Page 99 of Home Game

And then even through each other’s scars, we’d started to fall for one another. Not despite the scars, butincludingthem.

“I always liked that one, even though I never quite had it hit close to home for me, back in the day.”

“I like it, too,” I said. “Thank you for sharing it. And for everything you share with me.”

He hummed, leaning in to kiss below my ear. “Like my cock?”

I laughed. “Fuck yes, like your cock.”

His smile had my whole heart.

“Let’s head back in,” he said.

And we did. Together. Because for the first time in my life, I’d found someone who could truly love me, scars and all.

EPILOGUE

EMMETT, 3 MONTHS LATER

“I can do it,” Storm said, walking around his gleaming new kitchen and twirling with his arms outstretched. “I can make a cup of coffee in the morning, sit down at the bay window, and look out at the hot tub.”

I grinned at him. “Is that your ideal morning? Gazing out at your hot tub?”

“Gazing atyou, honestly,” he said, kissing me. “I love you.”

“I love you,” I replied. “I love you so much.”

It was wild how easy it was to say now. Howeternalmy love for him felt, just a few months after we’d finally fallen for each other.

When you know, you know.

It wasn’t even a quote that my dad ever said—it was just something I’d come to think a lot about Storm, now that we were a bona fide couple, so head over heels in love that it ached sometimes.

With him, Iknew. Knew that he was my person, even when he drove me crazy. Knew that he deserved all the love in the world, and that I wanted to give it to him daily.

Knew that he was well worth the recent media storm that had been following us, too.

It wasn’t that they ever wrote bad things about me, like Storm was worried about.

It was the opposite.

“Did anyone send you the article in the New Times from this morning?” I asked Storm now as he brewed himself a cup of coffee in his new kitchen.

“Nah, what are they saying now?” he asked.

“They said that we are the hottest power couple for the new year,” I said. “They even called Waycott Marketing a promising new business venture.”

Storm smiled and whistled. “Look at that,” he said. “Told you it was going to be a success.”

“It’s still insanely young,” I said. “But I have high hopes. I really think Dad would have been proud.”

“He would have been. I know it.”

Winter was in full swing now. Storm’s house was perfect—not too fancy, just like him, but modernized and beautiful, like a forest hideaway. Along the walls of his living room, he’d bought and hung up five Cartier-Bresson black and white photograph prints, just because he knew he was my favorite photographer.

Storm did a lot of little things like that, thinking of me. And it made me feel like a king, every day.

Outside the big, beautiful bay window in the kitchen nook, there was snow piled up around every corner of Storm’s yard. We’d just let Oreo and Pepper out to play in it, and I watched them bound around in the snow now, hopping like bunnies. The fence between our yards was brand-new, a beautiful wooden fence that Oreo couldn’t get through anymore.

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