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“The first time I met Gabriel Stryker, I kicked a door straight into his face. It was an accident, but one I’d gladly repeat over and over again.”
“Sounds painful for me.”
I grinned and kept reciting. “Because that one kick sparked a chain of events that led to the grandest entanglement of my tangled life.”
“More promising.”
“Because without that one kick I never would have fallen in love with him.”
He craned his neck upward, capturing my lips with his.
Our first kiss had been a tease of what could be, the birth of a new world of possibilities. We’d shared a lot of kisses since. Some of them were chaste and sweet, some desperate and wanton. We’d shared aRed Fish, Blue Fish-style rainbow of kisses, covering every variety except this one that was happening right now.
This kiss said something entirely new. It saidI love you.
A throat cleared. Loudly.
I reluctantly pulled back, giving Gabriel one more small peck.
The train was still bumping into us. And now Harold and the police were here, too.
“We’re going to need your statements,” one of the officers said.
“And a wellness check for the kidnapping victim,” said another.
Those were good things, and I was already pretty sure Gabriel was all right, but I really didn’t want to let him go even for a second.
“I love you, too, Layana,” he said with words that he’d already told me with our kiss. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. I went on television to prove it to you.”
“What?”
“Today. After the meeting where I told Biotabloom Dynamics that I was done bowing to their whims.”
“What?”
The officers gently removed me from Gabriel, apparently unwilling to wait for us to finish catching up. They untied him from the tracks, and that was good. The little pink train was finally able to continue on its way. We got checked out, gavestatements, and then held hands and watched as Dani was stuffed, cackling, into the back of a squad car.
I would never have imagined our reunion would go like this. In the grand scheme of things, our mistakes and our hurts didn’t feel so big. When I looked in Gabriel’s eyes, and his smile formed a little dimple on his cheek, I knew everything was going to be all right. We loved each other.
Maybe we had needed to make each other crazy to push us into the people we were always meant to be. We were better for it, and best together. Our destiny was heading right on track.
EPILOGUE
LAYANA
“Ohmyfreakinggobsmackers.” I gasped, wheezed, and fought to fill my lungs with cold air. Searing, clenching pain rippled through my limbs and twisted my insides. “You’re killing me, you know that, right?”
Moonlight cast the neighborhood in a soft glow. This hour, this glow—they were only meant to be seen by werewolves and vampires and whatever unfortunate schmuck was stuck working the graveyard shift at Eterni-Tea. Regular people were supposed to be asleep.
Gabriel stood there in his spandex, looking like the sexiest bumblebee in the world with an amused grin on his handsome face, watching me keel over. “It’s not much farther.”
“Running is the devil’s candy. You told me it would be fun. I trusted you.”
“You can do it. We’re almost back to the house.”
“I can’t. You’re going to have to carry me, or leave me here. I can curl up in a ball on the sidewalk, like roadkill. Come back for me with the car.”
“It’s not that bad.”
