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Oh God. Oh my God.
Behind him, Miles and Teo approach, both holding bunches of flowers. Not roses, I note absently, my mind on overload. Chrysanthemums, and gerberas, and freesias. Colorful. Summery. Happy.
The door behind me opens, and I turn as if in a dream to see our friends standing there, grinning. They file inside, one after the other. All of them. There are even some of the Damage Boys with their girls.
I’m feeling faint. Because all this…
“Do you know what day it is today?” Dylan asks, drawing my attention back to him.
“Oh God. Is it an anniversary?” Is this what this is?
I can’t keep track. Except for his birthday, and the kids’.
“It will be an anniversary.” He opens his hand, revealing a small box, and then he opens that, too, revealing a ring. “If you accept this ring.”
I’m feeling hot and cold. I open my mouth to speak, but then Miles and Teo walk toward me, their faces serious, holding up the flowers to me.
“Please marry Dylan,” they tell me in unison, and I giggle even as tears well up in my eyes. “Please be our mom. You make us all happy.”
Holy crap.
I take the two bunches and crouch down to kiss them. When I straighten, Dylan is standing before me, holding the ring.
“What do you say?” he asks quietly, and for a moment I forget that all our friends are standing behind us, silent, seeing only him. “I thought for a long time how to ask you to marry me. And then I realized it wasn’t only me who should ask, but my brothers, too. Because they love you as much as I do. What do you say, Tess?”
“Yes.” I practically fall in Dylan’s arms and he laughs, catching me. “Oh God, yes. It was perfect.”
Suddenly there’s applause and wolf-whistles, and Teo and Miles come to put their arms around us, too. I adjust my hold to bring them into the circle. I don’t even know where the ring is, if it has fallen and vanished through a crack in the floor.
I don’t care. I have everything I want, right here.
This is my family, and I love them more than anything in the world.
PART IV
Rafe and Megan
This Is War
Chapter Twenty Two
Rafe
The police station is a maze, but I pretend I know what I’m doing as I lead Zane and Dakota through it.
I insisted to be the one to accompany them. I’d been away when they found the house, and I felt… I dunno. Like I let Zane down. I know it’s not true, I know someone had to keep the tattoo shop running, but the moment I heard about him going to the police, I volunteered.
No regrets.
Except I hate police stations. I hate police bureaucracy, and procedure, and the rigid order facing you when you fucking fall apart.
Like I did when my family was killed. When I had to recount the events that led to the death of my parents and sister to an officer while I was in the hospital, the stab wound in my shoulder stitched up and bandaged, my mind an echoing void.
And again later, when I was discharged from there.
And again.
I’ve never gotten along with the law. My father was a Mafioso. I fought in an illegal fight club to find out who killed him. As far as I’m concerned, the law has failed me time and again. It has failed lots of people around me. Too rigid. Too exact.
