Page 129 of Hard to Hold

EPILOGUE

LENNOX

“SO THIS IS WHERE THE uber rich go when they want to escape life?” I look at the beauty surrounding us, and it’s hard to pick one thing to focus on. The crystal-turquoise water below me where my feet are swinging. The over-the-water bungalow at my back. Or the palm trees on the shore behind us.

Rush looks at me from where he sits in a chaise lounge beside me with the slyest grin on his face. “No, this is where a football star goes after he’s won both the Premier League and the Champion’s League and wants to escape with his woman.”

His woman.

It still gets me when he calls me his. It’s been almost a year since my move to England, and the fact that I get to wake up next to him every single day is still exciting.

I hold my face up to the sun to feel its warmth but also to mask the tears that threaten when I realize I almost lost this—I almost lost him—because I was too stubborn to believe love was real.

“Hey?”

I look toward him and smile when I meet his eyes. My heart flips over in my chest. “Hmm?”

“You know I feel that way too, right?” he asks softly.

“What way?”

“The way you’re looking at me right now. Like you can’t believe you knew how to breathe before you met me. Like you can’t believe this is real.” He leans down to kiss me, the warmth and familiarity of his kiss is all I need. “Like life didn’t have a purpose before this,” he murmurs against my lips.

I set my glass of wine down, stand from the edge of the patio, and then sit beside him. His skin is warm from the sun as I snuggle into him and put my hand over his heart.

“To those who wander,” he says softly, as his heart beats beneath the tattoo on his chest.

“To those who wander,” I repeat, a smile painting the corners of my lips, the good fortune that we’ve found warming my heart.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says as he twirls his finger in my hair.

“About?”

“About when you chased me to England.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I told you that I had to be your first client because it wouldn’t be right if you had my last name and I wasn’t.”

I still momentarily. “You did.”

“Well, you’ve set up your office, you’ve contracted new clients, I’ve won everything that can be won . . . and I’m thinking we need to finish what we started.”

When I lean back and meet his eyes, every kind of emotion flows through me.

This wild child who’s not so wild.

The rebel who rebelled for all the right reasons.

This man, who could have anyone but only has eyes for me.

How did I get so damn lucky?

“You’re all I need, Rush. I don’t care in what form, last name, plastic ring, marriage certificate or not . . . I don’t care. You’re it for me. That’s all that matters. You.”

He gives me the softest of smiles—shy but serious. “McKenzie never meant anything to me, Nox. It was a name given to me by a man I never met. But I made it into something. I made me into something . . . and yes, we don’t need any of that shit, but it would mean everything to me if you were proud to be a McKenzie with me.”

Tears well in my eyes when I lean up and press a kiss to his lips. It’s tender, and has a reverence everyone should get a chance to experience at least once in their life.