Deadly Oath

Epilogue

SAbrINA

F our months later

I see him the moment I walk into the small coffee shop, the scent of roasting beans and mocha filling my nostrils. He doesn’t see me at first, reddish-brown hair falling onto his face as he leans forward to reach for his coffee, and I look at him for a long moment, wondering if this was a mistake.

I should have changed my number. I should have told him to fuck off, when he texted me, asking if we could meet. I should have erased him entirely from my life.

But instead, I’m standing here in this small coffee shop, looking at the man who ruined my life. Who gave me something precious.

Who let me walk away, even though he once promised me he never would.

I draw in a slow breath, and cross the room to where Kian is sitting.

He looks up as he hears the click of my heels, and I see the moment his eyes widen, taking me in. I know what he’s seeing—the slight swell of my stomach under the fitted black sweaterdress I’m wearing, the curve that wasn’t there before, and I see him swallow hard, his gaze fixed on the shape of the bump as I sit down in the chair opposite him.

“I thought you might not come,” he says quietly.

“I thought about it,” I admit. I look up at him, at this handsome man who I know and don’t, all at once, and I can’t help but think that he looks tired. A little more worn around the edges. Lost, maybe—or maybe as if he’s lost something . Something that mattered to him.

Did I matter to him? He said he loved me, before I left, but words are easy. What I know was harder was letting me walk away.

“Why did you?” Kian asks, meeting my gaze. He’s dressed for the February weather, in a dark green knit sweater and jeans, a black peacoat hanging over the back of his chair. But he looks neither like the man I met in Kentucky nor the man who brought me back here to New York. He looks like someone else entirely, like all of this has changed him, too. For better, or for worse?

I can’t know until I try to find out.

I pause, thinking for a moment about the right words. “You saw a different side of me, when you got to know me, didn’t you?” I ask softly. “I wasn’t what you expected. And that was what drove a chink in your armor, right from the beginning.”

Kian nods. He says nothing else, letting me say what I want to, at the pace that I want to get it out.

“I’m here because I saw a different side of you then, too,” I say quietly. “When you killed that rattler. When you took me out to dinner because you knew I couldn’t cook. When you fixed my porch step.” I look down at my bare left hand. “When you bought me a ring that you didn’t need to, because you knew it would make me happy.”

“Sabrina—” he starts to speak, but I shake my head.

“Let me finish.”

He nods again, going silent.

“I needed space. You hurt me, Kian—I can’t change that, and neither can you. What you planned to do, what you did , was unthinkable. And I couldn’t stay after that. I needed to think about what I felt. About who I thought you really were. About what it could do to a person, to have someone they loved hurt the way your sister was, and what could be forgiven on account of that.” My hand touches the swell of my stomach. “About our child and what he needs.”

Kian’s head snaps up sharply. “You found out?—”

I nod. “It’s a boy. I found out at my last appointment.”

Something shimmers in Kian’s eyes, a brief glint, and he swallows hard. “Go ahead,” he says quietly. “I’ll try not to interrupt again.”

My chest tightens at that—at how quickly he backed down. He didn’t insist I bring his heir home, or tell me that this changes anything. This is the side I saw. This is the man I know he really is.

It gives me what I need to keep going.

“I think you can be better when you’re not driven by revenge,” I say softly. “You asked for a chance, Kian. A chance to start over. And I—I want to give you that. For myself, and for you. And for our son.”

I see the shock of those words hit him, the way they ripple through him. I see his hands tighten on the table, his knuckles whitening, as if he expects me to say that I’m joking. That this is my revenge, for what he did.

“You’re serious,” he says, his voice tight. “You mean it.”

I nod, and for the first time since he brought me to New York, I reach out and touch his hand. I feel him flinch, and then I feel his hand turn, his fingers curling against mine. “It will take time for all the wounds to heal,” I tell him. “But I’ve had time to think about it. To start that, on my own. And I mean it.”

Kian nods, clearly still in shock. “So what?—”

“Come with me.” I stand up, enjoying the moment of being the one in control, of being the one to direct how this goes. It won’t always be like this, I know—I don’t doubt Kian will still enjoy the same games he did once, only without the darker edge. But at this moment, he’s following my lead, and I take full advantage. “I want to show you where I’ve been living.”

I hail a cab when we step outside, and give the driver my address. It takes us to a pretty cream-brick building near Central Park, with a garden courtyard and black iron fencing all around it. “The FBI helped put me up here,” I tell Kian, as I lead him inside to the elevator. “Caldwell got in touch with me—he was pretty upset about all of it. But he came around eventually, once he knew I was safe. The FBI covered my expenses for a little while, until my father’s assets were unfrozen and handed over to me. I got a job as well, for something to do. An editor for a publishing house, part-time,” I add, and Kian makes a small sound of surprise.

“That’s impressive,” he says. “I’m—I’m impressed, Sabrina. I don’t know what else to say. You?—”

“I’ve done better than I thought I would, on my own.” I lead him down the hall, unlocking the door to my apartment and walking in. It’s large and airy, with big windows that overlook the park, decorated in soft earth tones and pastels, with furniture that I picked out bit by bit. “I want to keep the apartment,” I tell him, turning to face him as I set my keys down. “I know you’ll want me to live with you, and I want that, too. But I want to keep this, too. For my own space. To come and relax, to read, or write, or—whatever I want.”

“Of course,” Kian says, without hesitation. He shoves his hands into his pockets, swallowing hard. “I don’t want you to feel trapped, Sabrina. If you’re really going to—I don’t ever want to make you feel that way again. I’m sorry that I—” He stops, his jaw tightening. “I’m sorry for all of it. I look back at it sometimes, and I think I went temporarily insane.”

