Maddox

One and a half year later

“What is this?” I asked my beautiful man.

Ash put a big brown manila envelope on the table in front of me and pursed his lips shut staring at me.

“Are those the divorce papers, because we’re not even married.”

Ash snorted but didn’t answer.

“Nah, what am I talking about? It couldn’t be divorce papers.” I lifted the envelope in my hands and puffed. “It’s heavy. We definitely don’t own that much. But then again, I don’t know what you’ve been doing behind my back—”

“Ok, move on from the divorce joke, Maddox. It’s not funny,” Ash said rolling his eyes and I turned to Biscuit who was staring at both of us with a sagging tongue.

“Uh-oh, Biscuit, we’ve been told.”

“You’ve been told.” He poked me. “Leave the dog alone. He’s not being an idiot right now.”

I put my hand to my chest—a move I’d caught from Hwan and had mastered to perfection if I may say so myself—and gasped.

“Your words? They hurt me, babe.”

Ash wasn’t amused. He didn’t even grin. He scowled.

“Open the damn envelope, Maddox Shepherd!”

I loved it when he was being all serious and pissed like that. It wasn’t often, which was why it was such a sexy look on him.

There was just something about grumpy, irritated Ash that did it for me. And if I kept this up maybe hate sex was in both our future.

I grabbed the envelope from the wrong side and started picking at the glued edges.

“Oh for fuck sake!” After barely two seconds, Ash snatched it from my hands and tried to undo the cord of the flap but it kept getting caught so he ended up yanking the thing open.

Ka-ching!

Hate sex, here we come.

“There!” he said and passed the torn envelope back to me.

Bits of parchment paper flew across the kitchen and Biscuit chased them with an overexcited tail only to realize they were not edible.

I looked at the pile of papers that had been concealed within the envelope. The top page read “His Forever After” in big bold letters and right underneath it “by Ash J. Ford”.

“Oh,” I said. “What is that?”

I lifted the first page and there was only one line in small italics.

To Maddox, my forever after.

“The thing I’ve been working on for the past year,” he replied. “I wrote a book. Our book. Well, kinda.”

I bit my lip, swallowing a knot on my throat and nodded.

Since we’d both settled in Mayberry Holm he’d made it his mission to find a new purpose in life. Something away from tending bar or shooting down criminals.

And I wanted that for him. I wanted him to find something to do with his life that didn’t involve risking his life. He had left Team 13 for me and I hated that burden and I’d been hoping he’d find something fulfilling to take away from that loss.

“I fictionalized our story and turned it into a whirlwind, earth-shattering romance,” he said.

“Our romance is earth-shattering.” I glared at him.

“I know.” He smiled and squeezed my hand. “Well I guess I made it filthier.”

“It can get filthier?” I glared this time.

Was our sex life not spicy enough to make it on page?

“Oh shut up. You know what I mean.” I sighed in response. “So, what do you think?”

I lifted more pages and skimmed through the text all the while trying not to let my emotions show.

He finally told me. He finally told me.

I guess it’s only fair I tell him too.

“It’s cool,” I said as nonchalant as possible. Then got up from the stool and offered him my hand. “Would you like to dance?”

Ash sat frozen in front of me, staring, the excitement deflating from his body at rapid pace.

“What?” he asked.

I hated doing this to him, but I hoped after I showed him, he’d forgive me.

“Come on. Dance with me.” I pulled him up and into my arms at the same time reaching for my phone and scrolling through my files.

Biscuit didn’t waste the opportunity to jump on his back feet and try to get in on the action.

“I tell you I wrote a book out of our story and your answer is to dance? To no music no less?” he mumbled into my collarbone.

I shushed him, pressing a hand on the back of his head and swaying him from side to side for a few moments and then I finally found it.

I pressed play.

“There was a certain quality to Heath. He was strong. He was handsome. He was very skilled on the battlefield. He won people over so easily he could snap his finger and whole battalions would follow him into a battle for the heart of a woman. Although in all fairness, he probably wanted to get in said woman’s pants more than her heart. But that’s a subject for a different story.

“There was a certain quality to Heath but despite all his gifts he had one flaw.

“He couldn’t see me.”

The ethereal mellow voice spoke out loud and Ash stilled against me.

“Wh-what is that?” He pulled away and glared at me.

“What does it sound like?” I smirked.

