13
Epilogue
SIX MONTHS AGO, I came to Halo City to destroy a man. I built a life instead.
A life with Diana.
The foreman gives me a two-finger salute on my way out, and I return it. Behind me, the whine of a power sander cuts through the morning. The crew is finishing the drywall on what will be the main training floor. The space is coming together. Every visit, it looks more intentional, and every visit, the knot in my chest loosens a fraction more.
I step onto the sidewalk and start the six-block walk home.
Diana gave me a gym. More accurately, Diana found the space, negotiated the lease herself, and put the two-year worth of deposit down before I could form a full sentence of protest.
My first reaction was panic, and not the good kind. She was giving me a project, which meant she needed distance. The twenty-four-seven shadow I’d become was finally too much for her.
I sat with that panic for a full night. Then I thought about the storage room.Build a life so full that the people who hurt you become irrelevant.
So I agreed.
But instead of just any other gym, I made it a self-defense and training center for women and survivors. The idea had lived in my head since the first time she told me her story.
Every day I visit, and every time I walk through that space and watch it take shape, I find myself looking forward to the next one. That’s new. For twenty-five years, the next day was only ever a step closer to revenge.
Now it’s the thing I want.
I turn the corner onto our street.
I’m still poor by every measure a bank cares about. I resigned from Halo Protective Group. Vance took it well, which is to say he poured two fingers of bourbon, told megood luck, and I signed the paperwork. The man knew I wasn’t leaving the work. I was leaving the middleman.
I became Diana’s full-time, exclusive bodyguard. My paycheck comes directly from her now, deposited into the same modest account it’s always been, and my professional network is no wider than it was the day I first walked into her life.
The gym will be my side gig, but it’ll only be a small revenue stream. My target clients aren’t the high-profile or the well-funded, and I knew that going in. I’ve applied for government grants and non-profit funding, and I have contracts now with two social services agencies and a women’s shelter on the east side.
Diana pointed out that early mornings, and days the floor isn’t in use, I could rent the space to yoga instructors or for corporate bootcamps. I’m still deciding on that one. Either way, no one’s calling me rich anytime soon. I doubt they ever will, and I’m okay with it. More than okay.
This is the first thing in my life I’ve chosen that isn’t revenge. The gym. The work. The women who will eventually walk through those doors because they need to know how to fight back in a world that’s already shown them exactly what it’s capable of.
It’s mine. Not inherited. Mine because I chose it.
I want to use what I know for that. I want to teach. I want that to be the point.
Six months ago, the gap between her world and mine was eating me alive. Her penthouse. The suits. The Rolex.
Somewhere in those six months, the gap stopped being a thing that fed on me. It’s still there. I’m not delusional. But it doesn’t have teeth anymore. Diana never held it over me. She also never shrank herself down to make me comfortable, which I’ve come to understand is a more important kind of love.
Above all, Diana is my biggest wealth. I say it to her often, and she meets it by telling me I sound like a greeting card. It’s still the truth. Nothing else comes close.
I stop at the florist on the corner. This I can afford, so I buy her a bouquet every day. She isn’t a flower person. I’m not a flower person either. I buy them anyway. Yellow tulips, mostly. Yellow roses or daffodils when the tulips aren’t in. Yellow isn’t even her color. I buy it because she reminds me of the sun, and sheismy sun. My only light.
Greeting card. I know.
The elevator opens straight into the penthouse, and I step inside.
Carol, Diana’s secretary, is sitting at the dining table with her laptop. She looks up when she sees me, and I give her the same nod I always give her. Minimal.
“She’s in her office,” Carol says before I ask. “Mr. Thayer is with her.”
I walk down the hallway. I knock twice, then push the door open just enough to get my head and half the bouquet through.
