“Oh, I don’t know if I’d say hate,” she said with a smile, her fingers twiddling in my hair. “But old me was a little uptight, if you’ll remember.”

“I remember. I remember wanting to undo you like this. I wondered then if it’d just take the right man.”

“I suppose I did—I needed you. I needed your love, because no one ever had loved before, not like this. Not like you.”

I kissed her softly, briefly. And she gazed up at me.

“But you’re right,” she said. “Life didn’t turn out like I thought it would. It’s better.”

My gaze skimmed the planes and angles of her face. “Is it? Because in my whole life, I could never have imagined the truth of this feeling. Of moments like this. Of the depth of how I love you.”

“Me neither,” she said quietly. “And to think, if I’d spent more time in the greenhouse in high school, I could have felt this way for so long.”

“Don’t worry. We have the rest of our lives for that, if you want.”

Her cheek under my hand warmed, and the sparkle of a tear shone in the corner of her eye. “It’s all I want.”

“Then that’s what you’ll get,” I said against her lips before I took them for what they were.

Mine.

Epilogue

LILA

“Are you ready?” Kash asked with that smile on his face, the one I loved so well.

The puppy answered for me with a bark, his dusky gray hair flopping.

I laughed, scooping him up as best I could, big as he already was. “He didn’t ask you, Georgie.”

But Georgie only aggressively licked my face, wriggling in my arms.

“Oh, you’re impossible,” I said, setting him down, the two of us laughing when he jumped at the door, tail wagging and paws on the wood in wait.

Three months had passed since we moved in. Three months of renovations and half-finished projects around the house. Three months with Georgie, the Labradoodle puppy who was the perfect mix of priss and filthy.

Three months of working on putting together my new company, Revelry.

Once the new season of Felix Femmes had aired, I’d found that I didn’t have to look for work. Work found me.

Kash and I watched every episode with sick stomachs and cringes affixed for forty-two of the longest minutes of my week. They played the subplot all right, and it was brutal. Unconscionably brutal. My only consolation was the lovely financial package they’d offered me for damages and the villainization of Brock and Natasha.