He lets out a long, slow breath. “I confessed part of it to Ailin. Not all of it, not the worst parts. I couldn’t tell my sister about those. But—some of it. And she was ashamed of me, the way I knew she would be. She told me how wrong I was. Wrote it, actually.” Kian’s mouth tightens.

“She still isn’t speaking?”

Kian shakes his head. “She has a therapist now. So maybe—maybe she’ll get there. The psychiatrist is hopeful.”

He turns to look out of one of the windows, and I see the muscle leap in his jaw. “I hurt her, too, by turning into someone she didn’t recognize. By leaving her when she needed me, to seek out revenge she didn’t ask for. I hurt you both. And I can’t make it right—except by trying, every day, to show you how sorry I am.” He swivels back to me, taking a step forward, slowly—one after another, until he’s standing very close to me. “I love you, Sabrina. That hasn’t changed.”

I can smell the scent of his skin, spice, and male musk, and the wool of his coat. I can feel the heat of his body, radiating so close to mine, and nothing has changed. I feel that pull towards him, that desire, and when he leans in to kiss me, I let him.

I kiss him back. I tilt my chin up, and part my lips, and his mouth doesn’t crush against mine, the way it so often has. He brushes his lips against mine, softly, then firmly, his hands coming up to my waist, my arms, touching me in the way I once thought he would on our wedding night, the way he never has before.

Like I’m something precious. Like I’m something to love. Like I’m something he’s terrified of breaking again.

When our clothes come off, one piece at a time, he’s still touching me that way, all the way down to bare skin. When we end up on that pile of clothes, in the rays of sunlight spilling over the wooden floors of my apartment, when his mouth skims over my breasts, my stomach, the aching space between my thighs, he touches me that way. When he slides inside of me, gasping my name, fitting into me like we were made for each other—first in all the wrong ways, and now in all the right ones—it feels right. It feels like love.

It feels like what I imagined it would, in that small house in Rivershade, on the night I became his wife.

With every touch, every kiss, every thrust, every arch of my body against his, we rewrite all of that line by line. A new story, a new beginning. And when I come for him, I cry out his name, and he moans mine, his lips against my neck as I feel him shudder and fill me, his hips rocking against mine as his fingers wrap around my hands, and he moans my name a second time.

He pulls me into him as he rolls to one side, still on the floor, still buried inside of me. He pushes a lock of hair away from my face, gently, and looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time.

“I never got divorce papers. ”

“I never filed them,” I admit.

Kian nods, biting his lip as he looks at my face, our heads pillowed on the smashed tangle of our coats. “Well,” he says quietly. “In that case?—”

He sits up, sliding out of me as our legs disentangle, and he reaches for his jeans. As he slides his hand into the pocket, I push myself up, too, looking at him. He’s as gorgeous as I remember, all lean muscle and inked skin, and I savor the sight for a moment, drinking him in.

Kian turns back to me, one hand slightly out of sight. “Where do you want our new life to be, Sabrina?” he asks softly. “You could pick anywhere, and I’d go with you.”

“Here,” I tell him without hesitation. “You still have family. And I want our son to grow up with his aunt. Maybe it will even be good for her. But—I want to pick out a new home. Something we choose together. Not my family home, or yours, or the town where we met, or this apartment where I figured out what I wanted for my future. Something new, that’s only ours.”

“Done,” Kian says, equally without hesitation. “And on that note?—”

He reaches for my left hand, and when he opens his, I see my engagement ring—and a different band, a slightly wider one, encrusted with diamonds. Slowly, as we sit there still naked in the tangle of our clothes, he slides the engagement ring onto my finger, and then he holds up the band, tilting it into the light so I can see just inside of it.

There’s a date engraved there. I squint, peering at it. “Is that—today’s date?”

Kian nods. He doesn’t let go of my hand, the wedding band clutched between his other fingers. “I’ve been carrying this with me since you left,” he admits. “And when you said you’d meet me, I had it engraved with today’s date. Because—I had hope that you’d say this. That you wanted to start again. And I wanted to give you back your rings, but I didn’t want to give you the band I put on your finger on our wedding day. I didn’t mean it then, not like I should have. But now?—”

He draws in a slow breath, rising up to his knees as he looks into my eyes, my hand still held in his. “As far as I’m concerned, Sabrina, today is the day our marriage really begins. And when I put this ring on your finger, I swear—I’ll spend every day from now until the end of mine showing you how much I love you. How much I want to make every mistake up to you. I’ll love you and our son and our family with every beat of my heart, until it stops. If you’ll accept this—that’s what I can promise you. I do promise it. Right now—forever.”

He touches the ring to the edge of my fingertip. “Do you believe me?” he asks softly, and the question goes straight to my heart.

“I do,” I whisper, and Kian slides the ring onto my finger.

He leans forward, toppling me back onto the pile of clothing, and he kisses me softly, his nose brushing against mine. “I love you,” he whispers again, and I smile into the kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck.

“I love you, too.”

The path ahead won’t be easy , I think as he deepens the kiss, pulling me into him as we lie there in the sunlight. But nothing worth having ever is. Kian showed me who he truly was, when he let me walk away. When he gave up what he wanted, to give me what he knew I needed.

And now, I’ve come back to him. To us . To the family that we’ve made, that I’ve chosen—the future I decided that I wanted.

A future that I’ll never walk away from again.

Thanks for reading!