Page 89 of Like a Hurricane

It makes me melt a little, the way he looks at me.

“It’s time to go home,” he says to me.

The sentence brings so much damn joy to my heart I feel as if I may float. “Home,” I agree.

“To start making all those babies,” Everett wiggles his eyebrows.

Laughter bubbles out of me as his arm wraps around my waist and he tugs me in close, his lips crashing down onto mine.

“I love you,” He whispers on my mouth, the words tasting like sugar on my tongue.

“I love you too, Everett Avery.”

The boat rocks over the sea, the city behind growing smaller and smaller as we sail toward Ravenpeak Bay.

With his hand on mine and a whole life ahead of us, I realize this wasn’t the end of our fairytale but the beginning.

Epilogue

Five years later…

The sun beats down brightly, the summer heat almost unbearable. Pulling my hair away from the nape of my neck I step up onto the porch of the cabin for some shade and relief from the sun. We were surrounded by trees; you’d expect some shade but no.

But my little vegetable garden was coming along nicely. Turns out, I like to garden. Boring I know but the mundane tasks like pruning roses and getting pricked by thorns was something never offered to me. Rett says the novelty will wear off, but it’s been two years since I started doing it and I haven’t lost interest yet.

Not like the crocheting or candle making I attempted previously, or the several other hobbies before that.

I didn’t have time before, but I do now. In between managing the lingerie business which I mostly did online, with the occasional trip back to the factories and warehouses that were few and far between. I had piles of sketchbooks with new designs all being worked on but in between that, I did this.

Rett mostly watched while I did it, he tried to help once or twice but that man was like a bull in a China shop around plants, he trampled my flowers, so he was banned from them.

Speaking of Rett, he was supposed to be home by now.

He’d taken Walker, our three year old son, down into town to spend time with Maya and Torin and their brood but that was hours ago. I glance towards the clock, maybe I was wrong, but the clock shows the right time.

Pulling out my cell, I dial his number.

“Took you long enough little storm,” He rasps into my ear, answering on the first ring.

“What happened?” I gasp, picturing horrendous things, “Are you hurt?”

“Why not come and find me, princess?” His husky tone whips awareness through me and my eyes snap to the thick wall of trees in front of me, “Or perhaps you can go for a wander, and I’ll find you.”

“And what happens if you find me?” I breathe, knowing exactly what will happen.

“Are you bare under that pretty yellow dress, little storm?”

I lift my dress, still on the phone with my husband and shimmy my underwear down my legs before I lift them and dangle the lace off my finger. I knew he could see me, he was in those trees somewhere, hidden and waiting. I wave the underwear like a flag.

“I am now.”

“Run little storm,” Rett growls down the phone, “I am starving and right now you look good enough to fucking eat.”

“Promises,” I step down off the porch and into the sun, “I don’t mind playing your games since even when I lose, I always win.”

He chuckles and I hang up, taking a deep breath before I take off in a run.

We’ve played this game, many, many times, sometimes it lasts hours, sometimes it takes minutes.

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