He laughed softly and then dipped his head, touching his forehead to hers. “You’ve completely ruined my life plan to be a grumpy hermit. I would’ve been so good at it.”
“Sorry not sorry,” Andi said, a smile in her voice. “You ruined my plan to be an eccentric horror writer who lives alone in a creepy mansion.”
“You’ll always be eccentric, neighbor.”
“Thank God.” She lifted her head, meeting his gaze and letting her hands lower to his shoulders. “So are we doing this?”
He cupped her jaw and brushed his thumb over her lips. “Yes. How about every day for the rest of our lives?”
Tears spilled over, her smile like sunshine. “Deal.”
Light suffused through him, brightening all the dark corners that had gathered inside him over the years. This one. This one. This one.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he warned. “I don’t care who’s watching.”
“I’m going to let you.”
With that, he lowered his head and kissed her, finally knowing it wouldn’t be the last. This was only the beginning.
In their movie, there would always be another sequel.
Epilogue
One year later
“To Andi and her sick, demented mind!” Eliza announced, raising her glass of champagne.
Andi laughed as Hollyn, Jasper, and Ramsey raised their glasses. Hill set the tray of sliders he’d carried out to the back porch onto the table and grabbed a glass. “May Doxed continue to climb the bestseller list and keep people the world over from getting a good night’s sleep.”
Andi grinned and raised her glass, clinking it to each of her friends’ and then Hill’s. “Thanks, y’all. I’ll drink to reader insomnia.”
Hill set his glass aside and put together a plate of food, getting a few of each of the finger foods he’d made for the party celebrating Andi’s new book’s success, and then handed the goodies to her.
“Thanks, babe,” she said, setting her drink on the side table. “This all looks great.”
“It does,” Hollyn agreed as she chose items for her own plate. “This whole spread is gorgeous. Totally Instagram worthy.”
“Right?” Eliza agreed. “Maybe Hill should do this for a living, huh?”
“What a brilliant idea,” Ramsey said, piling mini-hamburgers onto his plate. “You should give that some thought, Dawson. I think a good friend of yours suggested that a long time ago. What was his name? He was the really smart and good-looking one?”
“Humble too.” Hill smirked as he took the spot next to Andi on the pretty blue outdoor couch they’d bought for their new place and draped his arm across the back of it. “I hope it all tastes as good as it looks. I’m using y’all as guinea pigs for some recipe testing for the cookbook.”
“Always happy to be of service,” Jasper said, sharing a towering plate with Hollyn. “To be a guinea pig or just a pig in general.”
Eliza grabbed one of the shot glasses Hill had filled with his version of gazpacho and plopped down cross-legged in one of the chairs. She took a sip and hummed her approval. “Yum. If everything tastes as good as this soup, I volunteer as tribute for recipe testing, too.”
“Same,” Ramsey said, taking down a slider in one bite. “Hey, Eliza, can I be your recipe-testing date?”
Eliza gave him the side-eye. “Stop trying to date me, fireman. I don’t want to fight about who gets custody of the children”—she waved her hand to indicate Andi and Hill—“when we divorce.”
Ramsey chuckled, this interplay with Eliza a common one these last few months as Hill’s and Andi’s friends came together. “Who’s saying we wouldn’t make it?”
Eliza rolled her eyes.
“So,” Jasper said, clearly trying to save Ramsey from a conversation that would only continue to spiral, “when’s the cookbook due?”
Hill took a gulp of his champagne. “We have about four months. The publisher only wants to use a few recipes from the blog so that it’s mostly brand-new content, but they want me to keep the same kind of recipes that I do on the blog and in the videos. You know, keep it simple for new cooks, single people, busy couples, that kind of thing. Plus, Andi will be adding the movie recommendations.”
Andi was smiling so hard as Hill talked that she was sure she probably looked deranged or drunk, but she never got tired of seeing her guy explain his new projects. The man lit up when he talked about cooking and food. She’d noticed it pretty quickly when they’d first started seeing each other, but since he’d decided to give a cooking blog a real try, she’d watched him transform. First, when the blog had started to gain some traction, then when he’d agreed to do some cooking lessons with her on video. In their videos, they’d feature a meal and a movie that matched the theme and dubbed the segments Netflix & Hill as a play on Netflix and chill.
The segments had turned out to be the tipping point. An editor had started following the vlog and then contacted Hill to see if he’d be interested in doing a cookbook with Hill providing the recipes and Andi matching movies to them.
“So does this mean lots of movie marathons?” Hollyn asked between sips of gazpacho.
“Yep,” Andi declared. “And you ladies are always invited. I promise it won’t be only horror.” She bumped her shoulder into Hill’s. “I’ve grown to appreciate a good romance these days, too.”
Hill kissed the crown of her head, right over the spot where the hair had been yanked out by Jacob Alberts. Luckily, her hair had grown back with no permanent damage beyond her scalp sometimes tingling. And though her psyche would always have the mark of that attack along with what had happened to her as a teen, she’d gotten back into therapy and felt more in control of her anxiety these days than she’d ever been. Plus, she’d used the incident as fuel, which had helped her healing process tremendously. She’d poured all her anxiety, anger, and frustration into her book Doxed, and the joke was on Jacob. While he was sitting in jail, her book was on the bestseller list.
Fuck him.
Hollyn gave Andi a knowing smile and then sent Eliza a look. “Look at that. We’ve turned her into a romantic after all.”
“Hush your mouth, Hollyn Deares,” Andi said, tossing an olive at her. “You say that too loud, and you’re going to ruin my reputation.”
“It’ll be our little secret. And don’t worry, we’ll still allow you to have the occasional movie where everyone dies at the end,” Eliza said magnanimously.