EPILOGUE
Solomon watched her from the highest point of his palace, watched her caravan as it made its way back to where it came from. He’d sent his best men to travel with her and see to her safety, for there was nothing more precious on this earth.
She’d been true to her word. Before dawn broke, she’d slipped from his bed, leaving him with a soft kiss and words of her love. She’d gathered her things and her envoy and left him brokenhearted.
Unimaginable grief took him by surprise, and he cried out her name as he raced to the very peak of his palace, where he watched from a distance, her shadow growing smaller and smaller the farther she went.
Tears streamed down his cheeks and his heart was shattered in a million pieces. There would never be another like his Sheba. And for the rest of his mortal life and through eternity, she would be the only one who held his heart. For he finally knew the meaning of love.
Miller wiped the tear that had snuck its way from the corner of her eye down her cheek, just as she did every time she thought about knowing what it was to truly love with all your heart and soul, only to find those pieces will always be missing.
“I’ve got to say,” Tess said, stacking the papers of Miller’s manuscript, “that’s depressing as hell. Why can’t you change the story so they get to be together?”
Miller hadn’t been to bed yet. The story had possessed her until she’d finally typed the last sentence somewhere around daybreak. Tess had been reading the book as Miller wrote it, and as if she’d known it was finished, she showed up on her doorstep with breakfast she’d picked up from the diner as an even trade for getting to read the rest of the story.
They’d taken up residence in the living room, much like they had almost two weeks before. Miller was as wired as she was exhausted. She’d crash and crash hard in the next few hours, but for now, there was an elation that only finishing a book could bring.
“I can’t rewrite history,” Miller said. “Their story didn’t end with them getting to be together.”
“Of course you can rewrite history,” Tess protested. “People do it all the time. Look at the real reason we celebrate Thanksgiving, for Pete’s sake. We celebrate a massacre by stuffing ourselves with relish trays and dry turkey. It’s absurd. There’s no reason you can’t give Solomon and Sheba a life together on the pages of your book.”
“Some things aren’t meant to be,” she said sadly, thinking of Elias. “And I told you your turkey wouldn’t be dry if you’d stick butter under the skin.”
Tess’s lip curled in disgust. “But then I’d have to stick my hands all up in the turkey. And that’s disgusting.”
“You have to stick your hands all up in the turkey to get the giblets and neck out anyway.”
“What are you talking about?” Tess asked. “What are giblets and necks?”
Miller closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. “How about I make the turkey for Thanksgiving?”
“Why are we talking about turkeys instead of this depressing ending?” Tess asked.
“It’s not the only ending,” Miller said, rolling her eyes. “My hero and heroine fell in love and lived happily ever after.”
Though she didn’t confess what a struggle that had been to put on the page. Mostly she’d wanted her heroine to stab the hero, who shared entirely too many characteristics with Elias, in the neck with a fork.
“That’s true,” Tess conceded. “I just think it stinks that Solomon and Sheba didn’t get their happily ever after too.”
“Real life rarely works out as well as fictional life,” Miller said.
“Are you going to tell me what’s really bothering you?” Tess asked. “I know you love him. You can’t hide that from me.”
Miller sighed and didn’t bother to swipe away the tears this time. “I just didn’t think it would hurt this bad. I knew he’d break my heart from the start. I thought I was prepared for it, and I’d take what I could get for as long as I could get it. But the worst part isn’t that I love him. It’s that he loves me too, and still chooses not to be with me.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Tess said, “he looks a hell of a lot worse than you do.” There was a knock at the door, and Tess went to answer it since she was already up. Tess rarely sat. She was always full of energy.
“That makes me feel only slightly better,” Miller said. “That’s probably the UPS man. He’s a glutton for punishment. Scare him a little and send him away.”
Tess laughed and left the room, and Miller snuggled down in the couch, pulling the throw that hung across the back of it over her. Maybe she was going to crash sooner than she thought. She wasn’t worried about Tess. She’d been coming and going as she pleased for as long as she could remember, and she’d leave when she was ready.
Her eyes were heavy, so she closed them, and listened to see who was at the door, but she couldn’t hear any conversations. The floors creaked as footsteps grew louder, and she wanted to groan in protest.
“Tess, you were supposed to send him away, not invite him in. The last time he was here he brought me a finger in the mail.”
