Epilogue

 

 

 

 

Megan

 

 

 

 

 

“Widen your stance and bend your hips a bit more.”

Simon’s back was draped across mine as I held the putter in my hand. I turned my head slightly so I could look over my shoulder at him.

“I should be giving you tips, Owens. I’m pretty sure you’re using this as an excuse to touch me,” I murmured as my nose grazed his cheek. Simon shifted behind me, the proof that he was turned on pressing into my lower back.

“Of course I am.” His lips molded to mine and we kissed for a moment before my sister let out a long sigh behind us.

“I think mini-golf is supposed to be rated G, guys.”

Simon separated our mouths and looked at Kelly with a grin. “You were taking too long at the last hole. We had to occupy ourselves somehow.”

We both straightened up but Simon didn’t let me move for a moment as he exchanged quips with my sister. When he had calmed himself down enough, he squeezed my shoulders and took a step back. I gave him a knowing smile and the one he returned was full of promises. I focused back on my ball and hit it, causing it to bounce off the different obstacles and come to a rest about a foot from the hole at the bottom.

“Nice shot,” Nick said as he slapped Kelly’s ass. “You girls have done this a time or two.”

I shrugged and giggled when Simon’s shot rebounded right back to him. “Miniature golf was a staple in the Gold house when we were growing up.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kelly nodded in agreement as she socked Nick in the shoulder and lined up her ball. “You should see our father. He puts us to shame.”

My sister looked so happy in the early-May sunshine. She was still dating Devin but from what I could tell, they weren’t super-serious and it sounded like Kelly was keeping them on their slow pace. She told me one night that she wasn’t in love with him and she wasn’t interested in taking any big steps until she was. Simon kept a watchful, big brother-like eye on them, too, and I absolutely loved how he loved my little sister as if she was his own.

Nick and Kelly were pretty chummy and he’d become her closest friend besides me. The chemistry between the two of them was undeniable and I was confused as to why they weren’t dating. I liked Devin, but it was obvious that he and Kelly didn’t have a fraction of the passion she and Nick did. When I asked my sister about it, she just smiled and said that they wanted different things. Whatever that meant.

It took Simon and I a couple of weeks to reintegrate into each other’s lives but our relationship was stronger than it’d ever been. He’d moved into the apartment completely and the basement at Alex’s house had been turned into a movie room for the family. Around the time Simon had moved out, Stacey had moved in and I loved seeing how happy she and Alex were. Despite the weird predicament I’d been in with the Owens brothers the year before, the end result was amazing.

We’d gone away like Simon had suggested but only to Southern California to see the Dodgers play the Giants, using the tickets I’d given him for Christmas. We spent four days doing touristy things and hanging on the beach. It had been incredible and helped us reconnect again. Simon had also insisted that we take a photo in the same spot at the stadium that he and his father had years before. A copy of that photo now hung proudly in his office, near his blueprints.

Simon and I spent a few days out of the month with the Williams family and he’d even escorted Samantha to a father/daughter dance at her middle school. Pam was a strong woman and doing a lot better, although I could still see the underlying sadness that would probably never leave.

The first time the two of us had visited together, she’d been surprised. She knew that we’d broken up because I’d told her but I never said why. When Simon had confessed the reason behind it, Pamela had been so angry that she’d yelled at him. That yelling turned to crying and eventually just loving admonishment.

“Hold on to each other, you two,” she said when we left that night. “Get married, have pretty babies, and make a ton of memories. Loving Tony was the best thing I did with my life. I miss him every day but he gave me so much.”

When we went home that night, Simon apologized wordlessly as he made love to me. I knew he regretted his decision but I didn’t anymore. Those three months apart only cemented how much we loved one another and proved that we could make it through anything if we stayed together.

“Do I even have a shot at beating either of you?” Simon asked as he settled his ball in front of a windmill. I looked at the scoresheet in my hand and nodded.

“You just need to make every green a hole-in-one, baby. Easy, right?”

He looked up at my teasing smile and rolled his eyes, obviously biting back his own grin. “The easiest.”

Kelly ended up beating me by a few strokes but the guys crashed and burned miserably. Both of them grumbled good-naturedly and we went to dinner at a casual restaurant. Nick draped his arm across Kelly’s shoulders in the booth as he read the vegetarian portion of the menu dramatically. Both Simon and Nick loved to give her shit about her diet but I didn’t miss the way Nick went meat-less as a show of support when Kel was around.

“What are you guys doing the rest of the night?” Simon asked once we placed our orders. “Megs and I are going to go see some Kristen Wiig movie if you wanted to come.”

Kelly shook her head as she reached over and took a drink of Nick’s beer. “I’m going to head to Devin’s after this.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination but I thought I saw a flicker of annoyance pass over Nick’s face before he schooled it and politely declined the movie as well. When he caught me staring, he just winked at me before taking his beer back from my sister.

“What do you think the deal is with Nick and Kelly? Why aren’t they together?” I asked Simon as we stood in line for popcorn later that evening. He met my gaze and offered me a small smile.

“Nick isn’t interesting in monogamy, babe.”

“Oh.” We stepped forward and I shook my head slightly. “Why not?”

Simon shrugged his shoulders and gave my hip a gentle squeeze. “He’s never really said but in all of the years I’ve known him, he’s never had a girlfriend. I think a part of me was hoping Kel would change that.”

Once it was our turn at the counter, Simon ordered a large popcorn, a large soda, a bottle of water, and some milk duds- our standard order. We’d share everything, even the bottle of water, and most of it would be gone before we made through half of the movie. I loved our little movie rituals.

The next afternoon, while Simon was at work, I found myself in a chair with my pants pulled down in front of stranger.

“Okay. Maybe I can’t do this,” I mumbled as I looked at my sister from the chair. She just grinned and shook her head slightly.

