Page 61 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Forty

ROS

The house didn’t feel haunted anymore. Not in the way it used to. Definitely not in the way it did the first time I’d run through these halls, heart pounding, fear licking at the edges of desire like a match to gasoline.

The shadows still lived here, yes — but they felt different now. Not like ghosts. Like memories. Like stories that finally had an ending.

And today? We were writing the next chapter.

The wedding wasn’t planned. Not really. Not in the traditional sense. There were no bridesmaids. No tuxedos. No seating chart. No cake.

There was just us and Stonewood Manor. A simple white linen dress I found in the back of my closet. A black suit Knox already owned. A simple bouquet I made with flowers from his mother’s garden. And the man I loved, standing in the foyer where his family once greeted guests.

He was already dressed when I came down the stairs. His back was to me, broad and straight, hands in his pockets as he stared out the tall windows overlooking the drive. Sunlight spilled through the glass, warm and golden, casting long shadows across the gleaming wood floors.

He looked like something out of a dream. Or a memory I’d only ever touched in sleep.

I paused on the last step, heart thudding like it had something to prove.

He turned before I could call his name, like he felt me there before I could say a word, and the second his eyes landed on me, everything else in the world went quiet.

I didn’t speak. Neither did he. But I could feel it.

The promise in his gaze. The weight of everything we’d survived to get to this moment. The ghosts we’d buried. The blood we’d stripped off the walls and floorboards. The love that had been waiting in the ruins.

He walked to me without saying a word. His fingers brushed the side of my neck, curling into my hair.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “You always were. But this…”

His mouth ghosted over mine, the kiss a whisper of reverence.

“…you’re mine now.”

“I always was,” I whispered.

His jaw clenched.

“I need to marry you before I lose my goddamn mind.”

I smiled, my heart full to bursting.

“Good. Because Hale and Alyssa just pulled up.”

He groaned softly, resting his forehead against mine.

“We’re really doing this.”

“Yes, we are.”

Alyssa was the first one through the door, dressed in sleek black pants and a tailored jacket, her hair in a braided crown, she looked like the kind of woman who took shit from no one. And also the kind who’d shoot you if you ruined a good love story.

Hale followed, as stiff and tall as ever, in his Sunday best — a navy button-down, slacks, and a tie that looked like it hadn’t been worn in years. He nodded at me respectfully. Nodded at Knox.

Then looked around the entryway like he half-expected it to swallow him.

“Place looks different,” he said.

Knox’s hand slid to my waist.

“It’s ours now.”

Hale’s eyes softened.

“Good.”

We didn’t have an officiant. Didn’t need one.

Knox had already drawn up the paperwork. Alyssa was the notary. Hale was the second witness. The legal part was handled before the vows were even said.

This part?

This was for us.

We stood in front of the fireplace in the front sitting room — empty but for the soft light filtering in through the windows, the faint scent of jasmine from the flowers I’d twisted into my hair, and the steady rhythm of my heart beating in time with his.

There were no guests, only our two witnesses and the ghosts. They stayed quiet. Waiting.

Knox took both my hands in his, and for the first time since this house became his again, he smiled without sadness.

“Rosalind Elizabeth Cooper,” he said, voice low and reverent.

“You walked into my life when I was eighteen and ruined every plan I ever had. I’ve loved you since before I knew what that meant.

I wanted you when I wasn’t allowed to have you.

I protected you when I had no right. And I watched you fall for the wrong man and still hoped — every fucking day — that you’d come home to me. ”

Tears filled my eyes.

“You’re the reason I made it through losing my whole family,” he said. “You’re the reason I survived. You pulled the truth from the dark and made the world listen. And now? Now I’m done waiting. I’m done hiding. I’m done surviving.”

He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.

“I want to live with you. In this house. In this life. In every way a man can live with the woman he loves. You’re not just my partner, baby. You’re my purpose.”

I was sobbing before I could even speak, but I tried anyway.

“Philip Henry Knox,” I said, my voice cracking with every word. “You were my neighbor before you were anything else. You were the boy who looked at me like I mattered when the whole world passed me by. You saw things I tried to hide. And when everything fell apart, you didn’t flinch. You stayed.”

I cupped his cheek, tears slipping down both of our faces.

“You love me the way I didn’t know I was allowed to be loved.

Fierce. Wild. Unapologetically. You didn’t just survive hell — you brought me through it with you.

And I will spend the rest of my life holding you, healing with you, and proving you were never too much for anyone. Especially not for me.”

He kissed me before I could even catch my breath.

Slow. Soft. Devastating.

When we pulled apart, Alyssa stepped forward and signed the marriage license.

