You’re the man, Caleb. You’re the man.

“As opposed to doing it … wrong?” Her eyebrows lift. “Is there a wrong way to do that?”

“Everything that’s not you feels wrong, Duchess.”

I can tell she’s pleased by my words. She scoots closer, throwing her leg over my waist. I trail my fingers lightly along her spine, and when I reach the ‘world’s greatest ass’ I lay my hand flat and stay there.

She wiggles and I know what she wants.

“Again?” I suck on one of her fingers and she shivers.

“Again,” she says. “And again, and again, and again…”

Epilogue

Olivia and I never marry. We took too many casualties in our struggle to be together. It seems almost wrong to get married after what we did to love. One night while we’re in Paris, we make vows to each other. We’re in our hotel, sitting side by side on the floor in front of the open window. Our view is of the Eiffel Tower, and we’re wrapped in the blanket we just made love on. We are listening to the sounds of the city, when suddenly she turns to face me.

“Mormons believe that when they get married in this life, they stay married in the next. I was thinking that we should convert to Mormonism.”

“Well, that’s most certainly a viable option for us, Duchess. But, what if we’re married to our first spouses in the next life?”

She grimaces. “I’d definitely be less f**ked than you.”

I laugh so hard we both fall over backwards onto the carpet. We shift our bodies until we are lying with our faces inches apart. I reach out to touch the small oval she wears on a chain around her neck. It’s our penny. She had it made into a necklace that she never takes off.

“Wherever we go in the next life, we’ll be together,” I say.

“Let’s not go to hell then, that’s where Leah will be.”

I nod in agreement, then I look in her eyes and say, “I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect you. I’ll lie, cheat, and steal to make you okay. I’ll share your suffering, and I’ll carry you when you’re weighed down. I’ll never leave you, not even when you ask me to. Do you believe me?”

She touches my face with the tips of her fingers and nods.

“You’re strong enough to protect your heart and mine, and your heart from mine. I’ll give you everything I have because from the day I met you, it’s belonged to you.”

I kiss her then I roll on top of her.

And that’s it. Our hearts are married.

We fight. We make love. We cook huge meals and fall into food comas for days. After she defends a murderer and wins the case, she sells her share of the business and we move into our house in Naples. She says if she keeps defending criminals, she’s going to go to hell and she really doesn’t want to spend eternity with Leah. She opens up her own practice, and I work from home. We have a vegetable garden. Olivia has a black thumb and kills all of the plants. I nurture them back to life when she’s not looking and then convince her she has a green thumb. She’s very proud of her (my) tomatoes.

We try to have a baby, but Olivia miscarries twice. When she is thirty-five, she is diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and has to have a hysterectomy. She cries for a year. I try to be strong, mostly because she needs me to be. But, during that time it wasn’t Noah I was afraid to lose her to, or Turner, or herself, it was cancer. And cancer was a foe I didn’t want to f**k with. Most days I just begged God to keep her alive and make it go away. That’s what I asked him — make it go away — like I was five years old and there was a boogeyman in my closet. God must have heard my prayers, because the cancer never came back and the boogeyman was vanquished. My hands still shake when I think about that time.

I wish I could have given her a baby. Sometimes, when she’s at the office late, I sit in what would have been the nursery and think about the past. It’s a pointless game of torture, but I suppose it’s a consequence of being a flawed, stupid man. Olivia doesn’t like it when I think. She says my thoughts are too deep and they depress her. She’s probably right. And I would hate for her to see what I see; the fact that if we’d just done things right, if I’d fought harder, if she’d fought less, we would have been together sooner. We could have had our baby before it was too late — before her body made it impossible. But, we didn’t, and we’re both a little broken because of it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no set rules in life. You do what you have to do to survive. If that means running away from the love of your life to preserve your sanity, you do it. If it means breaking someone’s heart so yours doesn’t break; do it. Life is complicated — too much so for there to be absolutes. We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you’ll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves. Olivia has stopped rattling quite as much as she used to. Love is a God-given tool, she tells me. It screws things back in place that were loose, and it cleans out all the broken pieces that you don’t need anymore. I believe her. Our love has been fixing each other. I hope to only hear a tiny jingle when I shake her in a few years.

Leah remarries and has another baby. Luckily, it’s a boy. When Estella is nine, she comes to live with us. Despite the “stepmother” status, Estella loves Olivia. They share the same sense of humor, and too often, I find myself the target of their jokes. Some nights I come home and they’re sitting side by side on the sofa, legs propped on the coffee table, MacBooks open, stalking boys. Olivia wishes she’d had Facebook when we were young. She says so every day. I’m not sure who’s more confused by their immediate chemistry — me or Leah.

Leah still hates Olivia. Olivia is grateful that Leah gave us Estella. Fortunately, Estella is nothing like her mother, aside from her red hair, of course. It’s a joke in the family that no one has the same hair color. Raven, red and blonde. We’re an odd sight in public.

We are raising a really beautiful little soul. She wants to be a writer and tell our story someday. We are gonna be okay. That’s what happens when two people are meant. You just work it out until you are okay.

We make love every single day — no matter what. She is the only woman I’ve seen that gets more beautiful with age. She is the only woman I see.

And the journey is over. After eight years and loving my characters through their lies, I can finally move on. To mothers, and fathers, and friends and foes. I steal snippets of your words and lives to thread through my stories.

I owe all to my readers. Passionate, dedicated, mildly insane. Just like me! Thank you. I wrote this for you. I will never forget the book signings, the gifts, the scrapbooks, the e-mails and the harassment. Thank you to the blogs for empowering the writer. And to the writers who empower other writers through their intoxicating words. I am ever so grateful for all of it.

