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Eyes I’ve known since I was fourteen.
His nod is slow. “Yes.”
Tears fall, and I press the back of my hand to my mouth.
It was him.
This whole time, it was him.
The boy who saved me. Who treated me. Who held me and promised not to leave me.
My first love. My first kiss. The boy who taught me that kindness exists is the man who reinforces that truth.
He comes to me, cupping my face and kissing my tears. “Don’t cry, Rose.”
I let out a sob and wrap my arms around his neck, and he holds me to him. I wonder how I never knew, because now it feels so obvious. The way he speaks, holds me, looks at me.
“I’ve loved you since I was sixteen years old,” I cry, burying my face in his shoulder.
“I know,” he whispers. “And I’m sorry I never came back. You were so angry with me, and I didn’t think it was fair for me to keep so much of myself from you. You needed more, and I was terrified to let you down.”
I pull away from the hug, and my tears won’t stop falling. I hold his face, and I see the boy I loved, the man I’ll always love. “You could never let me down, Odin.”
He smiles. “God, I hate that nickname.”
I laugh and wipe my eyes, and he rests his forehead against mine.
As we stand in the dim kitchen light of our home, I recount the moments in my life and how each brother saved me in their own way. Yale held my hand. Xavier made me fall in love under a colorful sky. Zayden broke a cycle of abuse that might have killed me.
I love them. Fiercely, passionately, with every fiber of my being.
“I can’t wait to have forever with you,” I whisper, closing my eyes.
Yale Silver kisses me, and smiles against my lips. “Good. Because it’s already started.”
Epilogue
ZAYDEN
“You hungry, boy?” Bullet’s ear twitches, his latest toy, a stuffed sloth, tucked under his chin, but other than that, he doesn’t move. “You’re lazy, you know that? The suburbs have changed you.”
He grumbles and flops onto his side, happy to wait while I make him his dinner. I’ve just taken his food out of the fridge when I notice the grocery list stuck to the front. Yale is picking Silence up from work and stopping at the store on the way home, and he’s forgotten the fucking list.
Like clockwork, my phone rings. I answer, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder as I fill the dog’s bowl. “I’ll text you the list.”
“Zayden Silver?” a deep, male voice says, and I pause, checking my phone screen. The number is withheld.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t know me. My name is Alistair Chase.”
I pause, straightening and holding the phone to my ear. No, I don’t know him, but I know of him. He’s the head of one of the most powerful families on the East Coast. I’m talking to a man who controls the people we should be afraid of—and one of those people is Sabina Morelli.
“I’ve heard of you.”
“Always good to know my reputation has hit the other coast,” he says. “I’m going to keep this short. I’ve made it clear to the Morellis that you’re not to be touched.”
I frown, placing down Bullet’s bowl. He scrambles over to the food, wolfing it down.
