Dark Favors

And then she kissed me.

And when Paige kissed me, it wasn’t because she owed me a favor. It wasn’t because I’d made her a promise. It was because she loved me – really loved me – and because she knew that whatever happened next, we’d figure things out together.

Just the two of us.

She kissed me over and over, and I knew right then that I really was the luckiest damn bastard in all of Ruby City, if not the entire world.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you, too.”

Epilogue

Paige

Six Months Later

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise.”

He was excited about this, I knew, and I couldn’t really argue with him about that. It took a lot to get Locke excited about things. Despite everything we’d gone through together, he was still often a closed book when it came to dealing with, well, anything. He’d been through a lot, and sometimes, pain changed a person. It made you cautious, it made you careful. In Locke’s case, it also made him attentive.

“A surprise?” I raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure how I felt about a surprise, especially after everything we’d been through. After the gala, things had gone downhill very fast for Josiah Reagan. Apparently, my existence wasn’t as secret as we all thought, and some of Josiah’s enemies were very quick to swoop in and catch him in the act of some other not-so-great activities. The very least of those activities included embezzlement and tax evasion. In the end, he went to prison for those crimes and left Annabelle in charge of his company.

As it turned out, she was a very good CEO, and she was excellent at cleaning up her father’s messes. She was able to salvage their company and despite the fact that it was in direct competition with Locke’s, the two of them managed to deal with each other in a very civil manner. Annabelle and I started having lunch once a week, and as promised, she told me all about our dad.

Locke and I...

Well, our relationship was complicated.

Messy.

It was wild and wonderful and painful and fantastic. Fawn had dropped out at the end of the semester, and I’d moved into Locke’s home with him. It was probably much too soon, but neither one of us could seem to get enough of the other, so we made it work.

Somehow, we made it happen.

And now he had a surprise.

We were driving close to campus. We’d driven to pick up a textbook I needed for an upcoming summer class, and he had been kind enough to take me in his car. The Saturn was still running, but barely. He’d tried to buy me a car, but I’d refused. I didn’t want handouts, I told him, even if my boyfriend was rich.

“So what’s the surprise?” I asked.

He stopped in front of the ugly, old beige house that I’d lived in with Fawn. Quickly, I looked at him. Then I looked back at the house. Then I looked at him again.

“It’s blue,” I said. He’d finally changed the damn color.

“I know you hated the beige,” he told me.

“So you painted?”

“I hired someone to do it,” he said. “It’s been remodeled: new flooring, new appliances.” He paused, smiling at me. “You’ll be happy to know that all of the appliances match.”

“All of them?” I asked. “Even the washer and dryer?”

“All of them,” he confirmed.

“Wait, but why?” I was a little confused by everything. Why were we at the old house I’d lived in? I didn’t live there anymore, and if I was being honest, I hadn’t really lost any sleep thinking about the old place. It had been Locke’s property, after all, and it hadn’t been something I’d ever really concerned myself with.