Cora places her fingertips against my cheek, trailing them down the stubble along my jaw. “I’ve thought about you, too. Every day. Every night. I dream about us at the ocean sometimes, listening to the waves roll in, feeling the water mist our faces.” She kisses my lips, wrapping her leg tighter around me and hitching it over my waist. “It’s my happy place.”

I smile against her mouth. “My happy place is wherever you are. And I want to make this work, Cora. No more hiding, no more holding back. I’ll wait for a job position to open back up here, and I’ll put in for a transfer. It might be a few months—it could be a year. But I’ll spend every goddamn weekend with you until I’m back for good.”

Tears well in her green eyes, her lips parting with wonder. “You’re coming back?”

“If you want me to. If you want this like I want this.”

She quickly nods. “I want this, Dean. I want you. I want everything I told myself I didn’t deserve.”

“You deserve it all, Corabelle, and I’ll spend my whole damn life giving it to you.”

She kisses me again, then again and again. “I’ll talk to Mandy this week. There might be tension at first… it might still be weird. But we’re in a better place now, and she’s moved on and is crazy happy with Reid, and I just know it’s going to be okay. My parents still love you.” Cora pulls herself even closer to me, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I know we can do this.”

I grin, my heart flipping the fuck out inside my chest. I wrap her up in my arms, whispering against her neck, “We escaped from a serial killer, Cora. We can do anything.”

Cora pulls my face to hers, capturing a kiss that tastes somehow different from all the rest.

It tastes like a new beginning.

After we finish making love that morning and lie basking in the afterglow, I have one more question to ask her. I catch her eyes, drunk with happiness, and I twirl a soft strand of her hair around my finger as she faces me on the bed. “Are you still mine?”

Cora doesn’t hesitate. She reaches for my hand, placing it above her heart. “It’s still beating,” she says. Her face lights up with a radiant smile that looks exactly like how her heartbeat feels. “As long as it’s beating, I’m yours.”

Epilogue

“Aunt Mandy and Uncle Reid are here!”

Aiden and Brooklyn charge towards the front door, the dogs trailing behind them. I frantically try to zip my suitcase, sitting on it, then bouncing up and down as Dean saunters up behind me pulling a t-shirt on over his head.

“Shit, Cora. It looks like you packed for the end of days.”

“Well…” Bounce. “…you know I just like to…” Tug. “…be prepared.”