A soft, broken sound echoed at the base of his throat, and the whites of his eyes pinked with the effort not to cry.
“But King?” I said as I sat up and slid to the ground on my knees so we were eye to eye and I could stab a finger into his chest. “If you ever scare me like that again, I swear to fuckin’ God and Satan or whoever is in charge of these things that I will kill you myself. You get me?”
The song finished, the store filled with scratchy, wavering silence for a long moment as King stared at me, mouth open, eyes vulnerable.
A moment later, the soft strains of “Oh, Sister” began to repeat themselves, and my brother blinked then smiled so hugely, I could count every single one of his pearly white teeth.
I was about to tease him for it when he lunged forward, dragging me into another tight, painfully beautiful hug so he could laugh into my mess of big hair.
He laughed and laughed.
And behind us, I could hear Cressida laugh wetly, Old Sam clapping and chuckling softly, Lion clearing his throat of tears before he laughed too.
And I knew in my bones in a way I hadn’t known since King was gone that everything was going to be okay.
Because my brother was home.
And no matter where he went again, I’d never let him go unloved.
Cressida
Paradise Found.
My bookstore was named after Milton’s book of epic poetry, but it was also a statement of fact.
I’d found my paradise.
Entrance, British Columbia, and its infamous motorcycle club, The Fallen, had become my home and haven. It went beyond my undying love for King Kyle Garro.
It was Zeus and his Fallen men.
Harleigh Rose, Loulou, Tayline, Rainbow, Cleo, Bea, Hannah, and Maja, my gang of biker babes.
It was the cliffs of Back Bay Road where our little Shamble Wood Cottage lay nestled among the towering pine and fir trees overlooking the vast stretch of the blue ocean at the foot of the mountains.
It was in the air and the earth of this town. I could feel it, the love, the moment we crossed from Alaska into northern British Columbia in a rented truck with King’s precious bike covered and secured in the back.
This place and these people were my home in the way Vancouver, my parents, and William had never been.
King had given me this paradise, but I’d taken it and made it my own, and I was proud of that. In the past five years, I’d gone from the meek, prim, and boring Cressida Irons to the Queenie my King deserved.
Returning home to Entrance felt like a returning to myself.
King and I knew it wouldn’t be an easy welcome home. More for my husband than myself because I wasn’t the one who had been faking my own death for the better part of a year.
But I had kept his secret.
When Harold Danner, former Staff Sergeant of the Entrance Police Department, had finally been found guilty for the first-degree murder of Riley Gibson among a slew of other charges such as police corruption, money laundering, and police brutality, King and I had packed up our little house in Sitka, Alaska, and hit the road the very next day.
It was time to go home and pay penance for the days of pain we’d left behind.
We’d seen Zeus and Harleigh Rose before anyone else.
Of course, we had.
Pain, loss, and adversity had forged our bonds as a family together like titanium. Being away from them, knowing they were hurting, had haunted us every single day.
Watching King reunite with his beloved dad and little sister would remain two of the most poignant, magical moments of my life.
But now, it was time to reunite with my tribe.
The people who had supported me through King’s “death” and my ever-descending whirlpool of grief. The same people who had happily offered to take over the responsibilities of my life so I could take off down the Sea to Sky and flee my sorrow like a bat out of hell.
I stood outside the black-framed glass panel door of my store and traced my finger over the golden words adhered to the pane.
Paradise Found.
I’d gone and found my fallen King, but that had been startlingly easy compared to this. I was…nervous. I’d hurt my friends by taking off, by keeping secrets, and I was scared of how they would react to me.
If the same people who had gotten me through the worst time of my life would hate me for my selfishness.
But in a strange way, I relished the difficulty of opening the door and stepping through to face my fears. My loved ones deserved this effort. They were owed my vulnerability and my fear.
So I would lay them at their feet and hope that would be enough.
No one noticed me at first.
Which was fair. It was surprisingly busy for a mid-week February afternoon.
Benny was with a customer at the till, his hands flying like sparrows as he animatedly discussed the book his female customer held out between them. His hair was longer, curling at the ends of his jaw in sweet little dips and flips I was certain Carson loved and had convinced his boyfriend to keep.
A new hire I didn’t recognize, a teenage boy so long and slim he looked like pulled taffy, spoke with two older ladies in the stacks to the right, and Jamie, a university student who had been my third employee, diligently darted between the rows of books helping people where she could.
But I only spared them all a single glance because my gaze swivelled to the lounge area near the floor-to-ceiling windows at the left of the store and stuck on the tableau there.
Sweet Loulou sat on the carpet by the coffee table stacked with books, playing with Angel, who had grown so much in the past four months, I couldn’t believe it. Her twin brother, Monster, sat on Harleigh Rose’s lap scowling like the little grump he was. When Lila blew a raspberry on his cheek, he squirmed and thumped his chubby fist against her jean-clad thigh in retribution.
The babes laughed.
Loulou, Tayline, Rainbow, Lila, Hannah, Maja, Cleo, Bea. Harleigh Rose had corralled them all together at the shop that afternoon so I could ambush them.
My heart swelled until the soft tissue pressed between my ribs so hard it hurt.
For a moment that felt like a lifetime, I stood there dumbly in the entrance to the shop, rubbing absently at the deep ache wrapped around the base of my back. It was strange to look into the window of your own life without you in it and realize that your loved ones could survive without you.
The beauty was in knowing they didn’t want to.
And that was proven the moment Louise Garro––once the sick teen I’d taught in my fifth period English class at EBA, now the First Lady of The Fallen––caught my eye.
A shudder rolled through her slender shoulder, pale cloud of blond hair shimmering.
“Cressida,” she mouthed, blue eyes so vivid I could see the exact shade of them from across the room.
Cerulean, I had decided a long time ago.
For Lou and Bea.
Aquamarine for Harleigh Rose.
A brown as rich as freshly tilled soil for Tayline and a dark shade, nearly black for Rainbow.
A haunting, striated green like carved jade for Cleo.
Almond-shaped, thickly lashed brown eyes littered with gold like fallen leaves in the autumn for Lila.
The ever-changeable green/grey/blue for Hannah and Maja.
I didn’t have a talent for drawing like Nova, but King and I had painted pictures with our words of the loved ones we’d left behind. Whole tapestries of them tossed between us on our small kitchen table in that cramped cabin on the oceanfront of a town that looked enough like home but would never be. In a way, we agreed that we knew our family better, loved them better for the strange period of absence we’d been forced to take. Taking the pieces of a person out again and again as you longed for them made it easier to notice the nuances of their beauty.