Tarryn

I packed, drove, and showered quickly so I could make the morning meeting on time. I wondered if April would be there now that she seemed close to being brought on as a full-time teacher. Hopefully she would be. I’d have to decide whether to sit next to her and breathe in her intoxicating floral scent or if I wanted to sit on the opposite side of the room so I could simply gaze. Or stare. Let’s face it — I would probably stare.

The room was half-full when I arrived with five minutes to spare. A few of the teachers looked up when I came in. Their faces registered surprise, clearly not expecting to see me back so soon. I got a few nods in my direction but no one spoke. Teachers aren’t usually morning people unless they’ve had their cup or two or six of coffee. Their silence made it evident that the liquid brown drug was not yet coursing through their bodies. Or that seeing me was a little awkward, considering the state I was in when they last saw me.

April was seated on the second row, and seemed to be lost in a pile of paper on her lap. She was wearing a long-sleeve white button-up shirt, sleeves folded halfway up her forearm. Her skirt was black, and her hair was back in a ponytail. Her outfit brought to mind just about every teacher fantasy I had ever allowed myself to indulge in while growing up. Because her hair was pulled back, the pearly white skin of her neck was exposed. I was starting to have serious vampire thoughts.

I will kiss that neck, I told myself. More than once.

I had never promised myself that I would kiss the body of a married woman before, but there’s a first time for everything, I guess. There was something about her neck that made me want to claim it for my own. So Maniac Marco could go f**k himself for all I cared. Knowing what I did about him, he probably wished he could f**k himself. Arrogant prick.

I snuck my way into the third row and took a seat behind her, one seat over to her left. When I sat down, I felt like I had immersed myself in a field of lilies, her soft, sweet scent filling my nose and lungs.

Yeah, her neck is mine.

Among other things.

“Good morning,” I said, not wanting to stir her from her paper reading. But very much wanting to also.

She turned around.

“Oh, hey you,” she said with a sense of familiarity that made my nerves tingle. “Good morning back.”

All she had to do was smile and I swear I would have done anything she asked. Including commit serious crimes.

“Is this your first meeting?”

“No, I came to the meeting on Tuesday also.”

“Oh, nice.”

She lowered her head and her voice, “They are so much fun!”

This time I smiled. Sarcasm almost always made me smile.

“Why are you sitting back there?” she asked. “You’re dumb. Sit next to me.”

She patted the chair to her right and I went straight for it, like a dog being called to the side of its owner. There hadn’t even been a second thought, just an immediate response. Surely, anyone paying attention would have thought I was pathetic.

Sitting next to her brought the sensation of diving headfirst into the aforementioned lilies. She wasn’t wearing too much perfume by any means, but what she had sprayed on was severely dangerous to my brain.

The meeting better start soon or I can’t be held responsible for what I do next.

“What are your thoughts on James Joyce?” she asked as more teachers shuffled in.

Her question caught my lily-obsessed mind off-guard.

“Uh...”

“You’ve read him, yes?”

I could read the look on her face as she read the look on mine. I had never read him, and she could clearly read that on my face.

“Oh my God,” she said under her breath. I couldn’t tell whether she was mortified or repulsed.

“There are plenty of authors, April. I haven’t had a chance to get to them all!” I said, feebly trying to defend myself.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “No. That doesn’t fly with me.”

My mind was trying to race through a list of authors I had read, ones I thought maybe she hadn’t.

“Well, what about Michener? Have you read him?” I asked.

She looked at me with a look of incredulity. And then she laughed.

“Are you asking me if I have ever read a Pulitzer Prize winner?”

Shit.

“You’re going to have to try a little harder with me, Luke.”

God, I loved this woman.

“What about Joseph Conrad?”

More snickers.

“Heart of Darkness, Nostromo. Come on, Luke.”

The meeting started, and we had to stop. But my mind continued. I started compiling a list in my head of authors that I could try to use against her. I wasn’t about to lose this easily. I paid attention to nothing that was said during the meeting. A passing mention was made about my return, I think. But my mind was occupied.

As soon as we got out into the hallway and started our walk together to our classes, I picked up again where we had left off.

“D.H. Lawrence?”

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I read that in high school because I thought it would be particularly scandalous. It wasn’t what I expected.”

“E.M. Forster?”

She actually stopped when I said his name.

“Any person worth a damn has read Howard’s End. Fact, Luke.”

I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was around to hear the “damn”. Thankfully, no one was on our end of the hallway.

“Less casual swearing in the hallway, ma’am. You don’t want to get fired before you even get hired.”

“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked, and I could have sworn she batted her eyes.

“No ma’am,” I said, knowing that even though I wasn’t a blusher, I was probably blushing now. She was sultry.

“There you go with that ‘ma’am’ shit again,” she said, putting very clear emphasis on the word “shit”. She wasn’t going to back down.

“Are you normally this defiant?” I asked, wanting to jump her right there in the hallway and claim her neck and every other part of her as mine.

She shook her head, slightly.

“I guess you just bring out the best of me,” she said.

With that, she turned, and walked into her classroom, giving me a splendid look at her ass.

When did I become an ass guy? Better yet, when did I become the kind of guy who had the hots for a married coworker?

Classes may have started but that didn’t keep us from communicating. I felt a little childish for basically texting her as soon as I sat down at my desk.

Wharton...

I figured I could judge by the amount of time it would take her to answer whether or not she was looking the author up. Even if she had read it, if she took a while I would just assume so and hold it against her.