I nod.
“So you’re saying you love me?”
Heat blooms in my chest. In my cheeks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
Theo’s grin widens. Then he swoops me up in his arms and swings me around until I’m clinging to him, and all I can feel is that love, impossible and terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
When Theo sets me down, he kisses me, and it’s not angry or devouring. It’s sweet and gentle. The kind of kiss that Oliver could see.
“I love you,” I whisper against Theo’s lips. “I know it’s fucking crazy, and I still don't know how it can work, but?—”
“It’ll work,” Theo signs against my chest. “I promise.”
And then he kisses me again, wrapping me in his strength and his warmth, as the cold wind swirls around us.
EPILOGUE
CHLOE
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Don’t swim out too far!” I yell from the edge of the pier, the warm summer wind whipping my dress around my thighs. Oliver gives me a thumbs up from the soft swell of the water and then promptly dives back under.
I sigh, although I’m honestly not too worried. He’s actually quite a good swimmer, as I learned when the first really hot day of the year hit, and he wouldn’t stop begging me to let him go out into the lake. Eventually, Theo just rowed the boat out to the middle of the water and sat there to keep an eye on him while I finished up work. When I joined them a few hours later, Oliver was swimming in circles around him, using a pretty impressively executed breast stroke. And Theo was smiling—reallysmiling. He didn’t look much like a ghost at all. Or a murderer.
I’ve seen that smile more and more these last six months.
Still, I don’t like leaving Oliver unattended, even here at Hanging Lake, where he feels safe. Where heissafe, a fact I keep having to remind myself of—although less often, these days.
I walk backwards down the pier, keeping an eye on where Oliver is circling around in the water. As long as he stays nearby, I can watch from the back porch, where I’ve got a brisket slowly cooking away in the big propane grill-smoker that Theo liberated for me from one of the still-abandoned houses along the lakefront.
It’s been nearly a year since that night. The killing moon, as Theo calls it, and my house is the only one still occupied. Me and Oliver have the whole lake to ourselves. It’s still astonishing to me that I was able to convince the state to let me take on Oliver as a foster while I work toward real custody. I’m sure Sofia played a role, especially after she came to visit shortly after Oliver ran away from his ex-foster family. She told me, the two of us standing in the driveway while the snow melted around us, that she had never seen him so content.
Theo, of course, is off the books entirely.
“Our guests will be here soon!” I call out to Oliver. “You’re gonna need to come in for at least a little bit to meet them!”
That earns me another thumbs up before he dives under the water.
I’m about to turn around when a big, rough hand scoops around my waist, and warm, familiar breath blows against the side of my neck. I breathe out, sinking into that firm chest.
“You caught me,” I murmur.
Theo spins me around, making my skirt flare out.
“I always do.” He brushes his hand over my hair, his face serious. Nervous.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I ask. “If you want to go back to your cabin, they’d understand. They’re mostly hereto see me. And that one.” I tilt my head back toward Oliver’s splashes.
Theo’s hand tightens against my belly. But then he nods, right before he kisses me, with that slow, gentle sweetness he uses whenever Oliver is around. Well, mostly sweetness. He does nip hard at my lower before he pulls away—not enough to draw blood, but enough to hint at the darkness he saves for when we’re alone.
“Just don’t leave me alone with them,” he signs.
I laugh. “What are you afraid they’ll do?”
“The humans?” he asks. “Nothing. The Hunters…”
