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“We’re safe,” I confirmed. “Thanks to you. Austin’s suspicions will be meaningless after this. And come Monday, he’ll be reminded of the NDA he signed when he joined our company. He’s done.” I clasped him tighter until there wasn’t a millimeter of air between our bodies. “But you and I aren’t. Not by a long shot.”
“Did you mean it?” Rowe demanded breathlessly. He wrapped his arms around my neck and stood on his tiptoes, peppering kisses over my face and neck, everywhere he could reach. “What you said back there?”
“The part where I said you were the love of my life? Where I said you were my greatest adventure? Where I said I planned to be by your side forever? Fuck, yes, all of it. And don’t you dare make a liar out of me, Sterling Chase.”
He laughed out loud and looked up at me, eyes shining with a kind of unconditional love I couldn’t have purchased with all my billions, couldn’t possibly have earned in the short time we’d known each other, but which Rowe had bestowed on me anyway… and I would do my best to deserve.
“I’m still scared, you know. I still have no clue what our future might look like… but I want it. This.You. I want to join your group chat and let you buy me ridiculous tuxedos. I want you to meet my mom and talk to me for hours about Daisy Chain or whatever project we dream up next. I want to make sure Silas never gets near your toaster again, and I want to spend some more time talking to Dev’s horse. I want us to betogether. Rowe and Bash. No matter which mega mansion we end up in.”
“Wherever we live, you’ll make it a home.” I pressed a soft kiss to his head before moving my lips down to his ear. “Whatever Sterling Chase wants, he gets.”
“And if Sterling Chase wants a fairy-tale ending?” he whispered, running his thumb over my cheekbone. “With a handsome prince, and true love forever, and the whole shebang?”
“Then I’d say we’re halfway there.” I grinned, feeling his body relax against mine as it began to move to the beginning of music coming from the other room. “Because I’ve found my Prince. And I could not love him more.”
EPILOGUE
ROWE
“Babe, the estimated income to you from the sale of Daisy Chain is in thebillions,” Bash told me for the thousandth time. “Can you please tell Lea to find someone else to deliver burritos on your birthday? I’d like to take you out. Hell, I’d like to take you to the Caribbean, honestly. But I’d settle for a nice dinner here in the city.”
He looked up from his phone with an accusatory glare.
Seeing him sitting at the rough wooden picnic table in my parents’ backyard was still a mindfuck. I couldn’t believe we were here in Linden. My parents seemed to like him, even though they took everything he said with a grain of salt. Apparently, rich folk from the big city were known as big talkers.All husk and no kernel, if ya know what I mean, my father had said with a knowing nod after Bash had bragged about how big Daisy Chain was going to be in the market.
I knuckle-punched Bash’s arm. “Stop saying the word ‘billions,’ or I’m going to puke all over you. You know how that much money makes me feel.”
It had been three months since the fiasco at the Innovation Awards. Three months since the Sterling Chase legal team had discovered clear evidence of Austin’s conspiracy to commit fraud in three other projects at the company. It had been enough to negotiate a settlement along with his silence to ensure the company and its owners would be protected.
Thanks to the legal team’s efforts, spearheaded energetically by Bash, we’d been able to move forward with Project Daisy Chain at lightning speed. I was thrilled with the result but completely overwhelmed by the realization of what it all meant for me personally.
My life as I’d known it had changed in the course of one summer. I’d gone from a dead-broke Burrito Bandito to a rich-as-god tech startup entrepreneur almost overnight. My parents didn’t believe any of it. Bash had offered to fly them to New York to show them around the office and talk to them about the project’s future, but they’d refused.
My father had claimed he couldn’t take the time off work, and my mother admitted to not wanting to miss the summer craft fair season where she sold the handmade crocheted items she’d spent all winter making.
Instead, Bash had flown us to Linden. The plan was to spend a few days decompressing after our whirlwind visit to Wheaton, Illinois to enjoy the annual all-night flea-market Saturday night. I wasn’t sure which part of the weekend had been the bigger culture shock for him—shopping for antique home furnishings while eating fried dough and listening to a Backstreet Boys tribute band, or meeting my parents and driving through Linden’s single stoplight on the ride from the airport.
Either way, the shock didn’t seem to faze him much. Bash was still determined to have me officially move in with him in the city, which was something of a joke since we hadn’t spent a night apart since the original Hamptons trip.
During the summer, we’d spent almost every weekend at the Hamptons house, soaking up the sun, sand, and each other with more passion than I ever could have imagined. But since Bash had finally convinced me to take the interior design class I’d been eyeing for weeks and Constance Baxter-Hicks had a year’s worth of design clients lined up for me, I had a feeling our lives were about to become much busier this fall. Knowing I’d come home to Bash each and every night to ground myself made all these big changes feel exciting rather than scary.
“Who told you about that shift?” I asked. “Are you texting with Joey?”
Bash nodded and tapped on his screen. “He said you’d promised him the use of the beach house during Labor Day weekend and that if he goes, you’ll have to work his shifts.” He looked up at me. “I thought he worked for that events place. Whatever happened to that job?”
I grabbed the phone out of his hand and typed out a message.
Bash: stop blabbing to my boyfriend.
Joey: your boyfriend, my cousin? Blab about what?
I rolled my eyes.
Bash: this is Rowe. If you want me to work your Burrito shifts, you might not want to piss me off by getting all up in my shit.
Joey: Sorry, bro. He wanted to plan a surprise thing for you. I had to tell him you were working.
I looked up at Bash. “You were planning a surprise for my birthday?”
