“More …?”

“You heard me.”

With a wary glance over her shoulder, Lark focuses on the items left inside, where I know there’s a manila envelope with her name on it. She keeps her back to me as she opens it. There’s a gasp as she withdraws the documents and reads the itinerary for a prebooked honeymoon trip to Indonesia I printed earlier today.

And then she flips to the divorce papers.

“What the fuck is this …?”

When I say nothing, she turns to face me, and finds me down on one knee.

A fresh wave of tears cascades down Lark’s cheeks in shining rivulets. She can’t seem to land on furious, or elated, or purely overwhelmed, but they all seem to combine when she says, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Proposing, by the looks of things,” I say with a glance at the diamond band I hold between us.

Lark looks around us as though the explanation can be found on the sofa, or out the window, or on the floor. Her gaze lingers on Bentley, who looks as confounded as she does. Then her eyes land on the papers that waver in her unsteady hands. I’m pretty sure a feckin’ eternity passes before her attention returns to me. “Why?”

“Because you never really had a choice in this marriage.”

Lark shakes her head. Her lips press into a tight line and her brow furrows. And I’m feckin’ terrified. I’m terrified to let her go. But I made a promise to protect her. From anyone, even herself. Even me. And the only way I can do that is to be sure she can live the life she wants. Otherwise, I’m not a protector. I’m a cage.

Lark’s expression is so hard and so pained that I can’t tell what she’s really feeling, but I know I need to keep going.

“You made this vow to save me. My brother. Your best friend. But I want you to choose the future you want, Lark. You can dissolve this marriage. Or we can do things another way. Maybe we start over and pretend we’d first met at Rowan’s place. Or we can stay married, have the honeymoon we talked about. You said it would be Indonesia, if this were real.” I take a steadying breath, but my throat burns when I swallow. It’s so hard to keep my eyes on her as I break open my heart to let her look inside. “This is real to me, Lark. I know I promised I wouldn’t let you go, but I was wrong. Because this decision is more important than me keeping my word. And for what it’s worth, I hope you choose me, in whatever way that needs to be. I’m asking you to stay with me. But I want you to choose what’s right for you.”

Lark holds my eyes.

And she doesn’t look away. Not as she tosses the itinerary over her shoulder, a move that incinerates my heart in a beat of panic. Not as she holds the divorce papers up and rips them apart, one after the next until each one is torn. Then she points at me with a trembling hand.

“I am madly in love with you, Lachlan Kane,” she says, jabbing her finger in my direction as though punctuating each word. “And I am also just madly mad. Don’t you ever give me divorce papers again.”

“I promise, duchess.” A burst of hope and relief and joy floods my chest. They are feelings I thought I’d never have, a life I never thought I’d live. Not until I made the choice to let Lark in. “I love you, Lark Kane.”

Lark’s anger dissolves. Her smile ignites. It’s the most beautiful she’s ever been, her happiness an unstoppable dawn.

“Good, you ‘feckin’ catastrophe,’” she says, and then she crashes into my arms. “Because I choose you.”

I slip the ring above the set on her finger.

And I choose her, like I have every day since I found the bottom of the chasm between us and decided to do whatever it took to claw my way into her light. I choose her like I will every day to come.

I kiss my wife. And I choose love.

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EPILOGUE

MAGIC TRICK

Rose

My grandma used to say that the best magic tricks are performed by the ones who believe.

It’s true. I see it all the time at Silveria Circus. The best magicians are always the ones who understand that the true magic at the heart of a trick is possibility.

Maybe that’s why no one looks my way now. Because I believed in magic too.

Abe Mead lies dead on the factory floor. That fucker. Wouldn’t mind having another shot at killing him if I could. Maybe I’d have done a few things a little differently.

I pull my attention away from his cooling body. I don’t want him to take another second of my time.

So I put all my focus on something beautiful instead. Lachlan and Lark. They hold each other in a crushing embrace. They sway like two trees that have twisted together and weathered storms side by side. Maybe this will be the last big one. A thunderstorm that leaves clean air and vibrant colors behind. I’d like to think the weather will always be fair for them now, the skies always clear. I think that’s what I’ll choose to believe.

I glance down at my shirt. There’s almost nothing to show for everything that’s happened. Just a small hole in the flannel fabric on my side, right beneath my ribs. There’s no more than a few drops of crimson to stain my shirt. A little trick. Nothing to see.

But I can feel it.

It burns right there, while the rest of me feels cold. No one notices when I lie down on the floor.

Lachlan and Lark are still wrapped together when a door flies open somewhere nearby. Running footsteps echo against machines and concrete walls.

“Rose,” Fionn calls out. There’s panic in his voice. He repeats my name over and over. It sounds like it’s growing more distant. Not coming closer.

It feels like the first time I flew through the metal cage on my motorcycle. The terrifying roar of the engine. The flip of my stomach when I realized I didn’t know which way was up. I just pulled back on that throttle and sped through the sphere until everything else faded away except the headlight in front of me.

“She’s here,” Lark calls back when I don’t answer, but she sounds far away too. “Oh my God—”

“Christ Jesus. Fionn, help—”

The world doesn’t go dark. It goes bright white. In the final moment before the light washes the shadows away, I see Fionn in the distance. And I know he’s my home. My person.

My love.

Maybe magic is real after all.

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BONUS CHAPTER

STRAPPED

LARK

Funny thing about marriage.

Sometimes I look at my husband and think, I can’t imagine having loved anyone as much as Lachlan Kane.

And other times, I just want to make him suffer.

In a loving way, of course. Most of the time.

Like now.

I watch from the hammock as Lachlan checks his gear and lays his wet suit out to dry in the sun on the porch of our beach hut. I give him a saccharine smile as he bends to place a kiss on my forehead and then heads inside, leaving the door open. He can’t see the way my eyes narrow behind my sunglasses, or the way my smile turns menacing as I roll out of the hammock and follow behind him.

“How was your dive?” I ask as he picks up his wedding band from the dresser and slides it onto his finger where the tattoo of a gold star is recently healed, the pale yellow and black lines vibrant.