Page 56 of Twice in a Lifetime

The sound of Lonny sputtering and gagging from my zip ties digging into his neck brought me back to the present and alerted me to the fact that we were both still alive, and at least marginally safe.

Then I remembered what he did and how pissed I was.

“Who’s gonna kill who now, motherfucker?” I shouted as my vision washed over with red. I braced my foot in the back of his seat and used it as leverage, pushing off so my bound hands choked him even harder. He thrashed in his seat, unable to get free or reach me with his busted arm.

I was so lost in the wave of violence that had washed over me I hadn’t realized my door had been thrown open until I felt a set of hands on me. “No!” I shouted at the person tugging at me. “Let me go! I’m not moving until this piece of shit stops breathing!”

“Angel, it’s me.” I barely registered Rhodes’s voice through my haze of vengeance. “It’s me, baby. I’m here. I’m right here.”

He finally broke through, and I twisted my head to see the most beautiful sight right there beside me. I let out a sigh of relief, but I didn’t loosen my hold on the son of a bitch in the front seat. “You made it,” I breathed.

“Told you I would, Angel. And I’ll always keep a promise to you.”

I smiled. I hadn’t thought it possible to love this man any more than I already did, but when he said something like that, I fell all over again. “I knew you would.”

“Come on, Blythe. Let’s get you out of here, yeah?”

Lonny sputtered and gagged, his one good arm slapping all around, trying to get free. “Not yet,” I growled through clenched teeth. “He’s still breathing.”

“Baby,” Rhodes said soothingly. “I understand exactly how you feel. But trust me, it’ll feel so much better to know this fucker is rotting in a prison cell every day for the rest of his miserable life than for him to be rotting in the ground where he’ll never feel it again.”

That did it. I loosened my hold on Lonny’s neck and lifted my arms over the back of the seat as he coughed and sputtered. His door flew open and my brother reached in, yanking him out and throwing him on the ground. As Tristan wrenched Lonny’s arms behind his back, setting off another series of screams as he cuffed him, I let Rhodes help me out of that God-forsaken car and extended my arms toward him.

“Get these off me,” I whispered. “Please, just get them off.”

“I got you, baby,” he assured me, pulling a pocket knife from his back pocket and slicing through the thick plastic. As soon as he cut me loose, I collapsed into him, wrapping my arms around his neck, and finally allowed myself to break down as he held me up, offering all the support I needed. Just like I knew he always would.

I saton the porch swing, rocking back and forth lazily, watching my kids squeal and laugh as they ran through the sprinklersRhodes set up out back. Koda barked and danced after them, barely dodging the stream in time.

It had been a week since Lonny tried taking his revenge—and in true Lonny fashion, failed epically—and I was finally back to a hundred percent. I’d come out of that ordeal with a couple scrapes and bruises and a pretty nasty concussion, but Lonny had faired much worse. I managed to break his arm in two places and fucked his larynx up enough it required medical attention. He spent two days cuffed to a hospital bed before he was carted off to jail to await arraignment for what he did to me. He was going to prison for a very long time, and I hoped each day was worse than the one before.

Rhodes told me it had been Merritt who alerted them that something was wrong. I’d wanted to see her right away, but I didn’t want to risk going to her house and setting off her husband. When I said as much to Rhodes, he informed me things had been set in motion that day. He wouldn’t tell me any more since it was officially a case for Alpha Omega, but he assured me she was getting help and asked me to be patient.

That wasn’t something I was particularly known for, but I would give it to him. Besides, my time off was finally coming to an end on Monday, so I’d be able to catch up with her and thank her for saving me as soon as I returned to work.

“Hey, Angel,” Rhodes said, his voice pulling me from my thoughts and back to the here and now. “You good?”

I smiled, scooting over on the swing so he could sit beside me. As soon as his arm looped around my shoulders, I nuzzled into his side, contentment washing over me. “Baby, I’m fantastic. And each day gets better.”

There were no half-lives here. Not for me or my kids or Rhodes.

“Can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. To know I’m the one who gets to give that to you.”

I tipped my head up and pressed a kiss beneath his jaw. “And I hope I give it right back to you.”

He tilted his head down, his lips meeting mine. “Every minute of every day, baby. And that’s why I got you this.”

He leaned to the side and reached into his pocket to pull something out. When he held his hand in front of me and opened it, revealing the most stunning ring I’d ever seen in all my life, all the air whooshed from my lungs.

“It’s always been you, Blythe. It was you when I was seventeen. It was you for all those years we were apart, and it’ll be you for the rest of my life. So what do you say? You want to do forever with me?”

My eyes welled up with happy tears as he slid the ring onto my left hand. Cupping his cheeks, I pulled his face to mine and kissed him with every ounce of love I felt for him. “There’s no one else I’d want forever with.”

Epilogue

Rhodes

Sometime later

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