Page 81 of The Hitman’s Final Job

I should have told you sooner.

I’ve been sitting with that since he said it. Turning the words over in my head and trying to guess what his secret might be.

Mark brings out more food: cheese and bread and crackers with various dips.

A new band starts performing on the main stage.

Tess moves in her chair in a way that suggests she and Clayton will be dancing on the street before long.

She’s right. Within twenty minutes, she’s pulled Clayton up.

Shortly after, Silas takes my hand, and then we’re dancing on the street too. Me, Vaughn Reeves, a man who is not known for making time to have fun. I’m dancing in the middle of the street with a man who challenges me every day. A man who loves being out in the garden as much as I do.

I put my hand on Silas’s back, and he puts his on my shoulder, and we dance like we’ve stopped pretending we’re not something.

Our friends around us, to their credit, take this in stride.

When Tess notices us, she smiles and looks deliberately away. Teresa says something to Emilio beside her. He nods, and both of them smile. David catches my eye across the crowd and raises his glass slightly.

Priya watches us for a heartbeat, then nonchalantly goes back to her conversation with Dom.

Silas sees none of this. Or sees all of it and is choosing not to react to it.

“The whole town is smiling at us,” I tell him.

“I know,” he says. “Pine Ridge is very affirming.”

“It is.”

We keep dancing until the music stops and the lead singer announces fireworks are about to start.

The crowd gazes up at the clear sky as the spectacle begins, reacting to the colorful bursts.

But I look at Silas. He’s watching the fireworks with a big smile on his beautiful face.

I could spend the rest of my life with this man.

I can’t help it. I pull him toward me and kiss him.

After a gasp, he returns my kiss.

When we break apart, we’re breathing like we’ve been running. We stare deep into each others’ eyes, our faces wreathed in pure joy, as the fireworks continue above us.

We kiss again. Slower this time.

“Dad?”

We separate, and I turn around.

Rowan is standing five feet away from us with a bag over his shoulder and an expression that is working through several things in quick succession. Surprise. Confusion.

“Rowan,” I say. “You came.”

“There was something—” His gaze is darting between Silas and me.

A firework goes up. Then another. Then the sky above Pine Ridge becomes fully lit with the finale, the big one, that makes everyone tilt their faces upward, but I can’t, because the look in my son’s eyes is one of betrayal.

Then there’s a sound that is not a firework.