It was one of the hardest adjustments I’d ever had to make in my life, what came after the incident at the hotel. I had never thought I would truly be free from the bonds of my father—but here I was, done for the first time. Finished. Complete. Free. When you get something that you’ve wanted for as long as you can remember, what do you do with it?

 

That was the question I kept asking myself in the weeks that followed my father’s death. I had no idea what my father’s will was laid out like, but I got a call from his lawyer a few days after he died, and he revealed that he had left me everything—the house, the cash, every penny. I sold our house as soon as I got the chance—it was snapped up almost at once by some wannabe-gangster poseur from across the country, and I was so glad to see the back of it. I felt a twinge of sadness saying goodbye to the house I’d grown up in, but it held too many painful memories to be worth holding on to. I needed a new start, and the only way I was going to get that would be to leave all of this behind.

 

Besides, I was living with Jasper. I had taken a few belongings from my old room and shifted them down to his apartment—with his permission, of course. The place was tiny and going to pieces wherever you looked, but none of that mattered to me—all that I cared about was the fact that Jasper and I were finally together—and man, had it been worth the wait.

 

We quite happily spent the first couple of weeks in bed but, since we didn’t have to hide from anyone anymore, I insisted that the two of us go out on the town when we could. Jasper obliged, taking me out to all the places he’d been obsessed with when he had first graduated to full-on nights out—dirty old bars, karaoke places, late-night junk food joints that we would pick up takeout from on our drunken way home.

 

I was probably meant to get all this stuff out of the way when I was a whole lot younger, but I didn’t care. Jasper introduced me to a world than I never thought I would catch a glimpse of, and that was enough in its own right. Even though some of his bodyguard reflexes were still in action when some guy tried to grab my ass at the club, he had a sense of fun that I’d never seen before now. I guessed both of us had a lot less on our minds than before.

 

Because, of course, on top of everything that had happened with my father—Jasper had also left the Stiches. I remembered vividly the moment when he broke the news to me. My mouth hung open as though it might drop straight to the ground, the takeout I had in my hand long forgotten.

 

“You did what?” I demanded, and he shook his head.

 

“I didn’t do anything,” he assured me. “They let me leave. Told me it was for the best.”

 

“Why did they do that?” I cocked an eyebrow in surprise.

 

“With D’Orazio and Condotierri gone…” Jasper always referred to them by their surnames, as if it made them easier to handle in his head. “They don’t need as many men. They asked who wanted to go and I…I did.”

 

“Why?” I asked, dumbfounded. “I thought you loved that place!”

 

“I do, and I’ll always be an honorary brother.” A smile flickered on to his face. “But I’m ready now. Ready for something new.”

 

“Like?”

 

“Maybe I’ll do some legit bodyguard work.” He shrugged. “Or go to college.”

 

“You want to go to college?” I didn’t want to sound mean, but it was news to me. Jasper usually kept to himself so pointedly that I still didn’t know much about him.

 

“We’ll see.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “With the money your father paid me…”

 

I flinched slightly at the mention of my father, but breezed by it—now, the two of us were free. It was all over. We could do anything we wanted, go anywhere we wanted, live any kind of life we wanted to lead. My heart blossomed open with excitement at the prospect of the two of us, out of this city for good.

 

So that was my next step—leaving this place behind. Around a month had passed since it had all happened, and I was itching to get out and try out life somewhere new and more exciting. Somewhere that I hadn’t been trapped in all these years. The only thing was, I had no idea if Jasper would feel the same way.

 

I approached him one morning, as he made coffee for the two of us. I was wearing one of his long t-shirts, the one I knew he liked me in—I was hoping that even if the request took him off guard, I might be able to cute him into a decent answer. “Hey,” I said.

 

“Yeah?” He peered over at me with a comically suspicious raised eyebrow. I shook my head at him—he’d become so playful since we’d put all of that behind us, and I wondered if he’d always been like this and I’d just been too wrapped up in everything that was going down to notice.

