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Aria throws herself into me so hard, she nearly topples me over. But I manage to catch her and stand with her in my arms. Her feet are dangling above the floor and her arms are wrapped around my neck. She looks at me with eyes that are bright and shining and she presses her mouth to mine, giving me a fiery and passionate kiss that nearly steals my breath.
“It’s more than crazy. But you’re right… when you know, you know,” she says. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you too, Silas. Of course, I’ll marry you.”
My heart swells so much, it feels too large for my chest. I spin Aria around and as the other diners in the restaurant applaud, I kiss her. I finally set her back down on her feet and slip the ring out of the box. Aria’s hand is trembling so hard, it takes me a few tries to get the ring lined up with her finger. I laugh when I’m finally able to slide it onto her hand and she holds it up, staring at with an awestruck look on her face.
“I can’t believe this,” she whispers.
“I can’t believe I’ve gotten this lucky,” I reply. “I love you, Aria Benson.”
She lowers her hand and raises her gaze to mine. More tears spill down her cheeks, but she lets them flow and gives me a smile that melts my heart.
“And I love you, Silas Gable,” she says.
Epilogue
Aria
One year later
I close the door behind me and carry my bookbag into the kitchen and drop it on the counter before fishing a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. I twist off the cap then step through the French doors that lead out to the back deck and stare at the waves crashing upon the shoreline as I drink. I breathe deeply, inhaling the heavy aroma of salt in the air and close my eyes, listening to the sound of the gulls crying overhead.
The sun is starting to sink toward the horizon, casting the sky in fiery shades of red and orange as it glitters like gold upon the surface of the Pacific. The cool ocean breeze soothes my skin and stirs my hair. There’s just something about looking out at the vast and endless ocean that puts things in perspective for me and soothes my nerves when I’ve got a heavy load on my mind. It puts me at ease and brings me peace.
It's been almost a year and I still can’t believe that this is my life. That this is my home. A year ago, I was living in a rundown rat trap in inner city LA. I was living in a place where your odds of getting shot just walking down the street were pretty high. I was working a degrading job in a bar where I was pawed at night after night and slinging drugs on the side just to make ends meet. Just to keep my brother safe on the other side of the country.
Now though, I’m living in a beachfront palace in Laguna. Thanks to Silas, I’m a student at UC Irvine and am on track to take my LSATs and get into the law school there. And to make myself feel useful and like I’m not completely mooching off him, when I’m not studying or prepping for my LSATs, I’m working for my husband. I’m doing the secretarial work and performing all the other tasks the office grunts usually do. He’s offered to hire somebody to help me, but I refuse. He’s paying my tuition and is encouraging me to chase my dreams so I feel it’s only right that I help contribute where I can.
I enjoy the work and honestly, I’m getting an education in how the law works that not even school is providing. Silas has opened his own firm and has attracted a lot of big name, high dollar clients. Though he feared it would be a struggle, the reputation he’d earned at his previous firm brought in the clients and his firm is proving to be a resounding success. And as a special bonus to him, his previous firm has been diminished and is hemorrhaging clients and money.
Though we’re living full time in Laguna, we still have the estate in Hidden Hills, but I’ve been encouraging Silas to sell it. Or rent it out. We don’t need two homes and it just seems kind of wasteful to have a house sitting empty and unused. But that’s my practical and frugal nature. I understand the house still holds some sentimental value to him, being the home he grew up in and all. So, I’m not pressuring him to do anything with it. I’ll let him decide what to do with it in his own time.
I wander back through the house, touching all the furniture and accessories that I pass. There’s some part of me that keeps expecting to wake up one day and find that this has all been a dream and I’m still living in that hovel in LA. But every morning I wake up to the sound of the waves crashing, the scent of the sea, and a husband whose desire for me hasn’t diminished one iota in the year we’ve been together. Making love every morning is the absolute perfect way to start a day. As long as there’s coffee afterward.
I walk down the stairs and through the breezeway we added that leads to the small structure Silas had built to serve as his home office. I open the door and step into the office’s back room where all the supplies are kept. I joke that it’s our secret passage, but since clients come in through the front door, it kind of is a secret passage. I run my fingertips along the top of the worktable that stands in the middle of the room and smile fondly as the memories play through my mind like a highlight reel.
Silas and I christened the worktable the very night we had it installed. And more than a few times since. He says there’s something about office sex that’s kind of dirty but kind of thrilling. He’s right, of course. I’d never had occasion to think about it until that day he went down on me in his office at his old firm and I have to say, like he says, it was kind of dirty but also kind of thrilling.
A two-way window sits in the wall next to the door that leads into the office. I take a peek out and see that he’s alone and on the phone, so I open the door and lean against the jamb, just listening to him talk. Silas has his back to me, facing the front of his office, and runs a hand through his hair as he shakes his head.
“I’m not sure how many times I need to say no, Doug,” Silas says. “You guys showed me what you thought I was worth when you gave Daniel that partnership instead of me.”
“It wasn’t my decision to make, Silas. I told you that,” his old boss’ voice comes through the speaker.
“But you didn’t fight it either. You didn’t fight for me, Doug.”
Silas’ voice is tight and cold, but I know Silas is enjoying this. Every couple of weeks, one of the partners in his old firm calls and tries to win him back. The fact that his old clients—and their rich friends—have left the old firm and followed Silas has them scrambling and trying to make amends. They’ve been pulling out all the stops in an effort to bring him—and all the clients and money he brings in—back into the fold. And Silas loves these calls because he gets a chance to rub their noses in it.
“We all make mistakes, Silas,” Doug says. “But we can correct this one.”
“Yeah, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life too. But I’ve never undervalued somebody the way you guys undervalued me,” I say. “I should thank you guys though. If you guys hadn’t fucked me the way you did, I might not have thought to chart my own course. If you’d given me that partnership, I might have just stayed where I was, content and earning. But you guys inadvertently showed me there is a better path for me.”
There’s another pause as he listens then chuckles.
“Speaking of Daniel, how’s he doing now that he’s a partner? He earning for the firm?”
“He’s…he’s a disaster.”
“I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m really not.”
