Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 42237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 211(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 211(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
I don’t care who sees. I don’t care about the wrinkled noses and the judgmental looks.
Fuck ‘em.
Because for the first time in my life, I’ve truly got it all. Success. Happiness. Wealth. A daughter who makes me so proud, and now?
We step out of the terminal, but before we get to the Bentley, with the driver holding the door for us, I turn, and I pull Kendall into my arms. I kiss her again—slow, deep, passionately, until she’s panting against me so hard, I can practically feel her pulse rate.
And now, I’ve also got the love of my life.
“C’mon, beautiful,” I purr into her lips. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Kendall
The breeze off the bay sweeps through my hair, tousling it in the wind as I yank the zipper of my windbreaker up.
Told you, Amy.
I grin to myself, remembering my friend trying to convince me about all the bikinis I’d be needing living in California. Except, I was right. Sure, I might need a swimsuit or two, but I swear, it’s sixty-five degrees, windy, and slightly overcast like two-thirds of the time out here in Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco. Which is actually fine, because truth be told, I love this kind of weather.
Luckily, so does Marshall, because it’s supposed to be like this all week, and he’s arriving tomorrow for a week-long visit.
My grin widens, my body tingling and my heart beating a little faster as I think about it, and how much I can’t wait to throw my arms around him and kiss him until I can’t breathe.
The distance thing does suck, but it’s not that bad. I mean, we rarely go longer than ten days without either him flying to me or flying me out to see him back on the east coast. Not everyone has that luxury. Chantelle, for instance—a girl in my calculus class I’ve made friends with—is long distance with her boyfriend, who’s studying art in Paris for the year. And they won’t see each other for months.
I make a face as I duck out of the wind. Yeah, no way could I do that. I’d go freaking crazy if I had to go longer than two weeks without Marshall’s hands on me or the taste of his lips.
I dash across the University green towards my condo, the wind whipping through my hair again. Through the clouds, a sliver of sunlight shines down, and when it catches on my ring finger, I blink at the refracted light across my face.
Okay, it’s not ostentatious, but it’s a big ring. Big enough that it turns heads. Big enough that even the most aggressive frat assholes who refuse to take “no” or “I have a boyfriend” or even “I have a fiancé who’s twice your size” can take a hint when they see it. It’s a ring that says I’m spoken for, and man do I love it.
It’s been almost a year since everything that happened with Marshall and I coming together like we did. Some things have changed a lot, some things have stayed exactly the same, and it’s all for the best. Tony ended up going to prison for tax fraud, credit card fraud, money laundering, larceny, and honestly about twenty other financial crimes.
Good fucking riddance.
My mom, obviously, divorced his ass as soon as she possible could once Marshall told her what had happened. And she’s doing okay. The financial hit was pretty big. I mean Tony seriously cleaned everything out. Her retirement, her emergency fund, my college savings, the trust my dad had set up for me as a baby. All of it. Luckily, Marshall and his team of lawyers were able to step in and start doing damage control on the rest of her assets before they could be seized due to Tony’s fuck-ups. She got to keep her house along with some other property my dad had bought years ago. Marshall helped her liquidate a lot of it, including the house, which gave her a pretty nice chunk of cash.
“I need to downsize anyways,” she’d said, smiling even though I know selling the house wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do. But she ended up with a great little condo in the city right by Central Park, and she’s currently loving living in the city again. She’s dating, too—Vincent. He’s a masseuse and part-time model, and very French, and he’s about twenty years younger than her.
And you know what? Good for her. She deserves it.
Marshall’s hedge fund took the money my mom made from selling our huge house in Greenwich and some of the other assets and rolled it into his market plays. And soon enough, mom was making really nice quarterly returns.
Amy’s living it up in Chicago. She’s kicking butt at her classes, she got really into swimming, and apparently, she’s seeing someone, though she’s been all sorts of secretive about him. Whatever it is though, she’s happy, and we also get to see each other probably once a month. Yes, there was a grace period of awkwardness with me being with Marshall, especially for the rest of last summer once everything was out in the open. For a week or two there, I was even still sleeping in my own room until she finally cornered me and demanded I “stop being a weirdo” about it and just sleep where we both knew I was going to sleep. Marshall and I did tone down the PDA in front of her though, which I think was fair.