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The hallway is a giant ballroom-sized room with a double staircase leading up to a balcony. A chandelier glitters from the ceiling and the floor is marble and so shiny it makes the whole house feel as though it’s sitting inside a light bulb.
After the darkness that marked the beginning of our journey together, I can’t stop the tears from rising up in my eyes.
“Juliana,” Jett whispers from behind me.
I turn to find him with his hand in his pocket, his jaw tight, his eyes intense and completely focused on me.
“Yes, Jett?” I murmur.
“I love you,” he growls. “I should’ve told you a long time ago, but I wanted to wait until now until you were standing inside our home. I love you more than life itself. My whole life, I never thought I was capable of feeling this. I never thought I was capable of feeling. But you’ve woken up so much inside of me. You’ve changed me in ways I never could’ve imagined before. You’ve – fuck it, I don’t care if it sounds cheesy – you completed me, Juliana, when I didn’t even know I needed completing. I love you—”
“I love you,” I gasp.
He smiles and I smile, and then we say it at the same time, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
We draw closer with each declaration until Jett is looming over me and my cheeks are on fire with the passage of my tears.
“Juliana Crichton,” he says, using the name I was given at birth, not Smith, the name that was supposed to hide me. That just makes me cry even harder. “Will you make me the happiest man in the world?”
He falls to one knee and pulls a ring box out of his pocket. Opening it, the elegant yet large diamond glistens up at me.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I cry, forcing the words past my tears of pure joy.
“Thank God,” Jett smiles, taking the ring and slipping it onto my finger. He leaps to his feet and wraps his arms around me, spinning me around and around in our wonderfully bright entranceway. “I was worried.”
“Are you kidding?” I giggle when he puts me down. “As if I’d ever say no.”
“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he says, smoothing his hand along my cheek, wiping my tears away. “And I’ll never stop loving you, my sweet Juliana.”
Epilogue
Three Weeks Later
Jett
I jog down the beach, the water licking at my bare feet with Rebel running happily behind me. I’ve got a big smile on my face, and I don’t give a damn who sees it.
My cheeks ache from smiling so much.
These past three weeks have been heaven.
With Patricia back on the east coast setting up the closure of her business and her move to the west coast so that she and Juliana can start her empire here, Juliana and I have had the beach house to ourselves.
It’s become a personal haven just for the two of us, the perfect place to rest and relax after all the craziness that brought us together, and while we begin the process of decorating our mansion in the suburbs.
I got word from Liam a few nights ago that Igor and his men are facing an impossible case. They’re going where they belong, not the dirt with a quick end, but to a prison where they’ll be forced to contemplate all the mistakes that led them there.
We’re free, me and the woman I love, my fiancé.
I stop when I reach our section of the beach, hands on my hips, grinning as I suck in fresh lungfuls of air.
Rebel leaps around on her hind legs, doing the little dance she does every time we complete a run together, mouth open in a smile.
“Okay, girl,” I laugh, leaning down and scooping her into my hand.
She nestles against me, lapping greedily at the sweat on my bare chest.
“Jett,” Juliana says, her voice cutting across the beach.
I snap my gaze toward her immediately.
There’s a panicked note in her voice.
My mind fills with ghouls and dangers.
But then I see that she’s smiling, holding something in her hand, a small white object.
My heart begins to thump with pure blazing joy, brighter than the setting sun that tinges the whole beach a glorious shade of orange. I place Rebel down and meet her in the middle of the beach, catching her as she throws herself into my arms.
“Is it—are you—Juliana,” I gasp, hardly able to form sentences, the happiness is so bright and welcome.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she cries. “I’m pregnant, Jett. You’re going to be a daddy. I’m going to be a mommy.”
She says it like she can hardly believe it, her voice wavering with the same stunned euphoria that made me fumble my speech.
“We’re going to be parents,” I gasp, bringing my lips down to hers.
