I hope she understands it.
And I hope she knows we’ll be waiting.
If it’s in the cards, it’ll happen.
It’s meant to.
I’ve always known that.
Just as I’ve always known that one way or another, I’d find my way back to Fuchsia.
We’ve waited this long. So what’s a little longer while we work to un-fuck our mess?
As the sun rises in a hot golden burst, I offer her my hand.
“Time to go, wildcat.”
She slips her hand in mine, gripping my fingers with a warmth and certainty that says she hasn’t forgotten how we used to make each other feel.
The promises we made each other. The same promises it’s not too late to fulfill.
Together, hand in hand, we disappear into the back streets of Bainbridge and then Seattle.
We take our sweet time, walking slowly, making our way back to the car on foot. It’s not just about not being seen.
It’s about letting this sink in.
This feels like polar opposites, an end and a new beginning.
That’s something you don’t rush.
Drawing near where we left the car, though, Fuchsia slows, looking up at me.
For the first time since I’ve known her, I don’t see the same fire in her eyes or the sharpness waiting on her tongue.
She looks completely lost, at wit’s end.
I give her a smile. Even the most formidable women have their weaker moments.
Maybe that’s what men like me are really for.
To be here for them to lean on until they can stand on their own two feet again.
“What now?” she asks softly. “What are we even good for anymore? This feels like all there is to us. No more missions. Nothing left to destroy. Our daughter isn’t even ours, and we just—what?—vanish to Alaska? Why? To rot away in obscurity?”
“To live, wildcat,” I say softly, lifting our clasped hands to kiss her knuckles. “We disappear and regroup. Then we find out what it means to truly live.”
10
Sweet Dreams (Fuchsia)
This isn’t how I ever imagined my ending.
The last month spent hidden away in Oliver’s snowed-in cabin outside Alberta has been all kinds of different.
Strange.
Enlightening.
Unnerving.
Wonderful.
We only came back because it was the easiest place to hunker down while he made arrangements—and while I made a few phone calls, too. To clear out his things, making sure his data stash was put into the right hands and migrated into a secure storage facility somewhere in Sweden.
It’ll stay there as our insurance policy, ensuring we stayed off the radar before we made any major moves that could be easily tracked.
I’ve arranged my disappearance many times, but not forever.
There’s a funny freedom in that feeling I don’t really know what to do with.
But I’m also terrified, deep down, that if I disappear, I’ll be truly lost.
Mandolin will never be able to find me again.
I keep that burner phone in my pocket at all times, always charged, always checking to make sure the prepaid minutes loaded on it haven’t expired.
I can’t miss that one call from her.
All of this can’t be for nothing.
Though calling it nothing hardly seems fair.
This month spent rediscovering Oliver has been something, too.
I always remembered him as this high-class executive in expensive power suits, a luxury penthouse, a wine cabinet worth more than the GDP of some small countries. The beast hid behind the suit, his twisted and beautiful menagerie of birds of prey inked on every inch of him, ready to devour me the instant we were naked.
In Canada, I meet another side of this man.
A hint of the Oliver Major I knew and an encore of the man he’s become.
And getting to see him as this rustic country man out in the wild, chopping wood with an axe like he’s let his inner lumberjack out to play?
Okay.
I won’t lie.
It’s nice.
It shows me who Oliver is without corrupt companies and never-ending cloak and dagger games.
Without Galentron, even if Durham and his wolves took his leg, took his eye, took so much of his life the same way they took mine.
And even if the mushy, snowy ground is hell on stiletto heels and the rigors of wilderness life have ruined my manicure, it has a certain charm.
I think I just might love it.
I know I still love him.
It’s tentative at first. We’re shy around each other, after my ugly cry and that first passionate reunion kiss.
Me.
As if Fuchsia Delaney could ever be called anything like shy.
But there’s a night when we’re sitting on the patchwork-quilt-covered sofa in front of the fireplace. Glasses of cheap wine that still taste just as good as ones many years ago, especially when they’re flavored bittersweet like my candy.
So much laughter my sides hurt in the best ways.
I don’t ever remember laughing so freely, but we’ve been trading half-drunk stories all night over our drinks.
Him telling me about a trip to Alaska, getting chased down a frozen river by an angry mama grizzly bear in the middle of a December blizzard with his prosthetic barely hanging on by its clasp lock.
Me telling him about the time I spilled hot chocolate fondue down the front of a Congolese war leader’s crotch and had to pretend I’d done that on purpose to seduce him back to my room to clean it with my tongue.
Instead of dispatching him with a poisoned dart to the neck.
But there’s a smoldering look at that mention of my tongue. A growl half interested, half possessive, as if I’m still his after all these years and he doesn’t like the idea of me even pretending to use my tongue on another man.
A tongue I flick at him mockingly, rolling that glistening bit of candy to the tip and catching it with my teeth, inviting him to take it—if he can.
A challenge he accepts.
His mouth crashes against mine, the bit of candy caught between us in hot little sugar-sweet, passion-wild tastes.
Then suddenly we’re on the floor, tearing at each other on the rug in front of the fireplace.
“Fuchsia!” he snarls my name with hunger.
Every wicked, long dormant bit of me tingles.
It’s just as magical as the first time.
Spontaneous. Insane. Frantic.
Pinning each other against the hard surface, rolling, grappling, then gasping, thrusting, writhing.
Oliver’s no slower for that prosthetic, no less keen with only one eye to rake over my bare skin. He watches me with an intensity that makes me bite my lip, devouring every reaction.
He makes me writhe for him even more than he did years ago, makes me impatient, draws it out until I get so angry I take what I want like I always do.
While he wakes up a passion inside me I thought had died out forever.
I blaze so bright, so free, under his touch.
My need, my hunger, my longing, my love all painted in magnetic, vivid colors.
It sounds ridiculous, but yes, I bloom for Oliver Major again.
Spreading, panting, hissing my pleasure in every kiss and seeing new shades of life.
They’re pink and hot and wild.
His tongue dips inside me and tastes me like candy.
I scream so loud I think I must scare every living creature in the forest surrounding this cozy little hideaway.