Hale followed. And just like that, we were married in the house where his family died.

In the house we’d rebuilt with blood and fire and something fierce enough to outlast the wreckage. In the house that belonged to us now.

Alyssa hugged me hard at the door, then turned to Knox and whispered something in his ear that made his jaw tense, and his eyes soften.

Hale didn’t say much. He just nodded at both of us and said, “You did good.”

Then they drove away without a backward glance. The house was quiet after they left. Not empty, never empty. Not anymore. But quiet in a way it hadn’t been since the moment I stepped foot inside it the first time.

And suddenly, we were alone. Husband and wife.

Knox turned to me in the foyer, his hand finding my waist.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded, breath catching.

“More than okay.”

He smiled, that rare, quiet smile that was only mine.

“Good.”

Then he kissed me.

Slow. Sure. Like he had all the time in the world. Like I was already his, but he was claiming me again anyway.

When we pulled apart, he didn’t say anything. Just took my hand and started walking. Room by room. Hall by hall. It felt like a tour through memories that didn’t belong to me. Not all of them. But I walked with him anyway.

We didn’t speak. It wasn’t necessary.

He showed me the formal dining room, still intact. The library his mother had loved more than any other room in the house. The back sunroom his sister used to sneak into to smoke, and sketch, and dream.

We stood in the kitchen where he once made late-night grilled cheeses for Ava. In the hallway where he used to run when he was small. And when we reached the grand staircase, I felt the air shift.

He stopped, looked over at me, and for the first time, he hesitated.

“Do you want me to go first?” I asked softly.

His jaw clenched.

“No. I want to take you up with me.”

So I did what I always do with him. I followed him. Up the stairs. Down the hall. To a room I’d only glimpsed once before — when he was wearing a mask and calling me prey.

Now? Now he was calling me his wife.

He opened the door slowly.

His bedroom hadn’t changed much. The furniture was still antique. The wallpaper still peeling at the corners. But the bed was new — delivered two weeks ago, before we even made the decision to move in after our first overnight stay here.

We stepped inside together, and he closed the door behind us.

I turned to face him, breath caught in my throat, heart hammering like a drum beneath my ribs.

“I’m not afraid,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said. “But I am.”

I blinked and my brow furrowed.

“Not of you,” he clarified. “Of how much I fucking feel right now.”

He took a step forward. Then another.

“I’ve waited so long for this,” he said, voice low. “For you. For this life. For this moment. And now that it’s here… I don’t want to fuck it up.”

I stepped into his space, laid my hand on his chest, and felt his heartbeat crashing beneath it.

“You won’t.”

He stared down at me like I was something holy, and then he dropped to his knees. Right there. On the floor of the bedroom he grew up in. Where his future had once been written in blood and grief.

He knelt like a man at church, pressed his forehead to my stomach, wrapped his arms around my hips, and held on like I was his altar.

And then he whispered, his voice rough and ruined, “Let me love you slow tonight. Please.”

Tears burned behind my eyes as he looked up at me.

I nodded, too overcome to speak.

He stood, lifted me like I weighed nothing, and laid me on the bed like I was everything to him.

He undressed me without a word. No rush. No commands. Just reverence.

Every button, every strap, every inch of skin revealed like it mattered more than anything he’d ever touched.

He kissed the scar on my chest. The curve of my breast. The trembling pulse in my throat.

And when he stripped for me, I saw it in his eyes, how much he wanted me… how much he feared wanting anything that much.

“I’m yours,” I whispered.

He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years, and when he came down over me, body warm and solid and real, I opened for him like I was made to take him.

There was no violence in it. No punishment. No stakes. Just love. Messy, devastating, sacred love.

His hands in my hair. My mouth on his skin. Our bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces that finally made sense.

He moved slow: deep, steady thrusts that stole the air from my lungs. He kissed me through it, one hand wrapped around the back of my neck, the other gripping my thigh like he never wanted to let go.

“You’re mine now,” he murmured.

“Always.”

“You made me believe in something again.”

“You made me feel safe,” I whispered. “Even when I shouldn’t have.”

“I will never stop loving you,” he said. “Even if the world tries to take you. Even if the ghosts come back. Even if you run.”

I arched under him, legs wrapped around his hips, tears slipping down my cheeks as I shattered beneath the weight of it.

He followed me. Bit my shoulder. Marked me. And when we both came, it wasn’t loud or wild or primal. It was soft. It was home.

We lay there after, tangled in sweat and breath and everything that had come before. And everything that still waited.

I pressed my lips to his chest, and whispered, “This is ours now.”