Page 114 of Truthfinder’s Promise

Epilogue

One Year Later

“Become the Aspect Liaison, I said to myself, it will give your life purpose, I said to myself.” Meredith typed the final word in her report, slumped back in her desk chair, and declared the work day officially over.

“Rough day, darlin’?” The low drawl made her heart skip a beat. Jensen stood in her office doorway in faded jeans and dusty boots, his shirt wrinkled from travel. Nothing and no one had ever looked so good.

A strangled noise escaped her throat. Back. He was back. She ran across the room and launched herself into his arms. He caught her and kissed her with the kind of enthusiasm that would have had her dragging him inside and locking the door were it not for the fact that this was now her place of employment instead of her home, and the Shifters currently in residence at the outpost would know exactly what she and Jensen were doing.

She reluctantly slid down, bare toes kissing the soft carpet. He noticed.

“Still enjoying your new feet?” he asked.

“You have no idea.” After Siren’s kid had popped out and the redhead had gone back to being their indestructible spitfire, Meredith had let her fix the years of damage done by her footwear. She’d wanted to have a ceremonial bonfire for every pair of heels she owned, but Siren had gotten that pained expression on her face that meant she was calculating the potential harm to the environment, so Meredith had donated them instead.

Jensen laughed. “Oh, I have some idea. Every time I call you now you’re out for a run.”

“Who knew running was so fun? That runner’s high thing is totally real. And I have to do something to distract me from missing you when you’re gone.” He’d split his time in the last year between his enclave in Pennsylvania and Seclusion. Rebekah wanted to step down, but she didn’t want to hand the reins off to anyone but Jensen.

He wouldn’t commit to taking them because Meredith was in Seclusion. She wasn’t leaving, and if he actually took over the enclave he couldn’t spend half his time here. They’d both agreed he shouldn’t refuse the position outright. Relations between Shifter and Aspect Societies were going fairly well, given the givens, but Rebekah handing the King Enclave to an unknown could create complications.

And though she hadn’t said it, Meredith hadn’t wanted Jensen to give it up for her. What if they didn’t work out? What if he resented her for it later? But it had been clear within a couple months that they were working out. More than. Every time he left, it hurt a little bit more.

“Nothing distracts me from missing you while I’m gone,” he said. “It’s the only thing I do.”

I wish you didn’t have to go. She didn’t want to make him feel guilty, so she didn’t say it. “You’re back early.”

“I missed you.” He kissed her. “And I heard there was a shindig tonight.”

Meredith rolled her eyes. “There’s a shindig every night for the next five days. Siren somehow managed to make an entire week out of Christmas.” She looked at the clock. “And if you want to go, we should get home and change. We need to pick up Natalie, and Siren’s been on a punctuality kick.”

“Home” was currently a condo near downtown. She hadn’t wanted to live at the outpost anymore, even though she could have, and she’d been holding off making any permanent decisions. She’d collaborated with Hel—who worked for Jensen’s construction company—to draw up designs for a new house. She’d picked out everything she wanted down to the countertops and the baseboard height and then she’d just…stalled.

If she’d been by herself, she would have moved forward in a heartbeat. When Hel had pushed her to get started with the building, and asked if she didn’t like something about the design, Meredith had blurted out, “What does Jensen want in a house?” Then she’d been mortified, said “Never mind,” and refused to ever discuss this lapse of her tongue again.

She and Jensen hadn’t talked about the next step. He had clothes and things in her apartment, and he stayed here when he was in town. But it was still her condo, not theirs. And that was the hangup with building a house. She didn’t want to build her home. She wanted to build theirs.

“Everything okay?” Jensen asked. An understandable question if your girlfriend had been standing in the bathroom holding her lipstick for the last five minutes while she stared into space.

“I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

She gave him a wicked smile. “Everything I’m going to do to you later.”

He plucked the lipstick out of her hand, tossed it away and drew her in. “You know what? Shindigs are overrated. Let’s stay in.”

He kissed her, the warmth of his body pressing against hers, and staying in sounded very, very good. She groaned and broke away. “We can’t. I promised Natalie I’d take her tonight.”

Given Natalie’s firm desire not to go back to the enclave, and the necessity of her learning about the Aspect half of her abilities, Jensen had agreed to let her stay in Seclusion. But since he was gone for weeks at a time, he couldn’t exactly just get an apartment and leave her alone in it. And while Meredith would have let Natalie live with her if they’d asked, she didn’t know anything about raising kids. Teenagers were pretty self-sufficient, she imagined, but they still scared the living daylights out of her.

When Siren suggested The Refuge, it had been the perfect solution. It was essentially a boarding school with round-the-clock supervision, kids Natalie’s age, Aspect tutors, and therapists to help her deal with what she’d been through. When they’d taken her to tour it, she’d been hesitant but she’d agreed to give it a try.

The first three weeks of enrollment, Natalie had spent the weekends at Meredith’s. But as time went by she acclimated more, and now she didn’t come over on weekends unless she was having a tough time or Jensen was in town.

Jensen sighed against Meredith’s lips. “If we’re not staying in then you’d better get your ass out the door or I’m getting it out of those jeans.”

She walked more slowly toward the door than necessary, and with more sway in her hips than was perhaps natural. Outside, Jensen raised his eyebrows when she unlocked the Escalade.