once slept through an emergency landing. But I nodded anyway. “Yeah, I thought I hid it well.”

Evie chuckled. “There was sweat beading on your forehead at one point.”

We’d just landed in Atlanta for Kitty’s long-planned family reunion picnic, which was two days from now, though Evie thought the party was tomorrow. She also thought we were going straight to my grandmother’s.

I cleared my throat. “It’s only seven. My grandmother has her weekly card game until nine. I told her to have it since half the time flights are late anyway. Do you want to take a ride to your Airbnbs, to check in on things, since we have some time?”

I had no backup plan, so I was banking on her saying yes.

“Oh yeah, that would be great. Let me look on the app and see if they’re booked.”

Shit.

Of course it was booked. I’d booked it a month ago under a fake name thinking I was slick, but I hadn’t stopped to consider she’d want to check before we went and would find it was rented.

Evie typed into her phone. “They’re both booked.”

“You want to do a drive-by anyway, just check on the property? What about the glamping site?”

“No, it’s okay. Maybe if we have time on the way home. It looks like they’re open on Sunday, so that might be better.”

I felt like kicking her ass. Think. Think. I was nervous as shit, so my brain couldn’t come up with anything. “You sure?”

She looked over at me and squinted. “You don’t want to get to Kitty’s while all her card friends are there because last time they made a comment about your cute bum. Is that it?”

“Yep. Yep…you got me. They might look like sheep, but those ladies are wolves.”

Evie snickered. “Fine. You know, for a man with such a dirty mouth, you really can be a prude sometimes.”

I drove the rest of the way to the Airbnbs barely saying a word. I traded billions in high-risk stocks every year, and never once had I felt like this. Evie had been on my ass about softening my tone a bit when I spoke to the new traders, because I apparently made them nervous. If this was the shit they went through, I really was a dick, and they should all quit.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Evie said. “I got tickets to Sesame Street Live for Abbey and Eloise for their birthdays. The show isn’t for a few months, but Abbey is obsessed with everything Sesame already. I thought Eloise might like it too. I got three tickets for two different shows. I wasn’t sure if you’d want us to take Eloise, or if you just wanted to gift them all to her for her birthday, and Aaron could take her and a friend.”

A few weeks after the day Aaron and I had talked, I took him up on his offer to get to know his daughter. It was awkward at first. I just wanted to stare at her and look for the baby I’d once thought was mine. But it didn’t take long before that wore off. Since then, I’d visited often. Aaron and I had even formed some sort of friendship. I never thought I’d be grateful to have that guy in my life, but I was. Because I couldn’t unlove a child I’d fallen for months before she was even born. I’d introduced Evie to them, and the last few times we’d gotten together, she’d brought along her niece, Abbey. Eloise loved her and treated her like a doll.

“Do you want to go?” I asked her.

“Sort of. My mom never had the money to take us to shows when we were kids. I guess I’m kind of curious what it is.”

“Okay,” I said. “So we’ll take her.”

“Really?” Evie’s eyes widened. “I never thought you’d agree to go to Sesame Street Live.”

I shrugged. “I’m going to spend a few hours with my little friend and then go home and get a blowjob because I did something you wanted to do, right?”

She chuckled. “Probably.”

“Sounds like a pretty damn good day to me. Don’t care where we are if it makes both of you happy.”

Evie’s eyes went soft. “You say the sweetest things without even realizing it.”

“It was the part about the blowjob, wasn’t it?”

She smacked me.

Ten minutes later, whatever calm I’d channeled talking to Evie went out the window again as we turned off the main road and onto the one that led to the treehouses. I parked when we arrived, just as the sun was starting to set.

Evie looked around. “Look at that sky. We couldn’t have timed this better if we’d planned it.”

I almost laughed. Someone did plan it.

“It doesn’t look like the guests have arrived yet,” she said.

“So let’s go up and take a look.”

“What if they come?”

“We’ll tell them we’re the cleaning crew.”

