Epilogue
— Dutch —
Three months later
I found Indira in the parking lot behind the clubhouse, sitting on the hood of her car and watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of orange and purple. She’d changed out of her work clothes—some corporate thing she’d worn for a client meeting—and into jeans and one of my old t-shirts, the fabric soft and worn from years of washing. Her cut sat on her shoulders like it belonged there, which it did.
She didn’t turn when I approached, but her mouth curved into a smile.
“You know what I was thinking about?” she said as I settled beside her on the hood.
“How lucky you are to have such a devastatingly handsome man?”
That earned me an elbow to the ribs. “I was thinking about the night I left. How I stood in this exact spot and looked back at the clubhouse and promised myself I’d never come back.”
I went still. We didn’t talk about that night much—not because it was forbidden, but because we’d both moved past it. But something in her voice told me this was important.
“What changed?” I asked.
“You did.” She leaned her head against my shoulder. “Not just the surface stuff. The real things. The hard things.” She was quiet for a moment. “My sister asked me last week why I came back to Millfield. She wanted to know if it was really forthe promotion, or if part of me was always planning to give you another chance.”
My chest tightened. “What did you tell her?”
“That I came back for the job. For my career. For myself.” She lifted her head to look at me, her dark eyes serious. “But that I stayed for us. Because somewhere along the way, you stopped being the man who hurt me and became someone I wanted to build a life with.”
I cupped her face in my hands, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. “I’m still scared you’re going to wake up one day and realize you made a mistake.”
She didn’t rush to reassure me. That was something I’d learned to love about her—she let hard truths have their weight instead of smoothing them over.
“That fear’s not going away, is it?” she finally asked.
“No.” My voice cracked on the word. “Some mornings I wake up before you and I just... watch you sleep. Make sure you’re still there. Make sure this is real.”
Her eyes softened, but she still didn’t offer easy comfort. “Good.”
I blinked. “Good?”
“The day you stop being scared is the day you stop trying. That fear? It means you know what you have to lose now.”
“Everything,” I said roughly. “I’d lose everything.”
“Then I guess you better keep earning it.” But she smiled as she said it, and kissed me soft and slow, tasting like the sweet tea she’d been drinking.
When we pulled apart, I took her hand. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
I led her around the building to the front entrance. Through the windows, I could see the brothers gathering for the party—Holden restocking the bar, Glitch setting up his laptop forwhatever presentation he had planned, Handful already three beers in and laughing at something on his phone.
And Colt, standing off to the side with a beer in hand and a look on his face I’d seen too many times lately. Distracted. Haunted. He’d been like this for weeks. He wouldn’t talk about it, but I knew the signs of a man being torn apart by his past.
I’d been that man not so long ago.
“He’s going to need you soon,” Indira said quietly, following my gaze. “Whatever he’s dealing with, it’s eating him alive.”
“I know.” I made a mental note to corner Colt this week. Brother to brother, no church politics. Just one man who’d been through hell offering a hand to another. “But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Come on.”
I pulled her past the entrance, around to the side of the building where we were building the new expansion—three thousand square feet that would house a legitimate security consulting office, conference rooms, and a workshop.
“Look.” I pointed to where the framing had gone up this week.
