Page 31 of Owl’s Cherished Mate

Bonnie was special.

We stayed like that for a while, wrapped up in each other, breathing hard, and not letting go. Her fingers traced slow lines down my spine. My forehead rested against her shoulder.

“I didn’t plan on ending tonight in a shed with you.” She chuckled.

“Better than a police station.”

She laughed at that, and the sound hit me harder than the kiss had.

I pulled back enough to look at her. Even in the dark, I could make out her face and the curve of her mouth. I reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and held her stare.

“I love you,” I said.

The words just came out, the way my hand had found hers in the truck earlier. There was no thought behind it, no calculation, it was just instinctual.

Her breath caught.

“Say it again,” she whispered.

Relief powered through me.

“I love you.”

Her hand came up and rested against my jaw. “I love you too,” she said. “I think I have for a while. I just didn’t know what to call it.”

She kissed me again, slow and sure, and I held her knowing this was the best moment of my whole damn life.

Bonnie chose me.

This amazing, strong, beautiful woman. She knew what I was, who I was, and she chose me back.

That was everything.

EPILOGUE - BONNIE

I sat at my corner table in the library, laptop open, pen poised to take more notes, and watched the front desk from across the room. Gray and Lawson sat side by side—Lawson in a chair he’d dragged over from one of the reading tables last week and hadn’t moved since. They had a damaged book between them, and Gray was showing Lawson how to smooth glue along the seam of the spine. Lawson’s fingers were clumsy, but he was trying.

“Too much,” Gray said, his tone gentle.

Lawson paused. Studied the area. “How much, then?”

“Half that. A thin layer.”

Gray scraped off the excess and Lawson tried again.

This was life now.

One month had passed since that night at the docks. Lawson’s hearing had gone better than I’d expected, probably because Sheriff Wick had spoken on his behalf, which I hadn’t seen coming. He’d told the judge that Lawson had cooperated fully, that the adults involved had fled and left a minor to take the fall, and that in his experience, this was a kid who’d been used, not a kid headed for trouble. The judge had assigned community service, counseling, and a probation period. If Lawson stayed clean, there would be no record following him through life.

He was staying clean. I would make sure of it.

He’d done twenty of his forty community service hours so far—beach cleanup and dock maintenance, supervised by a guy who reported back to Sheriff Wick. He went to counseling every Tuesday and never talked about it afterward, which was fine. He didn’t need to talk about it with me. He just needed to go.

He hadn’t mentioned Darren or Cade since that night. Not once.

Sheriff Wick had brought them both in for questioning, but they’d had alibis. Airtight ones, two people willing to swear they’d been somewhere else all night. The only camera facing that stretch of the docks hadn’t worked in months, so it came down to our word against theirs. And Lawson was the one caught standing next to stolen property.

Imagine that.