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Epilogue

Lake

Three months later

“I should probably take that down.” When Calisto frowned, I jerked my head toward the birthday banner covering the wall of my living room. Someone’d had the bright idea of crossing out the number twenty-five and changing it to forty-four. At the time, I’d gone along with it. Now, though, it seemed a little glib, like downplaying a huge and cataclysmic event in my boyfriend’s life. “He might not find it funny.”

Calisto gave me a reassuring smile. “Trust me. He’ll find it funny. Besides, he likes to remind people who give you two funny looks that you’re actually the same age. And what better way to do it than to have it in two-foot-high letters?”

“I suppose.”

“And…” Calisto continued, “it took us an hour to get it up there. We don’t have an hour to get it down.”

“Speaking of which,” Ben called from the other side of the room, where he stood next to Bellamy and John. “Shouldn’t he be here already?” Griffin had drawn the short straw and had to work, the necromancy department, by nature of its timeline, always needed to have someone on call. Nearly everyone else was here from the PPB. Cade, Kendrick, a few people from a different department who I’d met before, but whose names I couldn’t remember. Hopefully, Baxter would subtly reintroduce me to them when he got here. Of course, I could just ask him to. There were definite advantages to being able to talk directly to your boyfriend using only the power of thought.

I checked my watch. “He should. Traffic, probably.”

“Probably,” a few people agreed in unison, because it was the polite thing to do.

A few more minutes passed before the front door opened, and everyone immediately crouched down behind furniture like we’d practiced. It was a good job Baxter had insisted on buying some when he’d moved in, or everyone would have been trying to hide behind one sofa. Now they had a TV, a table, a new sofa, a bookcase, and two comfortable armchairs. As hiding went, it wouldn’t win any prizes, the move more of a tradition than an intent truly not to be seen. Asher wasn’t here yet, and I had to wonder whether that was deliberate to skip this part. I really couldn’t see him on his knees behind the coffee table. He just wasn’t the hiding type.

“What a bloody day!” Baxter called from the hallway. “Cade was a complete arsehole today. That’s why I’m late. He made me redo paperwork which had absolutely nothing wrong with it.”

Cade had been tasked with keeping Baxter at work for long enough that everyone else could get here and get into position, so I guessed that was the method he’d chosen to do it. I offered the man half-stood behind the bookcase an apologetic smile and mouthed, “He doesn’t mean it.”

“I reckon it’s a power thing,” Baxter continued. Loudly. “Like it gives him warm tingles in his nether regions to lord it over people.”

“He’s your boss,” I called back, doing my best to keep any strain out of my voice.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t have to be so… so boss-like.”

Sudden panic filled me that he might say something worse. His previous suspension had not been that long ago. “Hey, sweetheart, can you come in here?”

“Why? Are you going to make the stresses of the day go away with a blow job? Now that I could get on board with. Are you going to do that thing I love where you—”

“Please come in here,” I pleaded, my cheeks fiery hot. I didn’t look around, not wanting to see the amused look on people’s faces. It didn’t matter that almost everyone in the room was gay. There was a difference between blow jobs in general and mine and Baxter’s blow jobs. And I hadn’t gotten up this morning intending to share our sex life with all and sundry.

“Shall I take my clothes off first?”

“No!” There was a note of desperation in my voice now.

“Oh, you normally like me to.”

“I do not.” Someone sniggered. Quiet, but unmistakable. “I do not,” I repeated more quietly to the room. They were going to think I was some sort of Dom, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Calisto reached up from his position behind the sofa and squeezed my elbow. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Whatever you two do behind closed doors is no one’s business but yours.”

“I don’t demand he walk around naked,” I whispered back. “I don’t know why he’s saying that.”

Footsteps sounded outside, the door creaking open a moment later. I detected a note of relief in people’s voices as they all stood in unison to shout “surprise,” but it was also possible I was just projecting.

Baxter froze in the doorway, jaw hanging open. “Wow,” he said. “So many people in the living room.” He caught sight of the banner and laughed. “Good one. It’s not everyone who gets to celebrate their twenty-fifth birthday and their forty-fourth on the same day.”

“Told you,” Calisto said from behind me.

The party wasn’t in the house, the garden affording us more space, and the day too nice, even though we were heading into evening, to be cooped up inside.

Everyone seemed to be getting along great. At Baxter’s urging, I’d let Asher take over the barbecue, the man not seeming to care that he didn’t eat meat as long as he had something to do that stopped him from having to mingle. I had to admit that food was now being produced with military precision, and probably a lot less chance of giving someone food poisoning than previously.