Page 97 of After All The Wreckage

I stared up into his eyes. They’d thundered when we’d made love, flashing with passion and desire instead of lightning, but the heat had been just as intense. Now they’d softened into the gray of a fading storm. As if the sun would break through at any second and shimmer white beams onto the earth. Maybe he wasn’t the prince in the story but the princess. Maybe he was burning the evil away.

He watched me, and I wondered if he was ever going to tell me what else had inspired the tattoo. When he finally spoke, his words sliced through me in the most beautiful way possible. “The hero is the person who chooses to stay.”

They weren’t quite Veronica’s words, but I knew that was what he’d intended them to be. And the reality of it thundered through me.

“How many times have you actually watchedmyshow?” I asked quietly.

“More than any twenty-seven-year-old guy should probably admit,” he said, lips curving upward.

“Why?”

“Escape. And hope.”

“Hope?”

“That after all the wreckage, after all the damage, there’s still a chance for a happily ever after.”

My breath caught again, tears flooding my eyes, and I squeezed my lids shut to hold them back. I turned so my cheek was on his chest. My voice was choked as I said, “She doesn’t get her happy ending.”

“We all know Logan wasn’t in the car, Pipsqueak,” he said, hand running over my hair. “No way they could survive the tragedies they’d both experienced only for her to end up without him.”

“I don’t think Rob Thomas agrees with you.”

“What does he know? He may have created the characters, but they became something bigger than him the moment they landed in our hearts. And that little bit of hope the fans feel, the little bit of wonder that exists no matter what he says, that’s worth keeping.”

The tears I’d been holding back escaped, running down my cheek, and I moved my hand but wasn’t fast enough to catch the first one before it landed on his chest. He shifted, and the movement broke us apart. He lifted my chin with his finger.

“Why are you crying?”

It was the second time I’d done this with him. Tears that I hated. Weakness. Distraction. I couldn’t respond, so I simply shrugged.

“Rory…” Worry coated that single syllable.

I cleared my throat enough to say, “I’ve felt like Veronica in that final episode for almost a year. Panicked and sort of broken. Out of hope.”

“You think she was broken?”

I nodded.

“If anything, that ending shows how fucking resilient she is. Hownotbroken. And I don’t believe she was out of hope either. There was more waiting for her. Even if it wasn’t Logan. There were decades left of epic stories in her future.”

My eyes fluttered closed. I pulled away from his grip on my chin and rested my cheek against his chest once more.

Gage’s arms banded around me, drawing me impossibly tighter to him, and he kissed the top of my head. “Besides, you’re not her. You’ve never been her. You’re stronger and even more badass. You know what I think?”

I didn’t answer, and he kept going.

“The only mistake Veronica ever made was in thinking she had to do the big stuff on her own. You won’t make that mistake.Because I think you know the truth. I think you know that the only way to be epic is if we do it together.”

My heart literally spasmed inside my chest.

Before either of us could really register I’d moved, I was kissing him. It had the same fierceness as before—the same passion—but the edge of desperation we’d felt had been curbed. This was something bigger. Better. More. This kiss held the beauty of his words and the hope that he was trying to give me. It offered a future filled with times like this that I hadn’t quite believed in but somehow he could see.

Sitting up, I pushed him onto his back and straddled him. His eyes roved over my body and the small curves I’d never hated nor adored. They were just me. But the love in Gage’s eyes made me appreciate them in a way I hadn’t before.

I kissed him again, nipping at his lower lip, and we got lost once more in mouths and fingers and limbs. Retreating into the bubble of passion and lust we’d just left where we didn’t have to think of anything more than the way our bodies fit. Where we moved together as if we’d been doing this for an eternity.

When I finally lifted myself up to sheath him inside me, it was Gage who cried out this time. As if the joy and pleasure were too much to be contained. I savored his cry, swallowing it with another kiss. Making it mine.