“Yeah, you’re right.” His hand brushes my ass so deliberately it is almost comical, as he moves to the stove and picks a piece of juicy meat, crushing it between his white teeth and chewing.

Just as he says it, Emilia and Rosie walk into my kitchen, holding brown bags with fresh food peeking from their edges.

“Hey, everyone!” Emilia greets, while Rosie opts for a “You guys, turn on the air-con before I melt on your floor. Aren’t these new tiles? Yeah, turn that thing on. There are too many people in this room.”

“What are you doing here?” My eyes are wide. In the past year, Emilia, Melody, and Rosie have become great friends of mine. And although Melody is the older wolf in the pack—the one I turn to when Luna drives me mad and Theo is acting crazy—the two LeBlanc sisters are the two female BFFs I never thought I would have.

“We’re giving you a day off. You deserve it.” Emilia nudges me away with her butt, winking playfully. I don’t argue with that, even though I don’t feel like I should take a break. I love my life. Every morning, I take Theo and Luna to school and go to the beach and teach people how to surf. In the afternoons, before I pick them up, I have lunch with my hot boyfriend, then we have sex before we pick up the kids. Then he cooks and rubs my feet in front of Netflix after dinner. I don’t deserve a vacation. I’m living it.

“But I…”

“Don’t argue, Tide.” Trent grabs my wrist, tugging me into his hard body. Even now, after a year of living together, I melt a little at that gesture. Like that morning in the alleyway never changed us. Like I am still a love-struck puppy with a bad case of unreciprocated love.

He leads me outside, the pan still sizzling behind me, but I can already hear Rosie lowering the fire on the stove and Emilia cracking open a bottle of wine.

“What’s happening?” I ask Trent when we go out to the porch—ocean view—on the promenade.

“I’m not sure, but I think I’m losing my balls in the process.” He grimaces.

I laugh. “What? Why?”

“Because”—he opens the door and red light pours in, and I am standing in front of nature in its rarest beauty—“the sunset has never looked so fucking amazing, and if we could have one perfect moment, I want it to be this one.”

“That’s why you asked Rosie and Emilia to come here?” I quirk an eyebrow.

“Nope.” He turns to face me, brushing his thumb over my cheek. His eyes are light, his soul is dark, and everything else about what he gives me is full of colors. “I called them here in case you say yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes to my crazy-ass idea.” He kneels down on one knee, in front of the sunset, with cyclists and joggers and couples passing by us, and produces something from his pocket. He is still wearing his workout gear from taking Luna and Theo to the park, and that just makes him look even sexier. What’s insane about this—other than the fact we’ve never talked about it, not even once—is that I’m not nervous in any way. Just excited. We already feel like a married couple, and I say that in the best, non-boring way possible. He is stability and love. Security and confidence.

I’m his tide, and he’s my anchor. Or maybe the sand itself.

“Edie Van Der Zee, I want to dip my toes in the waves you make every single day for the rest of my miserable life. I want to fuck you—just you, only you, no one else—and a lot. Every. Single. Day. I want to live with you. I want to parade that fucked-up thing we have that keeps people raising eyebrows and thinking I’m a cradle-snatching douchebag, because fuck ’em, they’ll never have what we have. Will you marry me? I don’t ask for a lot. Not for kids, not for dinner, not for anything to be done in the house. I don’t ask you for anything other than what you’re willing to give me.”

Luna peeks from the door, smiling. I turn my body to her, smiling. I expect her to sign me something. Something like “aw, gross,” or “Daddy is being silly again”. But she doesn’t.

Instead, she arches one eyebrow, opens her lips, and lets the words fall out, awarding her father with the best present he could ever have.

“Say yes.”

Up until Edie, December was my favorite month of the year.

Not because of Christmas. Fuck Christmas. Because of the cold. It was the only month when it felt for a second that SoCal wasn’t going to burst into flames next time someone lit a match. Years ago, when Fiscal Heights Holdings opened a branch in Chicago, I was on that shit like a rash in a community college party. I loved the winter. Loved. Past tense.

I hate the winter nowadays.

I still enjoy feeling like the sun is not trying to fucking kill me, but I don’t like seeing Edie running barefoot across the promenade, a surfboard tucked under her arm, laughing like a crazy kid between the fat pearls of raindrops. Sometimes I run after her and tackle her to the sand for breathless kisses, trying to convince her to calm the fuck down and pass on her morning surf session. Most times I know it’s futile.

