Page 233 of Under an Endless Moon

He inhaled, those arms strong, and his boots crunched over the uneven terrain.

When we made it to his truck, he angled around to the passenger side. He opened the door and carefully settled me inside. He shut it and ran back around the front, sliding into the driver’s seat.

He turned it over and let the engine roar to life, then he turned to look at me, hand gentle as he brushed the pad of his thumb over the tiny freckle near my lip. “Thought I was going to die when I got to Moonflower and found you missing.”

“Were you coming to tell me how much you love me, my burly bear?”

I wound as much lightness into it as I could manage, though it was thick and soggy.

“Yeah, baby, I was coming to shout it from the rooftops and pray you’d shout it back.”

Love filled my chest to overflowing, years of it that had been shrouded and contained.

Love that was no longer trapped.

I blinked and another tear fell. “You’re my favorite person in the world, Otto Hudson.”

Otto reached down and hooked his pinky with mine. “And you, Raven Tayte, are mine.”

Then he dragged me across the bench seat to tuck me to his side. He put the truck in drive, then curled his arm around my shoulders as he whipped a U-turn in the road. “And now, Little Moonflower, I think it’s time you learned exactly what that means.”

EPILOGUES

Raven

I rearrangedthe flowers in the bouquet that I’d placed in the middle of the small table under the wall of windows in the great room at Otto’s house.

Correction: Our house.

It turned out I hadn’t been looking for my own place. I’d been looking for where I belonged. Where my heart and my feet and my body would be set free.

Sunlight shined in through the windows where they sheared in through the dense woods of the forest that surrounded the house, their glittering rays glinting over the lake that sat low in the distance.

It was breathtaking.

Stunning.

I pulled an iris from the bouquet and resituated it, making sure the arrangement was perfect.

A giant, full array of my favorite flowers.

Irises and lilies.

Tulips andhydrangeas.

Moonflowers, of course.

All surrounded by lush leaves and green foliage.

Pride swelled inside me when I thought of my little shop and what it’d become. What it stood for.

For the moments in our lives that marked us.

Weddings and anniversaries and birthdays.

Get wells and funerals and apologies.

Achievements and milestones.

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