She looked me up and down and smiled. “Even without the three-thousand-dollar suit, no one would ever believe you were the cleaning crew.”

“Why not?”

“Because you just look like the boss. I don’t want to get caught poking around after check-in time.”

I got out of the car and opened Evie’s door, extending a hand to help her out. “Come on, it’ll be fun. You like almost getting caught. Remember how hard you came when I ate you out on your desk last week without the door locked?” I rubbed the hair at the back of my head. “I’m missing a chunk of hair from how hard you pulled.”

She took my hand. “I’ll go, but I’m warning you… You’re going to be missing the rest of it if we climb up there and you try something like that again.”

At the ladder, I smiled when she looked around again to be sure the coast was clear.

“After you,” I said.

Evie was wearing a sundress, so the view from below went a long way toward making me forget what I was about to do.

“Stop looking at my ass,” she yelled without looking back.

I chuckled. “You appreciate your views, and I’ll appreciate mine.”

Inside, she took a few steps in and stopped short as I climbed in behind her. “Oh my God. There’s champagne chilling. The people must’ve already checked in. I bet they went for a walk. They’ll be back any second since it’s almost dark. We better go.”

Evie turned toward the door, but I grabbed her wrist. “Hang on one minute. I want to talk to you.”

“We can talk in the car.”

I did the only thing I could think of to make her relax. I cupped her cheeks and pulled her mouth to meet mine. She tried to pull away, but after ten seconds her shoulders loosened and she gave in. It was supposed to calm her down, but it started to have the opposite effect on me, so I forced myself to cut it off. Though I kept her cheeks in my hands and her face close.

“Just give me one minute, okay?” I whispered.

She blinked a few times, looking a little out of it, but nodded. I loved that even after all this time, I could still make that happen. Bringing her hand to my lips, I kissed the top before taking a deep breath and stepping back. Then, I dropped to one knee.

“Evie, I wanted to do this here because I know the significance of these treehouses. They’re a place you came to feel safe at times in your life when you wanted to escape the world. I might not have climbed into a treehouse, but I’ve definitely spent my share of years wanting to escape life—until you walked through my door.”

Evie covered her mouth, and tears welled in her eyes.

“Since the day I met you, my life has been changed. You’ve made me want to live again, to be a better person, and you’ve made me want so much more out of life than money and power.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring box I’d been carrying around since we left New York this morning. “I worried you might think I was playing pocket pool with the way I’ve been reaching into my pocket so much to make sure I didn’t lose this.”

Evie laughed.

I opened the ring box. Inside was a four-carat princess-cut diamond, with two smaller stones set into the filigree on either side. The smaller stones were from her grandmother’s ring and Kitty’s. It had taken a few people to get this made. Next to the ring in the black velvet box was the orange piece of sea glass she kept in her purse and never went anywhere without. I took out the glass and held it up to her. “I hope you don’t mind that I stole this from your bag this morning. I needed every bit of luck I could get today.”

She took the sea glass and held it next to her heart. “I think the feeling in my heart right now might be better than the one I had on the beach twenty years ago when I found it.”

I smiled. “Evie, I want to wake up with you every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. I want you to be my wife, and I want to have a family with you. But more than anything, the reason I wanted to do this here is because I want to replace your treehouses, sweetheart. I want to be the person who will always be there for you, the place you run to when you need to feel safe.” I paused and took a deep breath. “Will you marry me, Evie?”

Tears spilled down her face. She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Yes! Yes!”

My heart raced out of control as I took her mouth in a kiss. When it broke, we were both panting. I pushed the ring onto her finger, and she stared at it.

“The stones on either side are from our grandmothers’ engagement rings, given by their one true loves. Greer helped me find your grandmother’s ring, and Kitty couldn’t wait to give you hers.”

“Oh, Merrick, that means the world to me.” She held out her hand. “It’s absolutely stunning.”

“Well, then I guess I got the right one. Because it matches the woman wearing it.”

THE END

(But sometimes life is a circle and leads back to the beginning…)