Page 81 of Crave

Epilogue

Dallas

WHEN CHRISTMAS EVE ARRIVED FIVE DAYS LATER, there was cause for celebration. Thanks to Brody and Cal’s fast cleanup job, law enforcement hadn’t been able to find any trace of our presence out at the Christmas tree farm, and the Feds had officially pulled out of Blood Moon in a line of unmarked black SUVs the following day. It had only taken me and Lacey forty-eight hours and two bags of kitty treats to locate Fancy, which boded well for our chances at parenthood. And, oh yeah. She’d agreed to marry me. So I was pretty much on top of the world.

West, Hayden and Brody had gone all out decking out the ranch for our traditional Christmas Eve celebration. A plump ten-foot fir stood in the corner over by the fireplace, its branches festooned with strings of popcorn and cranberry, candy canes and bright red bows, as well as the sparkly plastic golden retriever-proof balls we’d had to get last year after Major melted down with puppy happiness when the honey-smoked ham was brought out and charged the tree. West and I had nearly died laughing. The tips of Brody’s ears had flamed. Apparently the secret high-intensity dog obedience courses were supposed to have had the last of Major’s puppy misbehavior sorted, which was why this year, in addition to moving Mom’s nutcrackers to the mantle and nixing Hayden’s spray snow designs on the Christmas village, everyone had a shift keeping the Furnado in arms reach.

“Who’s hungry?” Coming through from the kitchen, I cleared off space on the serving table. “We’ve got tamales, hickory smoked chicken wings with Ranch, fried mozzarella sticks, stuffed mushrooms, and guacamole with onion and cilantro.”

My brothers descended on the food… well, like a pack of wolves.

“You should sit down.” Cal clapped me on the back. “When’s the last time you got a night off?”

“Nah. Everyone knows this is the best night of the year to cook.” Loading up a plate for me and one for Lacey, I edged my way across the room.

Perched between Hayden and Naomi at the bottom of the stairs, Lacey was rubbing Major’s ears, the golden’s head flopped languidly in her lap. She had on leggings and a deep cranberry cowlneck top, her smoky eyeliner setting off her pale gray eyes perfectly. Seeing me approach, Major leaped to his feet. Naomi grabbed the bright red halter that had been decorated with jingle bells and held him in place, preventing him from tearing off into the kitchen.

“Not exactly keeping it on the down low, big guy.” Passing off one of the plates to Lacey, I snuck a look over one shoulder and tore off a piece of hickory smoked chicken wing.

Tail thumping happily, Major inhaled the morsel from my palm.

“That chicken organic?” Brody barked.

Lacey snorted, leaning in to stage whisper. “We had a deal. No one tells him about all the cookies and Auntie Lacey doggie-naps Snickerdoodle to go running in the morning.”

Clearly besotted, Major gazed up at her and barked.

I grinned. “Sorry, dude, she’s taken.”

Lacey nibbled on a cheesy breadstick, humming under her breath in pleasure. “You remembered the extra spicy pickles, too.”

“You’re carrying Cupcake. That means my job is to feed both of you, check off everything on the honey-do list and make sure you don’t try to do anything crazy like move an oven by yourself.”

She tapped the end of my nose. “Well damn, Caldwell, there goes the after party.”

Over in the corner of the room by the fireplace, Simon and Juliet were sitting close together, engrossed in conversation over glasses of eggnog. Shortly after everything came out, Lacey and I brought dinner over to Juliet’s house. Not gonna lie, there were some tense moments. I mostly listened, answering questions about my family honestly as they came up. After dinner, I did the dishes while Lacey and her mom made popcorn and turned on the Gilmore Girls. After the kitchen was cleaned up, I slipped Lacey my keys and whispered that I’d walk home so she could hang with her mom. The following week, Simon drove up from Austin and we all went out for burgers and sweet potato fries at a diner downtown. And maybe it was my imagination, but by the end of the night, after exchanging crazy Fancy stories over a plate of onion rings (because of course Simon was awesome and had a cat, too), things just felt like they were in a better place. It was going to take time, rebuilding my relationship with Lacey and her mom the way I should have from the start. I was just grateful that now I had the chance.

On the far wall, the TV abruptly switched over from the holiday movie that had been playing to a news segment.

“There was a vampire sighted in downtown Chicago,” Lacey murmured as they began playing three-year-old footage of the traffic cop’s arrest of #DashCamVlad, the same grainy video everyone around the world had watched so many times we all had the lines and blocking memorized by now. “Dozens of witnesses reported seeing him flash out.”

“What are they playing at now?” The shot passed over Vlad’s face, stirring something in my memory. But— No. It couldn’t be. I blinked, shaking it off.

Catching Lacey’s hand, I tugged her towards the back door. “Got a second? There’s something I want to show you.”

“If you’ve rigged up the patio with silly string and air horns, can I just say you already did that two years ago, and I nearly peed my pants.”

“Like I could forget. You charged across the street, picked up a brick paver and threw it through The Spoke’s front window.”

“While Brody looked on from the parking lot,” she reminded me.

That had been priceless. You two need to figure your shit out, my oldest brother had told me, and then climbed back into his cruiser without another word.

We stepped outside on to the back patio and Lacey gasped. The clear cold night was perfectly cloudless, the air crisp and smoky, a pale crescent moon burning at the edge of the horizon. Thousands of tiny white twinkly lights hung from the rafters of the gazebo, making the air around us shimmer like a constellation of stars. Fat red poinsettias sat on the wrought-iron table. Around them, tiny tea lights shimmered in a crystal bowl.

Lacey covered her mouth. “How did you—”

When she spun around, I was down on one knee, a dark blue velvet ring box in hand. We’d gone to pick it out the day after she accepted my proposal. She’d chosen a square cut diamond set into a white gold band with our initials engraved where the ring would rest against her pulse point. I would wear a plain white gold band as its mate.