Page 81 of The Rook’s Obsession

The surprise on his face lasts about half a second before it turns into something I don’t see from him nearly often enough: a full, real grin. It changes his whole face and makes him look, just for a second or two, like the boy from my dream. The one who met me on the dock.

“A dog,” he repeats.

“A big one. With a yard like this, it would be criminal not to.”

He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the kitchen until he’s standing in front of me. His hands settle on the counter on either side of me before he leans in close, his forehead almost touching mine. “We can get a dog.”

“A rescue.”

“A rescue,” he agrees.

“And I’m naming it.”

“I wouldn’t dare interfere.”

I look up at him, at those pale blue eyes that have seen the worst of me and the best of me and everything in between, and I feel something I don’t have a practiced response for. There’s no protocol here, no contingency plan. It’s just warmth that spreads outward from the center of my chest, filling the empty rooms of this house the way I intend to fill them for real.

“Thank you,” I whisper. Not just for the house. For the key. For the years he held onto something. For coming for me when I walked away, and for giving me space when I needed it.

He leans down to kiss me. Slow, unhurried, the way you kiss someone when you know there’s no rush. For the first time in either of our lives, there’s nowhere else to be.

When he pulls back, I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Steady and sure. “I have one more condition,” I murmur against his shirt.

“I thought it was non-negotiable. Singular.”

“I’m adding another one.”

“Of course you are.”

I pull back enough to look up at him. “You will never use that syringe on me again.”

He considers this, narrowing his eyes. “What if you walk away again?”

“Then you chase me like a normal person.”

This time, his grin is softer but just as real. “Deal.”

I take his hand and lead him through the empty house, room by room. As we walk, I start to see it. Not memories. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But something just as valuable. A future. Ours. Built from scratch in this beautiful, empty house, which we’ll fill together.

It’s the most ordinary thing I can imagine, and I’ve never wanted anything more.

EPILOGUE

NICK

Six months later

The golden retriever is eating a hamburger off the table.

I watch it happen in slow motion: the careful approach, the delicate lift of the head, the precise extraction of the patty from the bun. Then the shameless retreat across the yard with ketchup on her nose. By the time I open my mouth to say something, it’s over. She’s under the oak tree with her tail wagging, looking at me with an expression that says she knows exactly what she did and has no intention of apologizing for it.

“Bonnie stole another burger,” I call over my shoulder.

“Then you shouldn’t have left them unattended,” Ivy replies from the porch, where she’s sitting on the swing with a glass of lemonade and the chihuahua in her lap. The chihuahua—Clyde, because she thought she was hilarious, and I didn’t have the heart to argue with her—is asleep on his back with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. He weighs roughly six pounds and rules this house with an iron paw. Bonnie outweighs him by sixty pounds and defers to him in all matters. There was no hope of stopping at just one, and I didn’t have the heart to shut down Ivy’s dream.

This is my life now. Stolen hamburgers, a six-pound dictator, and a woman on a porch swing who can disassemble a rifle in under a minute and also makes the best cacio e pepe I’ve ever tasted.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.