 

“I was thinking,” I began haltingly, examining his face carefully as I spoke—the last thing I wanted was to move too fast for us and wind up shooting this relationship in the foot before it had even had a chance to get going.

 

“I want to move away,” I finally blurted out, knowing I couldn’t hide from the question any longer. He raised his eyebrows at me.

 

“What, into your own place?” He gestured around the tiny kitchen. “Away from this palace?”

 

I grinned at him, glancing down at his hands as he made the coffee. God, he had good hands. Maybe we could just…

 

I shook my head, and focused on the task at hand.

 

“Yeah, my own place.” I nodded. “But I want you to be there with me. I want….to move out of the city. But I want to keep you in my service, if you like.”

 

“You’ve got to stop talking about me as if I’m still your bodyguard,” he reminded me. “I’m here out by choice now, remember?”

 

“I remember,” I concede. “But let me have this one, okay? This is all scary as fuck and I need to be able to pretend that this is way more professional than it is.”

 

“Meem,” he said, using the nickname he’d come up with over the past few weeks of my living here. “This is personal, and that’s okay.”

 

“Uh-huh.” I cocked my head at him. “So…do you have an answer?”

 

“I guess I might,” he teased. He was enjoying this, enjoying how on edge I was. That said, from the glint in his eyes, I was pretty sure I could already tell what the answer was going to be.

 

“Of course I’ll come with you.” He shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee as though he was agreeing to the bar we were going to instead of making a momentous, life-changing decision. My eyes bugged out of my head, and I did my best to keep my cool.

 

“You’re serious?” I spluttered, and he handed me my coffee.

 

“Of course I am,” he wrinkled his nose up at me teasingly. “I need a new start. With you.”

 

I stared up at him for a moment, placed my coffee down, and threw my arms around his neck and held him tight. Once he got over the shock of practically being knocked off his feet, he hugged me back, and I let out a small, satisfied sigh against his neck.

 

“So, where do you want to go?” he murmured into my hair. It had been a while since I’d had it dyed, and the roots were starting to come in—but I didn’t mind. The inch of pale brown at the top of my head just reminded me of how much time had passed, and how much things had changed, that I didn’t give a damn it was there.

 

“Where do you want to go?” I asked, pulling back. I felt flushed and excited and a little giddy—so this is what it felt like to make my own decisions, to put myself out there and not know what the answer was going to be and shoot for it anyway. It felt deliciously liberating.

 

“I don’t know?” he admitted. “I…I know a lot of my family moved out to the Midwest so somewhere near there would be good.”

 

I was taken aback. “Really?”

 

“If you don’t like the sound of it there, we can find somewhere else,” he replied quickly, mistaking my reaction to the Midwest part of his statement.

 

“No, it’s not that.” I waved my hand. “You want to see your family again?”

 

“Lot of changes happening recently,” he remarked with a shrug. “Might as well see if they fit into my life now, you know?”

 

I stared at him for a moment; God, he really had changed. The Jasper I’d met all those months ago would never have gone near his family, spoke of them only in angry little sentences and only when he totally had to. But this Jasper…this Jasper was entirely and totally different, and I had to say I thought I might like him a lot more.

 

“The Midwest sounds great,” I replied firmly. “We can always go travelling once we’re there. I’ve always wanted to see Europe.”

 

“It’s your money. Besides, someone’s got to keep you on a tight leash.” He smirked, and my eyebrows shot up—there was still plenty of the old Jasper left, the one who, once in a while, enjoyed knocking me off the pedestal he’d put me on.

 

“Oh, I’d be careful with that kind of talk,” I warned him. “If you want me to support you through college, then you’ll have to make with the nice.”

 

I turned away in a mock-brattish mood, and he put his coffee down and wrapped his arms around my neck, pulling me close and pressing his lips against my neck. I closed my eyes, and tilted my head to allow him easier access.

 

“Forgiven?” He whispered in my ear, and I shrugged.

 

“No harm in going a little further,” I replied with a grin, and before I knew it, I was leading him through to the bedroom—and already dreaming about what our life was going to be like once we started it over, together.