“Yes, you can. Squeeze my hand.”

I took the hand she was offering and crushed her fingers when the faint buzzing started. The guy sitting on the stool next to me gave me a stern a look.

“Breathe, Megan. I don’t want you to pass out.”

Easy for him to say. I tore my gaze from him and focused on my sister’s smiling face. She’d already had her turn in the chair and she hadn’t so much as flinched. I wasn’t fooled, though. I could tell it hurt by looking in her eyes. Kelly was a terrible liar.

The needle touched my skin and I forced myself not to jump. I grit my teeth at the burning pain and shook my head at my sister.

“Holy crap.”

Kelly laughed and ran her free hand through my hair. “It will be over in a few minutes.”

“I told you, ladies,” Dustin the tattoo artist said as he kept working. “The hip hurts.”

I’d wanted a tattoo for a long time and I’d finally found a quote that I wanted during the time Simon and I were broken up. Finding the courage had been a bit harder. Kelly had finally talked me into it once she’d picked something for herself. Now, on her left hip, she had “With pain comes strength. With love comes life” etched there forever. The placement was perfect, not quite as high as her belly button, and I’d decided to put mine in the same spot except on my right hip. I hadn’t told Simon what I was doing and I was kind of nervous for his reaction.

“All done,” Dustin proclaimed less than thirty minutes later. He held his hand out so I could move to my feet and I examined the small, black words in the mirror. The cursive letters looked perfectly elegant and the swoop of the last ‘e’ ended in a heart.

“It’s amazing. Thank you, Dustin.”

He grinned proudly and rubbed some ointment on it. “I know you heard the aftercare instructions with your sisters but keep the bandage on for a couple of hours. I want you to wash it three times a day with simple anti-bacterial soap and rub in some of that diaper rash cream I recommended. In a few days, switch to regular lotion. Do not scratch it. Understand?”

I nodded and dropped my shirt once he was done. “Got it.”

The two of us thanked him again before paying and we drove home. Kelly only stayed for a few minutes before leaving to go see Devin. I went in to attend to Simba and I went to work in the kitchen. Two hours later, I was walking into the fire station with a plate full of cookies. I went right to Simon’s ground floor office and smiled when I saw him at his desk talking to Tori as she sat across from him.

“Hey,” I greeted quietly, earning smiles from them both. Tori moved to her feet and grinned before taking two of the cookies.

“Were your ears burning? Owens was just telling me about you being a mini-golf shark.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “I’m not a shark. He’s just that bad.”

She laughed again and took a third cookie as she left the office. I set the plate on Simon’s desk and turned my eyes on my boyfriend. He was sitting in his chair with a smile on his face. The smile only widened when I closed his office door, turning the lock and making my intentions obvious.

“God, I love that spark in your eyes,” he murmured as he moved to his feet. He took several steps to close the distance between us and cradled my face in his hands. “The flush in your cheeks is pretty damn sexy, too.”

My only response was to capture his lips with my own. He kissed me back eagerly and our tongues danced together in a familiar, erotic way. Every kiss with Simon still felt as electrified as our first.

His hands gripped the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head quickly, only interrupting our kiss for a moment. I did the same to him and let him walk us towards his desk. His hands came down to the button on my jeans and when he brushed against the bandage on my hip, he stopping kissing me to look down.

“What happened?” he asked, worry in his eyes when he looked back at me. I smiled and gently pushed back on him. Once he’d taken a step backwards, I tugged at the medical tape on my skin and pulled the bandage off. I watched Simon’s eyes widen before he crouched down to look at it.

“‘Sky above me, earth below me, fire within me.’” His voice was quiet and he stared at it for a long moment before pressing a kiss right above where the ink was permanently etched into my skin. “Fuck, that’s not only perfect for you, but it’s sexy as hell.”

He straightened up swiftly and reconnected our lips. The rest of our clothes were ripped off in a furious whirlwind and I perched on the edge of his desk. Simon stepped between my thighs and pushed into me unhurriedly, causing my heart to beat into overdrive. He thrust slowly at first, stopping to look down at where we were joined and to trace the outside of the tattoo once or twice.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” His voice was breathless and I shook my head as I used one of my hands to grip the firm skin on his butt.

“Definitely not. Faster, Si.”

He grinned and kissed me again as he quickened his thrusts and he had to swallow my moans as pleasure built in my body. I ripped my mouth from his when I knew I was at the tipping point and my gaze met his.

“I love you.”

His blue eyes were so full of passion and love that I felt like I’d get lost in them. He nodded once and dropped his forehead to mine.

“I love you, Megan. So much.”

That was all it took before my body was bursting into flames of euphoria. I buried my face into his shoulder so the entire station didn’t know what we were doing and I let myself get lost in it. Simon found his own release and the two of us stayed as we were, engulfed in the heat that I knew would never ebb.

“The other hip would look great with my name on it,” he said a few minutes later, his voice muffled by my hair. I chuckled and shook my head very slightly.

“It’s bad luck to tattoo names on your body.”

Simon pulled back and brushed his lips over the tip of my nose. “I guess that’s true. There goes my idea of tattooing ‘Megan’ across my ass.”

I let out a huff of laughter and dropped my cheek to his bare chest. “You’re crazy.”

“Crazy about you.”

“That’s sappy as hell.”

Simon’s chest shook with his own laughter. “Yeah, I know. I’ll do fifty bench presses after you leave to feel manly again.”

We stayed like that for a few more minutes before getting dressed and heading upstairs. I spent another hour at the station house with the company and realized how much Simon had given me. The company had become my family and treated me like I was one of their own. Add that in with Simon’s family and my own… I was incredibly lucky.

I’d never tell Kelly, but speed dating had been a fantastic idea.