“I’d like that back, by the way,” her brother said. “We can give it a proper burial.”
Her eyes snapped open and landed on Justin. He still looked worn and gaunt, but he was alive, and he seemed glad for it.
“That’s sick, man,” Elias said. “I’m not going to a funeral for your finger.”
Her gaze went to the man who stood beside her brother, and seemed to catch there. She felt the emotion deep in her chest, and the pain was just as real as it had been the last time she’d seen him. She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t pretend like everything was as it was. She couldn’t be friends and act as if seeing him wasn’t like having her guts ripped out.
She looked at Tess in a panic, but Tess wasn’t meeting her gaze, so she tossed off the throw and put her feet flat on the floor.
“Don’t get up,” Elias told her. “We can all see you’re exhausted.”
“Good grief, get on with it,” Justin said impatiently. “Tess is having trouble finding ways to look natural while you beat around the bush.”
“Remember our agreement,” Elias said. “You don’t want to interfere right now.”
Justin put up his hands in surrender and took a step back, so he stood next to Tess, but his smile held both good humor and warning. There were obviously undercurrents going on that Miller had no clue about. Actually, she had no clue about anything at the moment other than she hurt in ways she never thought possible, though now it was compounded by an audience.
She had some time before she needed to start her next book. She’d get a solid twelve or so hours of sleep, and then she could pick up and leave. It was time to expand her comfort zone. Maybe Tahiti or Australia. And it was definitely time to expand the distance between her and Elias.
“Uh-oh,” Tess said. “You’d better hurry. I recognize that look on her face. She’s about to run.”
“Thank y’all so much for all the help,” Elias said sarcastically. “But maybe we can have a few minutes of privacy?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Justin said. “You broke her heart once. I want to make sure you fix it.”
Miller was suddenly very aware that something was going on and she wasn’t privy to whatever it was. Her stomach was in knots, and emotion rolled through her when Elias seemed to find his resolve and moved in front of her, kneeling down so he could look her in the eye.
Her hands were freezing and gripped tightly together, but he pried them apart and gave her a comforting squeeze.
“I should probably start out by telling you that I’m a jerk,” he said.
Tess snorted, and Justin said, “That’s an understatement.”
But though his lips quirked, Elias kept his gaze on hers. She was having trouble breathing, and her brain wasn’t processing what was happening. Why would he come and reopen the wounds? To apologize? To clear his conscience?
She wanted to say something, but her throat closed. She shook her head as tears filled her eyes. This was a kind of hell she never wanted to experience again.
“But I’m a jerk who loves you,” he said. “Loving you is worth every risk, and I realized that letting myself love you the way you deserve to be loved is the only thing that can set me free. I can’t promise that it will be an easy life. At least not for the next five years. But I can promise to love and protect you with every breath in my body for as long as we both shall live.”
The tears fell freely now. She couldn’t help it. And when a sob escaped, she buried her face against their joined hands. He leaned his head against hers and she felt the shudder run through his body.
“Please, love me,” he whispered, so only she could hear.
She nodded against him, and somewhere in the background she heard the front door close.
“I do,” she told him. She’d never let herself love anyone like she loved him. She lifted her head because what she wanted to tell him needed to be said to his face. “I’ve lived my entire life on my own, holding a part of myself back out of fear. I lived, but I didn’t know what it meant to really live.” His thumb stroked her cheek, wiping away her tears. “I can love you and still survive without you. I’d already resigned myself to doing so. It would be easy to move on and live a full life. Even a happy life. But I’d much rather experience the joy of knowing what it is to belong to you. And for you to belong to me. There’s faith in a commitment of that magnitude, and it’s one I’d never planned on. But I want to be with you.”
Elias cleared his throat, and she realized how humbling it must be for a man as strong as he was to kneel at her feet and lay himself bare. And she loved him all the more for it.
“My job has long, unreasonable hours,” he warned her.
“Mine does too,” she said, noticing the twinkle in his eyes.
“And my boss can be a real bitch.”
“I’ve heard that,” she said. “But I’ve already got my revenge planned. I’ll send her a copy once the book is out. Maybe she’ll recognize herself.”
Elias laughed and pulled her into his lap on the floor. “I’d love to read it. I’m partial to happily ever afters.”