Some stories are eternal, playing out across time and space with love always finding a way to write the ending, today, yesterday, and forever.
After all, I always get my way—that’s the way fate would have it, and fate is in my hands.
44
Chloe
The bonfire on the beach casts flickering shadows across the sand, and I watch from the tree line as Skyla’s perfect family celebrates their perfect life with their perfect love story.
Gag me.
Liam wasn’t feeling up to it, and I certainly wasn’t going on my own. But here I am regardless. Like a moth to a ridiculous flame.
I should leave. I should go home and plot my next move, figure out how to insert myself into Gage’s life in a way that doesn’t end with him walking away from me like he did on that pier so many years ago. But I can’t stop watching them—the way Gage looks at her, even when she’s wrapped around Logan, the way she manages to keep them both devoted to her like she’s some kind of gravitational force they can’t escape.
How does she do it? How does she make two men share her like it’s the most natural thing in the world? If I didn’t know firsthand she was an angel, I’d swear she was a demon and a witch.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, dear.”
The voice comes from behind me, and I spin around so fast I nearly deck her out of sheer reflex. A woman stands tall—no, notstands,hovers—looking exactly like a slightly more refined carbon copy of Skyla. Same frosty blue eyes, same golden hair, same annoyingly perfect bone structure. But where Skyla radiates warmth, this woman is all ice and calculation. It must be why I like her better.
“Candace.” Of course, it’s her. I’d recognize this otherworldly menace anywhere.
She smiles, and it’s the kind of smile that makes you want to check if your wallet is still there. “Hello, Chloe. Still pining after Gage Oliver, I see. Some things never change.”
“If you’re here to warn me away from Gage?—”
“Warn you away?” Candace laughs, and it sounds like crystal breaking. “Oh, my dear girl. I’m here to encourage you.”
My heart stops cold. “What?”
She moves closer, and yet she’s not quite touching the ground. Her white dress glows with its own light, and the air around her crackles with something ancient and dangerous.
“You love him,” she says simply. “Truly, deeply, obsessively love him. That kind of devotion is rare. And useful.”
I lift a brow her way. “Useful to whom?”
“To the future, of course.” She circles me like a predator evaluating her next kill. “You see, Chloe, everyone down there on that beach thinks they’ve won. They think the story is over, the happy ending secured. But stories never really end. They just pause between chapters.”
I glance back at the bonfire where Gage is now holding one of the brats—his? Logan’s? Who can even tell anymore?
“What do you want from me?”
“The question is, what do you want? Because I can give it to you.” Candace stops directly in front of me, those arctic eyes boring into mine. “Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. If you’re patient. If you’re clever. If you’re willing to play a very long game.”
“Honey, my middle name is Long Game at this point.” I take a moment to growl at her. “Whatever. I know you’re talking aboutGage.” I blow out a breath, and it’s as if a thousand ghosts evacuate from my lungs in the damp Paragon night.
“I’m talking about destiny.” She reaches out and touches my forehead with one finger, and suddenly I see it—flashes of images that burn themselves into my brain. Me in a wedding dress, different from the one I glimpsed before. Gage’s face as he says, “I do.” Children with his eyes and my smile. A life together that feels so real I can taste it.
Then the images shift. Skyla crying. Logan’s fury. A fractured family. Time itself seems to splinter.
My heart quickens with excitement at the sight of it all.
“What the hell was that?” I gasp as the visions fade.
“One possible future. One of many.” Candace’s smile turns sharp. “The timeline is more fluid than my daughter realizes. Her little mail theft adventure proved that. Changes can stick. Futures can certainly be reshaped.”
“But she’s not from the future. She went back to make sure?—”
