“You stay here with me,” I tell him.
His grin wrecks me. “Deal.”
Exhibit F: Amara Khan, accepting a home.
Accepting a future.
Accepting love.
The verdict?
Guilty as charged.
I throw my arms around him and press my mouth against his again.
Case closed.
“I love you, Amara,” Corin says against my mouth.
I pull back long enough to look into his eyes. “I love you, too. Always have, always will.”
Turns out the best closing argument isn’t an argument at all.
It’s just... staying.
Epilogue
Amara
Six months later…
I’m standing in the cottage studio, surrounded by case files. The faint smell of sea salt drifts through the open window. Beyond, I can see the ocean waves sweeping in and out on the pink sand of the shoreline.
This is my life now.
Not temporarily. Not a six-week pilot that kept extending indefinitely. Genuinely, permanently mine.
The Eleuthera Legal Access Program files are spread across my desk. We’ve got a rotating fellowship now that brings young lawyers from across the Caribbean. Real lawyers who look at me like I’m some kind of legend because I once dismantled a corrupt board member using nothing but archived documents and sheer force of will.
Legend might be overselling it.
“Mildly competent attorney who got lucky” is probably more accurate.
But still. The program is fully funded. The clinic has real staff. We’re making a difference.
And I get to do this from a cottage with an ocean view that makes my old Gramercy apartment look like a prison cell.
Which, if we’re being honest, it essentially was.
But the icing on the cake?
Billionaire Corin Saelinger is my boyfriend.
Through the window, I can see Corin now, on the beach with Marisol. They’re discussing the new community center he’s funding. His sleeves are rolled to his forearms, and even from here I can see the way his hands move when he talks, the way his muscles—
God.
Six months, and the man still makes me forget how to think straight.
