As we lost ourselves in each other, the future stretched out in front of us…and I had never been more sure that everything would work out exactly as it should.
EPILOGUE
TYRE
Christmas lights glowed across the compound, strung between poles and wrapped around trees in warm white strands that reflected softly off the pool water behind the clubhouse. The Florida air carried just enough chill to justify the giant heaters scattered beneath the tents, but not enough to ruin the night. Music drifted through the yard, mixed with laughter, clinking glasses, and the low rumble of my brothers giving each other shit near the bar setup Fury and Gauge had thrown together beside the clubhouse.
And right in the center of all of it stood Cecily.My wife.
The realization still hit me like a punch every time I looked at her. She was fucking beautiful in a way that made it hard to breathe right. Her dress hugged her body before falling in clean lines to the ground, the winter lights catching in her wild, red hair while her brown eyes searched for me through the crowd.
The second she found me, her whole face lit up.
Mine.That feeling hadn’t faded once since the day I met her. If anything, it’d only grown stronger.
I leaned back in my chair at the head table, whiskey in one hand, while I watched her laugh with Jana, Ashlynn, and Larknear the dance floor. The wedding itself had been exactly what she wanted—intimate and outdoors under the lights behind the clubhouse with our families surrounding us. Just us, our people, and promises that settled deep into my bones the second I slid my ring onto her finger. And I’d meant every damn word.
Across from me, Blitz smirked over the neck of his beer bottle. “You’ve been staring at your wife for twenty straight minutes, brother.”
“Fuck off.”
He chuckled, entirely unbothered. “Just saying, if you keep fucking her with your eyes like that, one of the old ladies is gonna hose you down.”
Edge dropped into the empty chair beside me and snorted. “Too late. He’s already mentally stripped her naked at least six times since dinner.”
“Seven,” Nitro corrected dryly from further down the table. “I counted.”
I flipped all of them off without taking my eyes off Cecily. “One more word about my wife and sex coming from any of your mouths, and my woman will be remembering our wedding day as the one where several of my brothers lost limbs.”
That only made the assholes laugh harder.
Kane leaned back beside Savannah, his arm stretched lazily across the back of her chair while he watched me with obvious amusement. “Leave him alone. Man just got married.”
“Exactly,” Edge shot back. “Which means he’s legally obligated to suffer through our commentary.”
Century lifted his beer. “It’s tradition.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t even find it in me to be annoyed tonight. Not when Cecily glanced over again and smiled at me like I was the only thing she saw in the entire fucking world. It hit me straight in the chest every damn time.
A few minutes later, she slipped into the empty chair beside mine, her fingers brushing over the back of my neck while she leaned in close enough that her perfume wrapped around me immediately.
“You’re staring again,” she murmured near my ear.
“You’re my wife. I’ll stare whenever the fuck I want.”
Her cheeks pinkened slightly, and I grinned against the side of my whiskey glass.
Her mother appeared out of nowhere, carrying another plate of desserts while my mother and younger sister hovered nearby. Then our fathers and my younger brother came up behind them.
“Cecily really needs to eat more,” her mother announced, setting the plate down in front of her. “Training this hard burns calories.”
“And after the Olympics,” my mother added smoothly, “there’ll hopefully be grandchildren burning some energy, too.”
Cecily nearly choked on her drink.
My younger brother barked out a laugh while my dad smirked shamelessly beside him.
Her father nodded like this was a completely normal public conversation. “You two will need a proper family house in California eventually.”