I chuckle. "Did that hurt you to say it out loud? Was it hard?"

She laughs. "No. I thought it would be hard, but it wasn't. It feels good to tell you, finally."

"Finally?!" I shout. "How long have you known that you loved me?"

"I don't know," Riona says, seriously. "I didn't even know what it was, at first. But I'm sure now."

I kiss her again. "Let me make you more sure."

* * *

Epilogue

Riona

My parents are disappointed when I tell them I’ll be moving for good. There’s a mountain of documents and data, all of our most sensitive files, that has to be passed along to somebody. And there’s no one they can trust quite like family.

“Can you at least stay until the South Shore project is done?” my father asks.

“That could take years,” I say, gently. “And there’s always another project. Another job, another crisis. Our lives have never been calm. I don’t think they ever will be. Not here, anyway.”

“Is that why you’re leaving?” he asks me.

“No,” I shake my head. “I’m leaving for Raylan. But I’ll admit, the lack of imminent danger might be a nice side benefit . . . ”

Nessa flings her arms around me and hugs me much longer than I’d normally tolerate.

“I’m going to miss you,” she sobs.

“I’m just going to Tennessee, not Indonesia,” I laugh. “You can visit me, you know. And I’m sure I’ll come back here all the time.”

“No, you won’t,” Nessa says, shaking her head with surprising seriousness. “When you really fall in love . . . that person becomes your world. You’ll come back sometimes. But mostly you’ll want to be with Raylan. And I’m happy for you. Because I have the same thing with Miko. I will miss you, though!”

Dante is infuriatingly smug about the whole thing. He’s leaving on his honeymoon to Portugal with Simone and Henry, but he comes all the way over to my parents’ house so he can gloat.

“I’m the one who introduced you two,” he says, grinning.

“I know,” I say.

“I had to do it twice. Because you hated Raylan the first time.”

“I know,” I scowl at him.

“You better name your firstborn after me, for all the work I put in.”

“I’m not having a firstborn, or any born. I still don’t want kids, that hasn’t changed.”

“We’ll see,” he says, with a maddening air of superiority.

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t saddle them with the name Dante.”

His jaw drops. “Dante has been popular for eight hundred years. It has history and gravitas.”

“It’s not even a real name! It’s a nickname! You know Dante Alighieri’s real name was Durante.”

Dante looks both shocked and horrified. I don’t think he knew that at all.

“You’re lying,” he says.

“I never lie.”

He’s crestfallen. “Really? That’s really true?”

I start to feel guilty. “Never mind,” I say. “It’s not so bad. If I was going to have a kid—which I’m not—I guess I could name them Dante.”