I love you, too.
Don’t leave me, please.
The words are on the tip of my tongue.
But I never say them.
I have to let him go. For his sake. For Jesse’s. And for mine.
“Will I ever see you again?” I breathe through the agony.
He tugs me into his arms and hugs me tight. “Thank you,” he whispers, answering my question without actually saying the words. “You brought me back to life, Daisy, and for that, I will never be able to repay you.”
I’m never going to see him again.
My heart splinters in two.
He removes his arms from around me, leaving me cold. He stares down at me and gives me a sad smile. “Good-bye, Daisy Smith.”
I swallow past my tears. “Good-bye, Kastor Matis,” I whisper.
He touches my cheek with his hand one last time, and then he turns and walks out of my apartment and out of my life, taking a piece of my broken heart with him.
Epilogue
Three and a Half Years Later
Seeing the last customer out, bidding them good-bye, I shut the door and turn the sign over to read, Closed. Walking back around the counter, I drop my tired butt down onto a stool.
It’s been a long day.
A hard day.
Jesse’s starting university.
I drove him there this morning, so he could get settled in the dorm.
So, we’d packed my car up with his stuff, and I’d tried not to cry the whole time.
Yep, I have a car. I learned how to drive a few years ago. So much easier having a car, and I’m going to need it with Jesse being in Birmingham.
I was so proud of him when he got accepted. I might have wanted him to stay in London, but he’d loved Birmingham when we visited earlier in the year, and they have a really good law school.
Yep, that’s right. My boy wants to be a lawyer.
When he told me what he wanted to be, I won’t deny that I was surprised. He’d never shown an interest in the law before.
And the law hadn’t exactly been a friend to me over the years.
But whatever he wanted to do, I would be happy with it. I’d support him.
Then, he told me why he wanted to be a lawyer.
He said that the law had failed me in so many ways. My lawyer had failed me. He said there were too many shit lawyers out there, and he wanted to be one of the good ones. He wants to make a difference. Make sure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to anyone else.
I got a little choked up at that.
Okay, I might have cried.
I’m a weepy bitch nowadays.
So, I got my boy settled in his room and helped him unpack his things. Then, I left him to get to know his roommates.
I might have cried a little bit then too.
Okay, I held on to him for ages and sobbed before managing to pry myself away from him.
Once I got in my car, it took me a good fifteen minutes to be able to drive, as my eyes were blurry from all the crying.
But my boy has grown up. He’s a man now.
And I’m…alone.
Well, I have Cece. But it’s not the same.
So, with my bird having flown from the nest, I drove back to London and came back to work. I was supposed to have the day off, but I didn’t want to go home to an empty house. So, I came in and helped out Jasmine, one of my part-time employees.
That’s right. I have employees. I am the proud owner of a little chic coffee shop called Thessa’s.
And, yes, I named it after the place where Kas is from. Well, he’s from Thessaloníki, but it’s not exactly easy to say, so I went with Thessa’s, and I think it has a nice ring to it.
After my name was cleared, Cece encouraged me to pursue compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care about the money. I was just glad to be free of the blame. To have that black mark taken from my name and to be able to apply for jobs without having to tick that box was amazing in itself.
But then Cece pointed out that I could put whatever money I got toward Jesse’s future.
So, I got a lawyer, and she pursued a case for wrongful imprisonment.
My case was won, and I nearly fell off my chair when my lawyer sat me down and told me what I would be getting.
It was enough to set Jesse and me up for the future.
The first thing I did was put a deposit down on a house. Cece and I couldn’t bear to live in the apartment anymore, and I would never want Jesse living there. There were just too many bad memories in that place.
It wasn’t our home anymore. Damien had taken that from us.
So, we moved our things out of there and started afresh in our new home.
And then, a month later, Jesse moved in permanently with us.
It was the best moment of my life.
I had applied for full guardianship, and after jumping through hoops, it was granted.
I remember the first day he moved back home. Just being there with him, seeing how happy he was, made all the bad stuff that I’d had to go through to get to that point worth it.
I wasn’t going to look back and wish that things had been different. I could look back and be angry all I wanted, but it wasn’t going to change the past.
I had Jesse with me now, and that was all that mattered.
But I was still unemployed. Jesse was at school, and Cece was working. I felt lost. I spent a lot of those days wallowing and missing Kas, wondering how he was doing.
I’d never been a wallower, and I was starting to drive myself crazy.
One day, when I was out for my morning run, things changed for me. As I was running through the town center, I happened to see a For Sale sign in the window of a cute little coffee shop.
Before I knew it, I was stopping, peering in through the window, and then putting the number for the estate agent in my phone. I headed back home and called the estate agent, asking for the price of the place. I also found out they were selling the shop along with the equipment.