Page 94 of Our Elliana

EPILOGUE: 6 MONTHS LATER

ELLIANA

I’m stationed in the bleachers of Brentwood Hamilton Park cheering on the players of a baseball game. Only it’s not just any game. Noah Canter, my former employee and a one-time contractor on the Elegance website, is on the field pitching for his team of local District of Columbia firefighters.

The score is two to one against the opposing team, the local police precinct. The precinct includes the officers, lab assistants, and investigators involved in my stalking case. My old friend Detective Diego Ruiz has turned in his formal findings.

He determined that assailant Tanya Brubaker made threats against my life—including one of a fictitious bomb at our service counter that thankfully didn’t exist—took an illegally concealed weapon onto private property, and kidnapped her target.

AKA, me.

He also noted that Tanya displayed numerous signs of mental illness and based on past psychological records, listed her as a highly disturbed individual. Since she killed herself, I haven’t had to press charges or go to court.

But that’s not to say that I don’t feel burdened by the events of that day.

I will never forget the expression on Tanya’s features while confined with her in that RV. She’d been shooting wildly at something only she could see prior to linking her gaze with mine. As if gaining a few heartbeats of lucidity, Tanya had blinked several times. Her bottom lip had trembled, and she’d shaken her head at me, almost as if apologetic.

Then, sticking the barrel of the gun into her own mouth, Tanya pulled the trigger.

I still shudder whenever I think about it. The entire deranged turn of events felt so surreal to me. I can’t imagine it ever not feeling that way. I’d been shocked as well as petrified. Witnessing something like that is usually relegated to horror stories and slasher films, yet I had a front row seat to the gruesome reality.

The only sliver of a silver-lining has been that Tanya taking her own life means my stalker ordeal is over.

Mostly.

Noah strikes his third guy out, ending the eighth inning. My chef appears at my elbow with a refilled cup of soda, while my guitarist sits on my other side, handing me a basket of nachos. Tristan takes a sip of his own soda, giving my tortilla chips, hot queso dip, and Jackson’s chili fries a judgmental side-eye.

Maybe it’s his gourmet training or the fact that he’s just bought his own quaint café that he’s in the process of opening for lunch, but he can be a bit snobby around the likes of junk food. In fact, I’m astonished that he’s willing to gulp down his sixteen ounces of cola.

But I accept his quirks. I even find them endearing. Fortunately, my guys seem just as willing to let minor irritations go. Over the past few months, we’ve learned to coexist much more successfully.

I think my brush with death put everything into perspective for all of us.

That night back in December after the guys escorted me home—and once I’d regained control of myself and taken a shower—I’d resolved to better describe my intentions.

“I could no longer deal with the fucked-up power dynamic written into your contracts,” I explain as the four of us lay there together in bed, each of my guys in contact with me in some way. “Being the boss at work is one thing, but at home, I knew it wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. I realized that if we went on in a similar vein, eventually everything between us would disintegrate. Those Elegance stipulations were hanging over our heads like storm clouds.”

“Then, the shit hit the fan before we could have a real convo about it,” Jackson finishes my thought beside me on the mattress. We’re frequently on the same wavelength. “I’ve been in love before and had no plans to do it this time, but somehow, you made me fall for you anyway. I’m in for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Me, too,” Noah tells me, and I trail a hand along his cheekbone, stroking it with my thumb as I simultaneously grip Jackson’s hand. “I loved you all along, especially when I understood that you’d be patient with me and show me what to do. I was only upset because I thought you quit wanting me. That you quit wanting any of us.”

“Never,” I reiterate. I’ll sign a sworn statement, and have it notarized if need be. “Never ever. You three are all I wanted from the start. For real.” I peek over at Tristan, who has remained markedly silent. “What about you, Chef St. Pierre?”

“I love you,” he speaks in his growly straightforward manner, picking up my bare foot and rubbing along the arch. “And I enjoy being part of a cohesive group. Never had family or friends really, not until now. It’s important, and I don’t have any desire to give any of this up.”

Releasing the other two, I offer Tristan a fleeting hug around the waist, needing to share equal contact among the three.

So, on January 15th, their contracts with me were automatically terminated. That next day, I observed them one by one as they also severed any future ties with Elegance as a whole. They wouldn’t be going anywhere because their days as sex workers in any capacity were no more.

While it’s been another adjustment to have them in my house on their own terms, it’s been a positive one. Getting past the Tanya incident has been a challenge, and if not for my men, I’m not sure how I might’ve coped.

Noah’s always thoughtful, and Jackson’s always ready to bang my stress away. But it’s my chef who has taken the longest strides to reach me when I drift too far into my head. The main instance of this transpired around a week after the tragedy.

I jerked awake one night from this graphic nightmare where Tanya kept committing suicide right in front of me. I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stop weeping. Tristan, the lightest sleeper of the three, stirred first and carried me like a child to his bedroom before I could disturb the other two.

He held me, smoothed back my hair, and when my waterworks refused to cease, told me all about what happened to him years ago with a crowd of unruly women at his strip club.

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