Page 108 of Defended By Love

Then, he’s gone.

Grant and I sit in silence for several minutes.

“We’re not signing these, are we?” Grant asks.

“We are.”

“Why?”

I shake my head because Reinhold is right. Signing the contracts is inconsequential. I’m never, as long as I live, going to do anything that could risk the wrath of Hart Link.

“Because, with a flip of a switch, they could put us in a time loop for thousands of years if we ever say anything.”

They could put us in a time loop and keep us there for eons. When they finally end it, we would be mad with the weight of eternity while no time would have passed at all for them. And they could pass it all off as a simple mistake—human error.

Terrifying.

We sit in silence for several minutes of the weight of our own futility sinks in.

“Just to be clear, now would not be a good time to propose, right?”

I nod. “To propose would be to tempt fate. We are, after all, just flies. Buzzing around with our pointless personal dramas.”

To my surprise, Grant just squeezes my hand and kisses my cheek. “Sounds good.”

It’s flippant enough to pull me out of my nihilistic revelry.

“Sounds good?”

“I know Mr. Cragg got in your head, but I’m always going to believe in fate. Even if Mr. Hart did make the time loop, we’re the ones, just two out of everyone in the world, who got stuck in it. That’s fate.” I go to argue, but he holds up a hand to stop me. Well, I don’t love that. “You and I are forever, so I’m just going to sit back and trust that fate will have us married one day.”

And then, Grant flips on the damn television like the conversation is over.

I turn it off.

“So you’re just going to leave all the wedding planning to fate?”

“Yep,” he says, popping the ‘p’. “You just have to promise to go along with it when fate drops a wedding in our laps.”

“Grant, that’s not how things happen in the real world. Weddings don’t just walk up to you and offer themselves up.”

Grant laughs—always with the laughing. “No offense, but you have a track record of being wrong about this sort of stuff.” Then, ever the infuriating optimist, he kisses me on the nose and flicks back on the TV. “Besides, I already changed our relationship status to soulmates on all our social media ages ago.”

I sigh, suddenly certain that the upcoming Coffee and Karaoke that Beth is planning is a surprise party of sorts.

Let’s just hope I won’t have to repeat that day when it comes.

Epilogue 2

-Two Years Later-

I might have to start coming to terms with the fact that I’m often wrong. I was wrong about Grant not being my soulmate. I was wrong about Zagreus Hart being a polluter. To my eternal surprise, I was also wrong about fate not dropping a wedding in our laps.

Because a wedding has been dropped right in front of us. A wedding that’s everything that I could ask for and more.

Here we are, Grant and I, on a beautiful beach on the other side of the world as a gift from Zagreus Hart. We’re at his private resort, which is undergoing some renovations, so it’s closed to all but a few of his personal guests. Oddly enough, they’re all from Vancouver, like us.

There’s Grant and I. We were gifted this trip as a congratulations for a recent win against some major polluters. Then, there’s Darwin, from games night, and his wife, Phee. They did some work on a story about ghosts who were haunting an industrial building who died of lax regulations and it inspired Mr. Hart to fix up the place and make it an animal shelter. There’s also the most opposite-looking couple I’ve ever seen, even though they’re both named Casey. He’s the Prime Minister’s son and rockstar, while she’s some goth genius who works contracts for Mr. Hart. Then, there’s a pair of doctors, Ivy and Heath—at least that’s what they say. It’s a little hard to believe. He’s wearing a pink sparkly speedo, apparently on a dare, and said he just found the tickets to this trip on his doorstep and passed them off as a surprise.

---