Worth the Chance

Epilogue

Veterans Day – Months later

Liv

Walking into the steam filled bathroom, I marvel at the sight of the gloriously naked body stepping from the shower. It’s been months, yet it never gets old.

Vinny grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist. Lucky towel.

“Morning.” He leans down and kisses my lips, uncaring that water is dripping everywhere, a playful, devilish grin on his handsome face.

“Good morning.” I smile.

“It could be.” Taking the towel from his waist, he purposefully lifts it to his shoulders to dry off, leaving his very aroused bottom half delightfully naked, standing firmly at attention. The confident, knowing smile tells me it’s a calculated move and has nothing to do with needing to dry off. He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively when he catches me staring.

“You’re insatiable.” I laugh.

Wrapping his hand firmly around the back of my head, he tilts my head toward him. “You know I get turned on when you use SAT words.” Another hot, wet kiss planted chastely on my lips.

“Insatiable is definitely not on the SAT.”

“Whatever. Keep talking.” Allowing the towel to drop to the ground, he reaches down under my knees, scooping me up into his arms.

“Existential, exculpate, ebullient, evanescent, ephemeral.”

Reaching the bed, Vinny quirks one eyebrow. “Ephemeral?”

“Short lived. Fleeting.”

“Yeah, what I’m about to give you isn’t going to be ephemeral.”

Lying in bed sated, my ear pressed to his chest, I listen as Vinny’s heart beats steadily. The sound soothes me, leaving me feeling replete, a feeling I’ve come to cherish after so many months of chaos swirling around us. Thinking back, things could have gone so differently. The press had a field day with Vinny’s admission. Months of nonstop badgering from reporters could have taken its toll, but instead, somehow, it bound us even tighter. Me and Vinny against the world.

After giving the exclusive story to the Daily Sun Times in exchange for my job, we hung low for a while. Vinny needed to recover physically from his fight and mentally from the toll the last 25 years had taken on him. Preach, Nico’s old trainer, loaned us his lake house, a serene, picturesque hideaway where we could escape the hordes of reporters and photographers vying for a piece of Vinny.

Like Vinny, Senator Knight eventually gave the media his side of the story, falling far short of full disclosure, although finally admitting to a one night drunken affair. Mrs. Knight stood dutifully by his side the entire time, a plastered smile on her perfectly made up face. I noticed Jax was suspiciously missing from all of the family photos aimed at restoring the Senator’s public image, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

“I have to get up soon.” Vinny strokes my head as he speaks.

“I know. But I’m so comfy.” I snuggle closer to him, his warm body feeling incredible flush against mine. My body uncaring that it just spent the last hour greedily consuming his, the desire for more of him is just never quelled. Selfishly, I want to stay in bed all day, forget the ride they have planned, and keep him all to myself. I’m worried that today will be hard on him. Nico, on the other hand, thinks it will be good for Vinny. Help him get past the sour memory of his lost father by riding in the Veteran’s fundraising motorcycle run again this year. I’m not so sure. The loss to Vinny, of a father that never really was, came harder than anything else. He grieved the loss of a man he honored from the time he was a child. A veteran that he clung to for purpose in his darkest hours.

As Vinny gets dressed, I’m still undecided on giving him what I’ve planned. For five weeks, I’ve tossed the idea back and forth, one day thinking it was a great idea, the next wondering if I was crazy for even considering giving it to him.

Eventually, we both begin to get dressed. “You okay?” I sit on the bed next to Vinny. He’s been quiet since he got back out of bed.

He nods silently, seemingly lost in thought. “There’s lots of Veterans out there that should be honored. I keep telling myself it’s not about me. But it’s hard not to be reminded.” He pauses. “I don’t know, I feel like I lost someone, yet I never really had them to lose.”

My decision finally made for me, I walk to my purse and pull out an envelope. Removing a single page I’d written and balled up so many times, I offer it to the man I love as comfort. Vinny takes it and begins reading.

Staff Sargent Charles Fisher, Jr.

3/30/1960–1/19/1988.

Survived by his parents, Charles Fisher, Sr. and Laura Cantly Fisher, Staff Sargent Charles Fisher, Jr. was laid to rest on January nineteenth, nineteen hundred and eighty-eight.

A dedicated, two tour military hero, Sgt. Fisher was killed in the line of duty in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Three days before the end of his second tour, Sgt. Fisher was passing through Helmand in route to the US Embassy, when he came upon a bus exploded by the detonation of a suicide bomber.

Acting quickly, and without regard for his own safety, Sgt. Fisher dragged seven children from the burning vehicle while under enemy fire. As he removed the final child, insurgents moved in closer, finding a new target for their hostile fire, hitting Sgt. Fisher five times. All victims were rushed to a nearby military hospital. Miraculously, all seven children survived. Sgt. Fisher was pronounced dead on arrival.

A look of confusion on Vinny’s face, I remove the dog tags he’d ripped off his neck the day he found out the truth about his father.

“These dog tags belong to a hero. I researched the ID number. The man you’ve honored by wearing them may not be your father, but I thought you would be proud to wear them today anyway.”

Vinny closes his eyes for a minute and I watch as his throat works to swallow. Eyes opening to a window of emotion, pain that was only just recently in the forefront being overshadowed by caring and love, he leans down and lowers his head. Gently, I slip the worn tags around his neck, softly kissing his cheek.

Vinny pulls me against his chest for a hug, wrapping his arms around me tightly. “You rewrote the ending of my story with the truth.”

I smile against his chest. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess I did. Releasing his grip on me, Vinny pulls his head back enough to look into my eyes. His baby blues shoot an arrow straight through my heart, “I’m rewriting the ending to our story, Liv. I’m giving you your happily ever after. I promise.”

Finally, more than seven years in the making, I have no doubt that he will.

*****