Jo’s hand creeps into mine. “The fire department is here.”
I glance up the slope of lawn. Sure enough, uniformed men are running around Cormorant House, doing their damndest to battle the flames. I doubt they’ll try for long — it’s a lost cause.
“Waste of water,” I murmur. My eyes find Jo’s. “I’m sorry. I know it’s your home.”
“That place was never my home. Let it burn. I won’t miss it.”
“Jo…”
“You’remy home,” she says simply. “You’re enough.”
I wrap my arm around her shoulders and press my mouth to hers.
“Well, well, well,” a smug voice calls, arriving on the scene. “It’s about damn time!”
I groan as I pull my mouth from Jo’s. Chris Tomlinson is jogging down the lawn, grinning like a crazy person. He whistles wolfishly. “You two crazy kids finally admit you’re ga-ga for one another?”
I roll my eyes. “Tomlinson, can you please focus?”
“Oh, I am.” He waggles his eyebrows.
Jo snorts softly. “I think he meant focus on the arrest, Chris.”
At Tommy’s feet, Jaxon is coming to. He moans pathetically, reaching up to rub his temple. There’s a massive red welt forming there — Tommy really clocked him.
“Should I hit him again?” Tommy asks.
“That won’t be necessary,” Chris says cheerfully, pulling out a set of handcuffs. “I can see the headlines now:MBTS Officer Chris Tomlinson cracks drug case after failed DEA manhunt. If this doesn’t get me off desk-duty, nothing will…”
Tomlinson takes my brother into custody, dragging his sorry form up the lawn with the help of two other MBTS officers. Tommy follows, giving a statement to one of the policemen.
Jo and I stand together by the boathouse, watching Cormorant House disappear. Beams crumble, falling to the ground in an eruption of embers. Vintage furniture, draped in flammable sheets, goes up like kindling. Heavy draperies, doused with Jaxon’s gasoline, spread the flames from floor to ceiling, leaving no inch spared.
Soon, there will be nothing left.
“A world without the Valentine estate,” I murmur, watching the ceiling collapse. “It’s the end of an era.”
“No,” Jo whispers. “Not the end.”
I look down at her. My lips skim hers, the whisper of a kiss. “You’re right. It’s the start of something better.”
She pushes up onto her tiptoes, deepening the kiss. Sliding her arms around my neck. I close my eyes and hold her close, shutting out the rest of the world. With each passing moment our mouths move together, a bit more of the past burns away. All the darkness, all the damage. I feel it lift, rising off my shoulders and into the sky, drifting away on clouds of smoke.
Leaving space for light.
For love.
For life.
Ourlife.
The one we begin to build in this moment, on the fire-razed ground of everything we have endured. A future full of promise, instead of pain. I don’t know what that future will look like. But I know, so long as I have Josephine by my side, it will be well worth the struggle it took to earn it.
“Let’s go,” I tell her softly. “Let’s get out of here.”
She doesn’t ask where we’re going. She merely smiles at me — a smile of so much sunshine, it makes me smile back — and laces her hand with mine. So tight, it makes my finger bones crunch.
“Together?”