Amelia looked down at the towel in her hands. “Is this crazy? Living here for three months? Leaving our lives behind?”
“Yes,” I said, then kissed the back of her head. “But that’s never bothered me before.”
She twisted the towel back and forth. “Your life before this . . . It was so complicated. You had your undercover life and me and the whole FBI thing . . .”
“You’re worried what will happen when it’s just us?”
She nodded at the countertops.
Gently, I turned her hips until she was facing me. “All I have ever wanted to do is leave the world better than I found it. To make it a better place.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I used to think it meant eliminating problems. That’s a noble and necessary endeavor. I don’t regret my service. But all I ever did was take things from the world. All I ever did was create voids.” I kissed her lips. “Then I met you. And suddenly all I wanted to do was give. To grow. To love. To put something back into the world. And that starts with us.”
There was peace in her eyes, blue skies rippled with creases of delight.
“I don’t think this is our happily ever after.”
“No?”
I shook my head as I cupped her cheeks, ghosting my lips over hers. “It’s just the beginning.”
EPILOGUE
JUDAH
Eight Months and Three Weeks Later
Saturday, May 23 | 7:15 p.m.
“Look at you,” I teased Amelia as we broke through the trees. “I might actually turn you into a hiker.”
She heaved as she reached the rock ledge and dropped like a sack of potatoes, wiggling to the edge and dangling her feet off. “Unlikely, but your delusion is endearing.”
I chuckled as I sat beside her and looked out over the valley. “And yet we’ve been here six months longer than we anticipated.”
Her laugh was light as she tipped her head to the side and rested it on my shoulder. “You gave me internet access. Did you really expect me to leave and go back to the real world?”
It had been almost nine months of the two of us hiding away in the cabin atop the Monongahela National Forest—a far cry from the three we had initially agreed upon. But when December rolled around and the date to pack up and head back to Connecticut came, we just . . . didn’t.
Sure, living out here was a pain in the ass. We had to plan our meals weeks in advance unless we wanted to blow an entire day driving to the grocery store. We had to drive our trash down the mountain and dispose of it in town. Cell service was patchy, and that was when the weather was good.
But when the weather was bad, there was no place I wanted to be other than under that roof with her. When the weather was good, neither of us wanted to stay inside.
Unless she was teaching, we were exploring. Reading. Talking. Playing cards. After a lifetime of living to serve, we retreated to our mountain and lived to love.
Since we weren’t using the cabin as an off-grid safe house, we’d spruced up the place. We brought in a new bed. Some appliances. And Amelia’s favorite, a satellite internet connection.
In an attempt to keep her on their faculty, Alcott University had offered her a completely remote teaching position. In my spare time, which was really just when Amelia was teaching, I did a little consulting.
When the folks at Keller & Associates couldn’t add a job to their calendar, Joel would shuffle them my way if they wanted advice. It ranged from a pop star looking to shake a stalker from her tail to companies wanting to beef up their building security and needing someone to coach their in-house team on what upgrades to make. On one occasion, it was a casino wanting Amelia and me to train their dealers on how to spot and thwart card counters.
We told them to get fucked.
“We survived winter up here,” I mused as I tucked her into my side.
The corners of her mouth turned up. “Way better than Connecticut. We didn’t have to go anywhere. No slushy roads. Just you and me and the woodstove.”
Thankfully, we were almost out of the wood-splitting temperatures. I didn’t mind quite so much—it was a good workout—but I was grateful as May turned into June and we could comfortably sleep at night without a small fire.
“I thought for sure you’d get bored after a month,” I said as I studied the view. “Like when we were up here the first time.”
