She shrugs, and the oversize sweatshirt she’s wearing slips off her shoulder. “I don’t know.” She wraps her other arm around me. “But as long as he’s far away from us, I’m happy.”
I lean in to kiss her lips, carefully, because of the cut near the corner of my mouth. “As long as you’re happy, ladybug, I’m happy. I fucking love you.”
“I love you too. Now ... are you ever going to tell me what your real last name was? I’ve been dying to ask, but there hasn’t really been a good time.”
I grin. “You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“It was Champion. Gabriel Champion.”
Her mouth drops open, and she starts to giggle as she shakes her head. “Only you would want to upgrade to Legend.”
I steal another kiss. “Just wait until I make you a Legend, ladybug.”
Epilogue
Scarlett
“Areyou sure you’re up to this? We don’t have to haul the picnic basket all the way out here. We can sit by the sidewalk,” I say to Gabriel as he leads me to a spot in Central Park on Monday morning.
He’s black and blue, which pains me to see, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Especially not after he told me how much money he’d bet on himself, and with the odds, what he’d won.
Legend will be his, free and clear, next week. Well, almost. He’s making Q a full partner.
“Only so I don’t have to feel guilty about him working all the damned time.”
But I know it’s more than that. Gabriel wants to share his good fortune with his best friend, and I’m fully in support of it.
Bump asked yesterday if he could go back to Meryl’s center to see the kids, and that’s where we’re headed tomorrow.
I had a nightmare after the fight, mostly about Lucy. When a ghostly Rolo entered my dream, I woke up from a dead sleep. Gabriel held me and promised it would get better, adding if it didn’t, he’d insist on taking me to see Kitty at the gentleman’s club since it worked for Bump. His joke did make me feel better, but I passed on the titty bar all the same.
Instead, I made an appointment to go back to Dr.Grand’s office, but this time to see someone specializing in trauma. In the meantime, I’m writing in my gratitude journal twice a day, because I have even more to be grateful for now. I won’t take waking up in the morning for granted. A brush with death will do that for you.
“Are you saying that because you want to get back to the store so you can help rearrange everything because Crey’s wife is coming?”
Holly Wix called me last night, and she’s coming in on Wednesday for her first appointment at Curated. To say I’m nervous is an understatement.
I whip my head around to look at him. “Miss a breakfast picnic with you to rearrange things? Never.”
He chuckles as he sets the basket on the ground. “I almost believe that.”
I come toward him and slide my arms around him, gingerly, because of the bruising. “You know there’s nothing I’d rather do than spend time with you. Always. Nothing will ever change that.”
“Good, because this would be pretty awkward if you said otherwise.” Gabriel peels my arms away from him as I stare in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
His answer is to walk another dozen steps away from me and take a knee ...on a rug?
“Is that the rug from your office?” I stare at it in confusion, wondering how the hell I didn’t see it as we walked up.
Gabriel’s lips curve into that incredible half smile of his as I close the distance between us.
“How ... what ...” I can’t put two words together in a coherent fashion, so I go silent and wait for him to explain.
“I was going to wait until we were done eating, but I can’t. I can’t wait another fucking second to ask you this question.”