Page 55 of Fractured Destiny

“Yeah,” I manage. “Every time.”

“Every time.” She kisses my neck, jaw, mouth.

I taste her tears but don’t say anything because my woman gets to cry after I fuck her if she wants to.

Eventually, we settle and she lifts off me carefully and nestles against my chest. I pull the blanket up over both of us. Her palm rests on my collarbone. I look down and see the diamond catch a fleck of candle and sparkle.

I lift Noa’s hand, turn it over and run my thumb across the ring. Emerald cut. Four carats. Slim gold band.

She said yes last month. I proposed on the deck of the pool house at her parents’ compound with Levi by my side. Every time she calls me her fiancé, I feel it in my ribs.

“Can you believe,” I look over to see her watching me, “in twelve weeks we’ll be married.”

Her mouth curves against my throat. “I know.”

“Twelve weeks and you’re my wife.”

Noa kisses my jaw. “No, you’re my husband.”

“I can’t wait.”

She lifts her head from my chest and looks at me. Her eyes are still a little wet. “Then a lifetime.”

“No, beyond.” I put my hand at the back of her head, guide her down and kiss her. Long. Slow. The kiss of a man who’s going to marry the woman who was made for him.

She lays her head back down on my chest and drifts off to sleep almost instantly.

Down the hall, our son sleeps with one of his treasured rocks tucked into his fist. Beyond the wall of glass, Lake Washington lies black beneath the moon. Beside me is my soulmate.

For years I only measured my life in tour dates, album releases, sold-out arenas, and cities blurred together by hotel rooms and airports. I loved every minute of it and still do. Music built this life.

What I never imagined was how the best part would be waiting when I came home.

Noa shifts closer without waking, her hand finds mine beneath the blankets the way it always seems to now. Some nights I still catch myself wondering how I got so lucky. Then I remember luck had very little to do with it.

She and Levi came into my life as a curveball I never saw coming. Nothing about them fit the future I’d mapped out. They unraveled every plan I thought mattered, challenged every certainty I held on to, and asked more of me than I believed I had to give.

They’re the greatest gift of my life.

Tomorrow we’ll wake up and do what families do. Make breakfast. Chase a little boy who still believes rocks belong in pockets and beds. We’ll juggle rehearsals, calendars, grocery lists, counseling appointments, and a hundred ordinary moments.

It won’t be perfect. Neither will we.

I spent years chasing the next stage, the next city, the next milestone, convinced happiness waited somewhere farther down the road when it was here all along.

With the woman asleep against my heart and the little boy down the hall.

Now we’re building a life neither of us expected. One neither of us would ever trade.

I kiss Noa’s hair and close my eyes.

For the first time in my life, I don’t wonder what’s waiting for me tomorrow.

I already found it.

Epilogue - One Year Later

The bus is somewhere in New Mexico.