Page 10 of Her Sun-Drenched Billionaire

Her apartment was small and warm and full of everything she was—the binder on the desk, the sticky notes, the framed photo of her mom, the First Light mug with pen marks on the rim. It smelled like her. It felt like her. Every surface had something on it that mattered to someone, and none of it was for show.

The next morning, I woke in her bedroom with the sun flooding in.

No blackout curtains. She’d never had them, never wanted them. The light poured through the windows and filled the room without asking permission, and she was lying next to me with her hair across the pillow, still asleep, the sun turning it three shades lighter than it had been last night.

I’d spent four years in a glass house, light from every direction, alone. Here the light came with her.

She shifted in her sleep, and through the wall I could hear a door closing, footsteps in the hallway, the muffled sound of someone laughing two apartments down. The building was waking up around us, full of noise and people and life.

The sun was on her hair. The walls were thin and warm and full of sound. And for the first time in my life, someone had come looking for me.

EPILOGUE

ELIZA: 5 YEARS LATER

The glass treehouse was full of noise.

It was the good kind of noise. The kind that settled into the walls and stayed. Small rain boots by the front door, lined up next to August’s shoes because Maverick insisted on doing everything Daddy did. Crayon drawings taped to the floor-to-ceiling glass—a purple dog, a house with too many windows, something that was either a truck or a dinosaur. A booster seat at the kitchen island with a smear of peanut butter on the tray that I’d missed during cleanup.

Maverick was with my mom for the weekend. Diane had picked him up Friday afternoon with a bag of library books and a sleeve of animal crackers, and Maverick had gone to her without looking back, which was the highest compliment a three-year-old could pay.

She made the drive up at least once a month now and stayed in the guest room—the white duvet, the reading lamp, the bed that had been perfectly made and untouched for four years before I came along. She kept a toothbrush in the bathroom and a sweater in the closet.

We’d had the kitchen-table conversation. Not once—many times, in the years since the gala. The first time was three months after August and I got together. I’d driven to her house on a Sunday afternoon and sat across from her at the same table and told her everything. Why I’d chosen First Light, what I’d been carrying, the baton I’d picked up off the floor when I was fifteen. She’d cried. I’d cried. She told me she was proud of me, and then she told me she was sorry—not for quitting, but for never explaining why. She’d been too exhausted to have the conversation then, and by the time she wasn’t, it felt too late.

It wasn’t too late. It was past tense now. Healed.

August was on the cantilevered deck with his coffee, barefoot, looking at the valley the way he did every morning. I leaned against the doorframe and watched him. The beard, the jaw, the ink down both arms catching the early light. He’d filled out slightly in the past five years—broader through the chest, thicker through the arms—and it suited him. Everything about this version of him suited him.

His phone was on the kitchen island behind me. I glanced at the home screen. The BrindleIQ Connect dashboard filled it. Forty-seven active mentorship pairs had become ninety-three. He knew six of their names by heart, and he checked every week.

He turned and saw me watching him. The smile came slowly—not the almost-smile, not the beginning of one he didn’t let finish. The real one.

“Mav survived the night,” I said. “Mom just texted. He passed out before they hit the highway last night and slept through till seven.”

“That’s because she let him eat animal crackers for dinner.”

“She’s a grandmother. That’s the job.”

I stepped out onto the deck, closing the door behind me. The way he looked at me made my breath catch the same way it hadon the rooftop five years ago. Some things didn’t change. Some things just got deeper.

I crossed the warm wood to him without a word, the morning air cool against my bare legs beneath the loose sleep shorts and tank. August set his coffee down on the wide railing as I sank to my knees in front of him.

My fingers hooked into the waistband of his gray sweatpants, tugging them down his hips. No underwear—just bare skin, his cock already hard from the way he’d been watching me.

I wasn’t surprised. We’d made love twice last night, falling asleep tangled and naked in the sheets, finally alone in this house for the first time in weeks. The freedom still felt like a gift.

I took him into my mouth slowly, savoring the familiar weight and heat of him. My tongue traced the underside before I drew him deeper, hollowing my cheeks. One hand wrapped around the base while the other slipped lower, fingers gently rolling and stroking his balls the way I knew made his thighs tense and his breath hitch.

He groaned low, one hand threading into my hair—not guiding, just holding on. I worked him with long, wet pulls, taking him as deep as I could, loving the way he filled my mouth, the salt and musk of him, the quiet power in every twitch against my tongue.

“Eliza,” he rasped after a few minutes, voice rough. His fingers tightened, then eased as he nudged me back. “Up.”

I rose, lips tingling. He moved me gently toward the railing. I braced my hands on the smooth wood, the valley sprawling out below us in a sea of green and gold, morning light catching on distant rooftops and the winding roads below.

His chest pressed against my back as one broad hand slid down my stomach and into my shorts, diving straight beneath the thin fabric of my underwear. His fingers found me alreadyslick and aching. He stroked through my folds, circling my clit with just enough pressure to make my knees tremble.

“Look at it,” he murmured against my ear, voice dark and low. “All of it while I touch you.”