Three months.
It felt like a lifetime. A whole new, quiet, sunlit lifetime.
Audrey stood in her office, her hand resting on the gentle, firm curve of her belly. Below, in the museum’s grand hall, her team was carefully installing a collection of maritime artifacts. Her collection. Her vision.
The brass plaque on her door read “Head Curator.” It was a title she had earned twice over. Once with her work, and again by surviving a war.
The news of the scandal had burned bright and fast, then flickered out. Cole was a name in a court docket. Beatrice was a ghost in Monaco. The world had moved on, leaving Audrey and Kian with the one thing they’d fought for: peace.
The door opened and Kian walked in, a familiar, easy smile on his face. He wore jeans and a faded t-shirt, looking more like the dockworker she’d fallen for than the magnate who owned half the city. He carried a single, perfect red rose.
“A delivery for the boss,” he said, his voice a low, happy rumble.
She took the rose, inhaling its sweet scent. “Is this part of the logistics consultation?”
“It is,” he said, leaning against her desk. He reached out, his hand joining hers on her belly. He felt the baby kick, a small, secret tremor just for them. Awe washed over his face, a look she never got tired of seeing. “Payment for services rendered.”
They stood like that for a moment, a small, perfect family in a quiet office.
“I heard from the lawyers,” he said softly, his thumb stroking her hand. “Cole’s final appeal was denied. It’s officially over.”
Audrey nodded, a slow, final exhale. The last ghost was banished. The last chain was broken. “Good.”
He watched her for a moment longer, his eyes full of a light she couldn’t quite decipher. “Are you ready to leave? I’m closing up shop for the day.”
“Absolutely,” she laughed. “This baby is demanding ice cream.”
He drove, but he didn’t take the route back to their brownstone, their noisy, cluttered, perfect home. He turned toward the water, toward the old port, the setting sun painting the sky in strokes of fire and gold.
“Kian?” she asked, a flutter of anticipation in her chest.
“A detour,” he said, his eyes on the road. “I need to show you something.”
He parked near the same chain-link fence as that first night. The air smelled of salt and rust, the same scent that had clung to his clothes when they first met. He led her by the hand down the long, empty pier, the setting sun casting their shadows long behind them.
They stopped at the very end, the water lapping gently against the wooden pylons below. This was the exact spot. The place she had run to escape her life. The place she had collided with her future.
“Right here,” Kian said, his voice thick with emotion. He turned her to face him, holding both of her hands. “This is where my life started.”
“Mine too,” she whispered.
“I was so lost, Audrey,” he confessed, his gaze intense, stripping away everything but the two of them. “I was drowning in a world of glass towers and empty handshakes. I came down here to feel something real. And then you crashed into me.”
He smiled, a memory playing across his face. “You were so fierce. You had this fire in your eyes. You were trying to outrun a monster, and you had no idea you were saving a man from his own cage.”
Tears welled in Audrey’s eyes.
“I didn’t fall in love with you because you were beautiful,” he said, his voice breaking. “I fell in love with you because you were real. You saw me. Not the Sterling name. Not the money. Just me.”
He squeezed her hands gently, then let one go, reaching into his pocket.
Then, Kian Sterling, the shipping magnate, the most powerful man she had ever known, got down on one knee on the weathered wood of the pier.
He wasn’t a magnate now. He was just a man, on his knees by the sea, holding his heart in his hands.
He opened a small, simple box. Inside wasn’t a massive, blinding diamond. It was a simple, elegant ring, a band of platinum with a single, perfect sapphire the color of the deep ocean. The color of his eyes.
“I don’t want to be a magnate,” he said, his voice trembling with the weight of his love. “I just want to be your husband. I want to be the father of our child. I want to build a life with you, full of books and clutter and so much love it spills out the windows.”
He looked up at her, the last rays of the sun catching the tears on his lashes.
“Audrey Wells,” he asked, his voice raw and full of hope. “Will you marry me?”
A sob of pure joy escaped her lips. There was no hesitation. There was no doubt. There was only this man. This love. This perfect, impossible life they had built.
“Yes,” she cried, laughing through her tears. “Yes. Of course, yes.”
He slid the cool, heavy ring onto her finger. It was a perfect fit. He stood up, his hands framing her face, and pulled her into a kiss.
It wasn’t a kiss of desperation or escape. It was a kiss of arrival. A promise of forever. It tasted of salt, and tears, and the profound, unshakable certainty of coming home.
He pulled back, resting his forehead against hers. He placed one hand on her cheek, the other on their baby.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips.
“I love you,” she answered, her hand covering his.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and in the quiet twilight on the edge of the world, their future began.