Everyone else spills out behind her like the worst surprise party in history.
Zoe is crying openly. Dana wipes at her eyes. Maddox looks suspiciously shiny-eyed and is beaming, and Cole is holding a bottle of champagne and wearing the smug expression of a man who will be insufferable about this for years.
“You said yes!” Penelope squeals.
I laugh through my tears, dropping down enough to hug her. “I did.”
“Are you coming home now?”
I smooth Penelope’s messy blonde hair back from her face, wipe the tears from mine, and try to calm my breathing enoughto answer her. “Yeah, Pen,” I whisper, grinning. “I’m coming home.”
She responds with a blood-curdling shriek of excitement.
A loud crack breaks through the space, making half of us jump, and Cole mutters out an apology as he sheepishly lifts the now-opened champagne bottle in explanation.
The brewery fills with sound. Laughter, crying, Penelope chanting something about me coming home, Cole pouring champagne for everyone but himself. Grayson stays pressed to me through all of it, one around my front, his chest to my back like he doesn’t want to let go.
I lock eyes with Zoe as she raises a glass in a toast.Thank you, I mouth.
She beams and slips between bodies, stopping beside me and clinking her glass against mine. “You’re not going, right?”
I snort and lift my glass to my lips. “No. Fuck the interview.”
Gray presses a kiss to my temple, lingering for just a second longer than he needs to before he caves and gets pulled away by a very, very excited four-year-old who holds him in the palm of her hand, babbling about how excited she is that we’re together.
And I have to breathe through the realization that I’ve clawed my way out of the pit my life had tumbled into months ago, that I am back out on solid ground, a life worth living finally within my grasp.
Epilogue
Carly
One Year Later
Grayson grunts against my neck,his lips grazing that sensitive spot just behind and below my ear, his gruff pants and my whines the only sound in the massive suite.
“Fuck—yes?—”
His grip tightens on the laces crisscrossing the back of my dress, using them like reins to haul my body back to him after every thrust, my dress tightening a little uncomfortably. But I do not care. I could not care less.
My forearms are the only things separating me from utter devastation — the comforter that will, no doubt, fuck up my makeup to high hell if my face touches it. His palm lands against my bare ass once, then twice, and I moan, dropping my forehead to my wrist.
“Oh my god?—”
“This fucking dress,” he growls, pushing the loose fabric of my skirt back up toward my waist, but it has a mind of its own. “Too much tulle. How am I meant to—fuck?—”
I laugh into my arm, the sound cut short by another moan as he thrusts particularly hard. “You’re not allowed to destroy my wedding dress.”
“I want itoff. Want to see you.”
“No—” I gasp, my fingers knotting in the bedding. “No, no, you’ll never get it back on me right.”
“I willfigure,” he grunts, slamming harder into me, “it out.”
“You won’t,” I grin, half gasping, knowing damn well that I’d prefer that it was off, too. “You’ll have me looking like I—ah—got dressed in the dark. They’llknow.”
His answering laugh is dark and strained and god, the sound of it only makes me wetter. “They already know. Cole saw me corner you in the elevator before the door shut.”
“No,” I whine, my cheeks heating at the thought of how ridiculously smug Cole will be when we get back downstairs.
