Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
I wanted to hate her, but in the scheme of it, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have any space left inside myself for the animosity to infiltrate. No room for the fear, humiliation, and shame.
I was letting it go.
All of it.
And I was doing it today.
Otto peered down at me, and his brow arched in speculation. “You want to tell me what he was talking about when he claimed you killed his brother?”
I curled deeper into his hold. “I don’t know why I was always so afraid of telling you.”
Unease rolled through his being. “Tell me what?”
“That I followed you that night. That I knew what you were doing. That you were somehow going to go and make the ultimate sacrifice. Thinking that it would make up for what happened to Haddie and me. But I couldn’t let that happen.”
He slowed a fraction, and he pulled me even closer as old pain wisped from his mouth. “It was you.”
My throat clogged off, and he hugged me tighter.
“You were the one who saved me. Gave me a new lease on life.”
I peeked up at him. “Because I always knew you were destined to spend this life with me.”
“Fuck, Raven, you…” He trailed off.
I looked up at him without shame. “I never regretted it, Otto. To me, what I did was the exact same thing as what you all do for Sovereign Sanctum. Stopping an atrocity from happening. And no, I don’t love the way I had to go about it, but would I take it back? Change it?”
I stared up at him as the rays of sunlight speared through the breaks in the trees, the glittering rays flaring around him like beacons.
“Never.” It was an urgent whisper. “Because you were always worth it to me. Because I would always fight for you, the way you promised to fight for me.”
The wings on his throat thrashed as he swallowed. “You found me at my lowest.”
“Just the way you always found me in mine. And now it’s time we both rose above it.”
He inhaled, those arms strong, and his boots crunched over the uneven terrain.
When we made it to his truck, he angled around to the passenger side. He opened the door and carefully settled me inside. He shut it and ran back around the front, sliding into the driver’s seat.
He turned it over and let the engine roar to life, then he turned to look at me, hand gentle as he brushed the pad of his thumb over the tiny freckle near my lip. “Thought I was going to die when I got to Moonflower and found you missing.”
“Were you coming to tell me how much you love me, my burly bear?”
I wound as much lightness into it as I could manage, though it was thick and soggy.
“Yeah, baby, I was coming to shout it from the rooftops and pray you’d shout it back.”
Love filled my chest to overflowing, years of it that had been shrouded and contained.
Love that was no longer trapped.
I blinked and another tear fell. “You’re my favorite person in the world, Otto Hudson.”
Otto reached down and hooked his pinky with mine. “And you, Raven Tayte, are mine.”
Then he dragged me across the bench seat to tuck me to his side. He put the truck in drive, then curled his arm around my shoulders as he whipped a U-turn in the road. “And now, Little Moonflower, I think it’s time you learned exactly what that means.”
EPILOGUES
Raven
I rearranged the flowers in the bouquet that I’d placed in the middle of the small table under the wall of windows in the great room at Otto’s house.
Correction: Our house.
It turned out I hadn’t been looking for my own place. I’d been looking for where I belonged. Where my heart and my feet and my body would be set free.
Sunlight shined in through the windows where they sheared in through the dense woods of the forest that surrounded the house, their glittering rays glinting over the lake that sat low in the distance.
It was breathtaking.
Stunning.
I pulled an iris from the bouquet and resituated it, making sure the arrangement was perfect.
A giant, full array of my favorite flowers.
Irises and lilies.
Tulips and hydrangeas.
Moonflowers, of course.
All surrounded by lush leaves and green foliage.
Pride swelled inside me when I thought of my little shop and what it’d become. What it stood for.
For the moments in our lives that marked us.
Weddings and anniversaries and birthdays.
Get wells and funerals and apologies.
Achievements and milestones.
And sometimes, they just represented the day to day.
But to me, each of those days were a milestone. Something to be remembered and cherished.
Each a reminder that my wings were no longer clipped.
This girl had decided to soar, and I no longer held back.
Excitement blazed in my belly when I heard the low grumble of a motorcycle coming up the drive in the distance, that anticipation growing to a furor as the sound of the garage door rolling up echoed through the walls before it wound back down.