Covet

| Epilogue

"I'm going to miss you so much. I can't believe you're not coming home with me." Carolyn dropped onto the sofa next to me. She smiled at the little bump now visible on my belly. Her bags were by Lucille's front door. Her impromptu visit after Antoine had gone had done us both the world of good.

I leaned my head on her shoulder. "A master's degree isn't for me. I don't think it ever was. There's a wider world, and Benton is my home now." My eyes found Paul already staring at me from across the room with a silly grin on his face. In the weeks that followed, Lucille returned to us but never wished to challenge my lead. In our downtime, Paul encouraged me to paint, draw, to do anything but study the art of others.

I hated to admit it; the boy had been right. There was a therapeutic solace in creating something from nothing, and as Paul had said, ′It wasn't like I didn't have an incredible view out of my bedroom window to inspire me'—our bedroom window, that is.

It wasn't long before my art adorned the walls of our house, garage, and the law practice of Arthur Jenkins. I even donated one to the diner, but Pamela had turned her nose up and asked if it was returnable. If Arthur was surprised when we instructed him we were no longer selling Lucille's, he didn't show it.

The house on the bluff was now officially ours.

Through the double doors to the Juliet balcony, we watched our boyfriends talking. Dressed in lived-in dark jeans, a simple t-shirt, and signature sandy bedroom hair, Paul was as devastatingly handsome as the day I had met him. Maybe even more so now the pregnancy hormones had kicked up a gear. Paul paused mid-conversation and threw a cursory glance over his shoulder. He mouthed the words, ′I can hear you.′

I grinned. Didn't I know it? After ascending as Alpha, my ability to read Paul's thoughts became instinctual, the frequency regular and I found it difficult not to do all the time. For the first week, he'd stomped about like a child, screaming for me to get out of his head. When he was really wound up, his protests made me laugh even harder.

Welcome to my world, Mr. Benton.

It wasn't always that way; there were times when it became more than handy, and not only when I'd forgotten something at the grocery store. The sex went from mind-blowing to other-worldly. Knowing what ran through his head at the same time he was in mine was indescribable.

Paul turned again and flashed me a wicked grin. This was the other upside. I could now make that boy blush quicker than he could make me. Seven billion smiles on Earth, and Paul's was the only one I wanted to see for the rest of my life.

For a moment, I prayed for our child if it were a girl and for all of the teenage boys who would attempt to date her. May the powers that be help them both, especially if she was stuck in her ways as Paul or as naïve as I had been. This very idea was the sole reason why Paul was insistent we were having a boy. His brain could not comprehend the idea of internally vetting boyfriends.

Luke's funeral was rough. Carlyle, Jenny, and Paul banded together, dusted themselves off, and made a pact to celebrate him each and every day in any way they could honor his memory, but with a knowledge that power corrupts and they would never allow it to happen again. The loss for Paul had been too great.

It had been a double blow. The part that shook me the most was—Paul had known this was the only plan B. It was the idea Paul had refused to entertain after leaving his father's house, but for the sake of his unborn child and myself, both had allowed trade to happen.

As loving towards his children as David always was, he would be an even better grandfather if he survived long enough to see it. Lucille, ever present in my life now, would make sure of it.