I clear my throat and blink a few times. “I didn’t build it.”
“But you saved it and you gave it to her and then you fucking ignored me and I have a damn title to the building in my name now, and how fucking dare you? Do you know what I have to do now? I have to change it. I have to change it and call it Bee & Nugget and install your beehives in the windows and put your massive, gaudy fiberglass bee on the outside of the building and sell kombucha so that it can be ours instead of mine or yours.”
She sniffles.
Jitter whines and sways between pushing against my legs and pushing against her legs.
“If you’ll come home,” she adds in a whisper. “If you’ll please come home and do this with me.”
Home.
I lean down to wrap my arms around her, squishing Jitter between us so he doesn’t have to choose, and bury my face in those glorious curls, breathing in all of her. The subtle coffee scent. The light, clean shampoo. The lemons. “I want to be home with you. But I wanted to be whole. Not living for revenge. Not doubting my worth.”
“I missed you so much more than I’m supposed to ever miss anyone.”
“I was coming home for Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?”
“Random Acts of Kindness Day. It seemed a better holiday than that fake heart holiday to spend with my Duchess.”
“Stop making me cry,” she whispers.
“I’ll kiss all the tears until I make you laugh again.”
“I’m not supposed to love you but I can’t seem to help myself.”
My heart swells so hard and fast that I should be going lightheaded.
But instead, all I feel is warmth.
Warmth and peace and acceptance and belonging and love.
“I am supposed to love you,” I whisper back. “That’s what life’s been trying to teach me. And I’m ready now. I’m ready to spend the rest of my life loving you.”
“And answering my phone calls,” she says on a laugh and a sniffle.
I kiss her ear. Her cheek. Her nose. “I will always answer your phone calls.”
“No, you won’t, and that’s okay.” Her sparkle is back. “But most of the time. Most of the time, when you’re not hip deep in concentrating on something amazing, you’ll answer my calls.”
“Highly likely.” I brush the tears off her cheeks with my thumb. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I’m so glad you’re coming home.”
Home.
I am.
I’m going home. With the woman I love and her dog and her community, to my grandma and my nibling-slash-best friend and the place where it’s so easy to feel like I belong.
“Bee & Nugget?” I say.
“Zen’s already ordering the sign. Do not test me.”
I smile and pull her in for a kiss, well aware that there are people watching us again, probably recording us for posting somewhere on the giant web of the internet, knowing that it won’t go viral because who cares about two people kissing?
Nothing scandalous here.
“I love you, Sabrina Sullivan. You’ll always be the duchess of my heart.”
“I love you more, Grey Cartwright. And I can’t wait to get you a superhero cape for your next era.”
EPILOGUE
Sabrina
“I’m going to marry him,” I tell Laney, Emma, and Zen over drinks in Emma’s garage in the house she was planning to share with Chandler three weeks after Grey and I get home from an epic road trip of doing random acts of kindness from California to Colorado.
Laney squeals and bounces on her toes, finally free from her cast and now in a boot instead.
Zen grins. “I’m making you sign a prenup.”
“Make sure he gets the café in the event we get divorced,” I instruct them. “And I don’t want a dime of his money. Put that in there too.”
“He proposed?” Emma asks.
“No, but when he does in five years, I’m absolutely saying yes.”
All three of them crack up.
The men bent over what was supposed to be Emma’s wedding gift to Chandler—a ’57 Cadillac convertible that he had apparently been telling her he wanted for years and also apparently knew was supposed to be his wedding gift—all pause and look up at us. So does Jitter, who’s in his happy place in the corner by the garage door.
And Duke.
Yes, Duke. Grey’s dog.
He paid off the bills for his ex-wife’s birthday party in exchange for getting his dog back, and now I’m living with the very best man in the entire world and our dogs, who made fast friends.