The ocean is her drug.

She is mine.

To accommodate this shit, I move things around. And it’s funny, how I always thought I’d die alone, and suddenly, I have all these people around me. Theo and his weird love for Tom Brady, Luna and her noisy, mostly-content silence, and my soon-to-be-wife.

First thing I did after throwing Jordan Van Der Zee into jail—he’s a white collar bastard who gets lots of visitation rights and perks, but no one wants to see him. Not his ex-wife, not his kids, and certainly not Val, God knows where she is—was to buy the surf club on Tobago Beach. I wanted Edie to have flexible working hours, and now she’s her own boss. The second thing was to summon my three friends and partners and tell them I was going to cut back on the hours, majorly.

“I have a family now. A big-ass, in-your-face family with a crap-ton of needs and a tight schedule,” I explained. Dean smiled.

Vicious said, “Another one bites the dust.”

Jaime nodded. “We’ve got your back.”

And they do. They have my back all the time. So much so that they weren’t even horrified when I told them I was asking my nineteen-year-old girlfriend to marry me. It’s absurd. You think I don’t fucking know that? Think again. We should wait until she hits her twenties.

We should keep it on the down-low.

We shouldn’t display this. We shouldn’t draw attention. We shouldn’t make declarations.

And we don’t. Fucking. Care.

“Mr. Rexroth, your…a…Edie, is here to see you,” Rina informs me through the intercom. I toy with the idea of correcting her—fiancée, that’s who Edie is. Shortly after she said yes in front of the most beautiful sunset to ever be seen in SoCal, a cab took us to the airport for a Hawaiian weekend. She surfed a lot. We fucked a lot. The engagement ring was too heavy for her to give me a hand job. You live, you learn. It’s now in the safe in our bedroom, collecting dust.

I push the red button on the switchboard while smoothing my tie. “Send her in.”

She walks in, unapologetically young. Her body covered in baby blue short overalls and yellow tank top. Dr. Martens and a smartass smirk. She doesn’t have an engagement ring on her finger, and it doesn’t make her any less mine. She is too natural for this stone, anyway. She’s got a seashell on her neck, a new one—identical to the two she made for Luna and Theo.

“I dropped in to say hi.” She wiggles her brows, holding a Panda Express bag.

I lean back in my chair and cross my legs over my desk. “I think you came here to fuck because I couldn’t come home this afternoon.”

“Oh, and that, too.” She shrugs, laughing. She dumps the oily food onto my table. I ignore it completely.

“Are you trying to bribe me with food?”

“Actually,” she says, walking over across my desk and parking her ass on my erection—because I always have an erection when she is around—knotting her arms around my neck. “I was thinking you could look at this wedding catalog with me. It’s so weird to plan a wedding. I don’t know where to start. Other than Millie and Rosie, all my friends are male and teenagers.”

“Don’t remind me,” I groan. I made peace with Bane, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep an eye on the bastard. I place my hands on her waist and pull her for a dirty, messy kiss that will soon turn into office sex, and we both know it. “I’ll help, but when I asked you to marry me, I didn’t mean this month. Or this year. I just want to put it out there for the world to know and to see—we’re getting fucking married. End of story.”

“Yes, but I want to marry you soon.” She brushes her nose against mine.

“Why? Thirty-four is not actually that old, Tide. I’m not gonna die on you in a year or two.”

She swats my chest and laughs. “I just mean, I want to be Mrs. Rexroth. I want Theodore to be a Rexroth. I’m ready to change our last name to something we’ll both be proud of.”

I used to love December, but now I love September.

Because it is in September when a seahorse is kissing a tide, creating a gorgeous fucking wave, and my fiancée places my hand against her stomach. “I think I’m ready for a dynasty.”

“I think you’re crazy,” I reply, but not really. She can have it all. And she knows it.

“Why not both?” She smiles.

This is where it’s at. The thing I’ve been looking for. In those eyes. In those lips. Our story is not perfect. My daughter is still not speaking. I am still The Mute. Theo isn’t cured, and Edie is still the product of a fucking asshole.

But imperfection is where we thrive. In the dark alleyways of society where we first met. I take her face in my hands and kiss her again, our teeth clashing together. Imperfect.

“Bend over and bite your forearm for me, Edie.”

And she does. “I love it when you hurt me.”

“I love you when I do, and when I don’t,” I reply, caressing her ass cheek through the fabric of her overalls.