Page 73 of My End
I pushed my empty plate aside and stood. “I guess I’d better get to work setting everything up. The canvases should be delivered this afternoon.”
Thank goodness for online shopping and overnight delivery. My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I checked the alert: shipment out for delivery. Good. I had time to clear a workspace.
Stretch stood and kissed me on the lips, slow and soft. “Make sure to make them not as good as mine, sweetheart.”
I laughed and cradled his cheek. “You’re crazy.”
His eyes locked on mine, warm and deep andso full. “Only for you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Five weeks later…
Stretch
Cue Ball’s painting was still drying.
Tilly had finished it twenty minutes ago when her brush finally dropped to the side of the easel like a white flag surrendering to exhaustion.
Now she was curled up in the middle of my bed, with her knees tucked to her chest, and the curve of her spine rising and falling with every deep breath she took. Her hair was fanned out across my pillow, wild and tangled and goddamn perfect. She hadn’t even changed clothes, still in those paint-smeared leggings and my old Iron Fiends shirt she’d claimed as her own.
I leaned against the dresser, arms crossed over my chest, and just watched her.
She looked peaceful. Completely spent. She’d run herself ragged for five weeks, working sunrise to midnight to finish all ten portraits for the premiere.
And she’d fucking done it.
If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be standing here, free, alive, and in love, I would’ve called you crazy.
If you’d told me I’d be standing herewatching my woman sleep in my bed, with the ghosts of Boone and Gibbs behind us and a second chance ahead, I would’ve laughed in your face.
But here I was.
I pushed off the dresser and walked over to the bed to sit on the edge. Her hand twitched in her sleep, like she was still holding a brush, and I smiled. Even in her sleep, she was painting.
“You wore yourself out, sweetheart,” I whispered and bent to press a kiss to her forehead.
She mumbled something that sounded like “Cue Ball has a weird nose,” and I chuckled.
She rolled toward me instinctively and snuggled into my chest without even waking. Her arm draped across my stomach, and her head found my thigh to rest on.
This club had been through hell.
I had been through hell.
But this woman? She made all of it worth it.
I never thought I’d find someone like Tilly. Never thought I’d find a love that felt solid. Real. Like it was going to last longer than the next job, the next lie, the next fight. I thought I was a ghost, just a shadow meant to drift through the cracks of this world until I burned out.
But she saw me.
And I wasn’t going anywhere.
Tomorrow, we’d go to that premiere. We’d shake hands with studio people and drink cheap champagne and watch everyone ooh and aah over those paintings like they weren’t made in the middle of total chaos. But tonight… tonight was quiet. Tonight was justours.
In the end, after all the lies, the blood, the broken promises, this was what mattered. Not the club politics. Not the ghosts I’d chased or the men I’d helped bury.
It was Tilly.
