EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
Kevin
Skye’s father’s death was ruled a suicide. Whether or not it was doesn’t matter. I could never let her harbor that guilt. He got the ending he deserved.
Now that I’ve been with Skye, I can’t imagine being with anyone else. She knows where my worst demons crawl, but she faces them anyway. I can speak to her phantoms and calm their eerie cries.
I watch her while she sleeps, but not because I can’t sleep. She helps lull me into much-needed rest. It’s because I can’t keep my eyes off her. She’s as necessary as the breath in my body or the heartbeat in my chest.
She yawns and rolls over to take shelter beneath my arm. I grab a small box from the drawer beside the bed, flip it open, and look at the ring inside it.
Of course I’m going to ask her to marry me. Before her, I couldn’t imagine continuing the life I was living. I know what path I was on, and it was nothing but destruction. I was on the path of war, and Skye became the armistice.
“Good morning,” she says through another yawn.
“I’ll make it a better one,” I tell her as I squeeze the box in my hand.
As I open the velvet box and show her what waits inside, she cocks her head.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. She tries to fight the smile creeping across her face.
“Skye, will you marry me?” I ask. My breath catches in my throat. My nerves tighten my stomach and make me feel like I’m going to throw up. I swallow hard as she hesitates.
“But . . .” She shakes her head. “I’m too fucked up to be a wife, Kevin.”
“Fucked up or not, I want all of you,” I tell her with complete certainty. “I’ll chase off your demons and you can soothe mine.”
We’ll never be free from our demons. We’ll always be a slave to our memories. But she gives me the strength I need to face down the monstrosities that haunt my nightmares, even when the monster is me. No matter how intimidating or ruthless the phantoms are that haunt her past, I’m stronger. I’m more real than they can ever be. No one will lay their hands on her again. Including me.
She cries, sending fat tears rolling down her perfect cheeks. “How?”
I touch her face. “Because you’re me. All the good parts of me, at least. When I look at you, I see myself, but it’s the me I was before the wars. It’s me before I became bitter and angry about the world. And I fucking love that me because of you.” I kiss her. “I love you, Skye. Please say yes.”
I need her to say yes.
I need her.
She kisses me, leaving the salty taste of her tears on my lips. “Yes,” she whispers against my mouth. “A thousand times, yes.”
I draw away from her so I can look at her face. I never expected the whirlwind of a girl who burst through the church doors that day to be the cataclysmic event that changed the course of my life. She taught me what it meant to love something more than I hated myself.