“What the fuck’s Rabbit doin’, anyway?” Shutter asked.
Doom shook his head. “Can’t tell you, brother. Wish to Christ I could, but I can’t.”
Shutter and I shared a glance of derision. I hated that my closest buddy couldn’t share what he was doing with me. And I hated that I wasn’t in whatever shit was going down. Rabbit and I were ride or dies long before Parker and Posey came along.
But that was the nature of the beast when you were part of a club. There was always secrecy at some level, and you had to learn to live with it.
“There you are,” Posey breathed out, stepping onto the deck, my sister and Lyric following.
“Hey, baby.” I held my hand out, and she wrapped her arms around my waist.
Doom pulled Lyric to him and kissed her while my sister handed Shutter a beer.
“Who’s watching your kids?” I asked, Lyric.
She grinned. “Willow the magnificent.”
I chuckled. “I’m surprised Dash doesn’t keep knockin’ her up with how much baby-fever she has.”
“Oh, she’s very adamant they’re done, but I’m with you. I feel like she doth protest too much.”
Posey shivered and I held her tighter. “You wanna head inside?”
She shook her head. “This is good.”
“Want me to get your jacket?”
“And give me an excuse not to wrap myself around you?” She grinned up at me. “No, thank you.”
I chuckled and squeezed her tighter.
As we stood with our family in the brisk Savannah evening, I held my woman as close as I could while we laughed at whatever joke Shutter was making in the moment.
My life had been a series of disappointment and tragedy, but my reward was standing next to me, her tiny body warming me, and I smiled at my sister, knowing she recognized this fact as well.
I was a lucky fucker, and I was never going to take my beautiful, nuclear reactor for granted.
EPILOGUE
Posey
Six months later…
I STARED DOWN at my diamond engagement ring sitting proudly on my finger as I stood in the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I hadn’t been able to do anything but stare at it since the second it was put on my finger.
Shadow had whisked me away to Tybee island on Thursday for the entire weekend and proposed to me by the lighthouse as the sun went down. I had never known a love like his, and I said ‘yes’ immediately.
“Baby, we gotta go,” he bellowed.
“I’m coming,” I said, after rinsing and drying my mouth.
We had an appointment with Otter and Shiloh’s realtor, Rhett, and we were running a little behind. Probably because I was smitten with the one-carat beauty on my finger.
I grabbed my jacket and met him in the foyer where he handed me my helmet. “Remember, we don’t have to buy this one. There is no rush.”
“It’s on five acres and has a tiny house in the back which would be perfect to stream my yoga classes, not to mention massage. Unless the pictures have completely lied, we do have to buy this one.”
“And it’s practically next door to Jane’s new house.”
I bit my lip and grinned. “And it’s practically next door to Jane’s new house,” I confirmed.
He chuckled. We’d looked at three houses in the last month, trying to find something that would fit the bill.
We took off for our appointment and I couldn’t believe everything that had happened in the last few months.
My landlord at the studio had decided to cut his losses, take the insurance money and run. He’d sold the site to some developer, so even if I wanted to rehouse my studio in the same place, I was going to have to wait for a few years before it was built back up.
I loved not having that extra payment each month, and my online classes were actually going really well. I still had a few private clients, and my massage clients weren’t going anywhere. If this house worked out, I’d be able to do everything from home, able to keep my overhead extremely low.
Plus, it was the home Shadow and I were going to buy together, so we were finally going to get to start our lives as a married couple in the new home, and I personally couldn’t wait to fill it with babies.
Jane had discovered that Frederick had taken out over two-million dollars of life insurance on her, with double indemnity if she’d died in an accident, so the D.A.’s theory had been that Freddie intended to have her killed at some point, which was freaky as hell.
He’d also left her a rather large nest egg, considering he hadn’t gotten around to changing any of his legal paperwork to remove her as his beneficiary once their divorce proceedings had begun. She was technically still his next of kin, and since he’d murdered his only living relative, she’d gotten all of his money, along with his mother’s since Freddie was her beneficiary.
And to call it a nest egg was an understatement. Freddie may have complained he’d been broke justifying his reason for taking Jane’s savings to buy a boat, but his mother had been loaded. Over ten million in some account Jane was sure Frederick didn’t know about. She was convinced if he had, he would have killed her a long time ago. She decided to sell the boat and donate the proceeds to the charity Lyric had set up to help low-income people get legal help.
Pulling up to the traditional brick home, I jumped off the bike and set my helmet on the seat. “Oh my god, it’s adorable.”
“Fuck, it really is,” Shadow agreed.
The white pillars framed a red door, and the black shutters gave the brick old-world contrast. It was gorgeous. The front door opened, and Jane rushed out with Rhett following her.
“You just have to buy this,” Jane demanded, hugging us. “It’s absolutely perfect and we could put a gate between our properties, so we don’t have to ring the doorbell.”
“Jesus,” Shadow breathed out, then grinned.
“I promise, I’ll text first and make sure neither of you is naked.”
I laughed. “Okay, let’s go. I’m dying to see it in real life.”
Before we could even walk onto the porch, Shadow lifted me into his arms.
“What are you doing?” I squeaked.
“Carrying you over the threshold.”
“We haven’t bought it yet, crazy man.”
“Baby, the second I saw those pillars, I knew I was a goner, considering that’s always been your dream,” he said. “And now that I see it in person, we absolutely are going to buy it, so in my opinion, it’s a done deal.”
I grinned, kissing him gently. “I’ll be the final judge of that.”
And I was.
We moved in forty-five days later, a brand-new marriage certificate to go with the deed, because of the positive pregnancy test I’d taken a week before we closed on the house.
Shadow had rushed me, my mother, Jane, and Cat down to the courthouse to ‘make an honest woman’ out of me, and now I was Mrs. Nolan Grant, soon to be mother of a noodle yet to be named, and my life was perfect.
Our love, like steel, had been forged in flames. At first, fragile, but now strong enough to withstand any battle.
Unedited Excerpt Copyright Trixie Publishing, Inc. ©2020-2021