He took a breath.

Then another.

“It sounds like Hayden Rivers reading my book,” he said.

“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.” I flicked his nose like a bell and pinched it at the end.

Ash slapped my hand away and slipped out of my arms.

“How…how the fuck is this possible? How is Hayden Rivers reading my book?”

He appeared to be equal parts scared and shocked, although I could detect a hint of fascination under all those layers.

I tapped the pause button, put my phone back on the kitchen counter and took both of Ash’s hands in mine.

“I have a confession to make.”

His eyebrows rose but the rest of his body remained still as a statue.

“I’ve been so curious about your project I kinda got into your laptop.”

“What?” he shouted.

“Before you get mad, I just want to say I absolutely love the story and you’re an amazing writer, and so talented and I wanted to do something nice for you, so I found Rivers, sent him a message and paid him to narrate your book to surprise you.”

All the time I’d been reading his book when he was at work, or sleeping, or going through Hayden’s audio files, I thought it was so cute and such a great idea but seeing him look so horrified right now I felt terrible.

“So you’ve already read it?” he asked and the stillness relaxed slightly. I nodded. “And…and you convinced Hayden Rivers to…to narrate my book.”

“Well, it wasn’t so much convincing as it was paying him—a lot of money, by the way—to do it.”

“Oh. Th-that’s what happened to your savings.”

I shrugged.

“Aren’t savings supposed to be for a good cause?”

Ash frowned, but I didn’t miss the little trace of a smile in his expression.

“Uhm, no savings are for emergencies.”

“That’s what this was. I needed to make my baby feel good. Stat! But I failed, didn’t I?”

I had screwed up. Why hadn’t I thought this through?

To be honest, I had wanted to stop reading after I discovered it, but after one chapter I kept coming back to it, drawn to the story, the words, the fact that it was Ash who was writing them, making our love into an even more beautiful romance.

And of course I was kinda glad to see some of the moves I’d pulled on him in bed make it on the page.

“What? No!” Ash’s voice dropped and he brought his hand up to cup my cheek and lift my head.

“I did. Don’t lie.”

He took a deep breath.

“Okay, I’ll admit I don’t like the idea that you’ve read some of the crap I was writing before edits, but your surprise? It’s amazing. I can’t believe you did that for me.”

I looked up and into his eyes and there was a pang in my chest. An all-too familiar pang I’d been feeling since I saw him for the first time.

Like Heath had seen Xander.

Reading my love’s book had made me realize how truly blind I had been all my life. And also how absolutely right he was for me. How perfect we were for each other.

“I’d do anything for you. You saved me, Ash. You saved my life, you saved my mind, you saved my heart. I owe my everything to you.”

Ash shook his head and brought my hand up to kiss my knuckles.

“You did that yourself, baby.”

“No I didn’t. You did. If it hadn’t been for you I’d have been lost. But I’m not. Because of you.”

Ash let go of my hands, grabbed me by the neck and pulled me into a deep, wet kiss that made me weak at the knees.

“I can’t believe you got Rivers to narrate this.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Of course. And you know what that means, right?”

“What?” he asked.

“We’re so having sex listening to your book tonight. Just like God intended.”

He laughed.

“God intended for us to have sex listening to my book?”

“No. Just like Hayden’s voice made me see you, his voice and your story can bring us together.”

He shook his head, chuckling.

“Our story,” he corrected.

“Our story.”

This time it was me who pulled him into my arms and I pressed play and we danced to an audiobook in our kitchen, with our dog jumping excitedly from side to side, loving every part, every second of our lives together.

“You know he’s coming to meet you, right?” I said after a while.

“Who is?”

“Hayden. He was so touched by our story and my surprise he wanted to meet us. I just have to tell him you told me.”

“What?” Ash slapped my chest and pulled away. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I’m telling you now!”

“Still.” He slapped me again. “Is he really coming?”

I nodded.

“You don’t think we can get him to read the book live while we do the deed, do you?”

He punched me this time. I deserved that, but hey, a boy’s got to try.

“You,” he growled into my ear. “How did you end up so perfect, huh?”

I squeezed him onto me, and sighed.

“I told you. It was all you. You made me like this.”

“What? A horny, sneaky bastard?”

It was my turn to slap him. On the ass.

“Hm…I see what you mean about having sex to his voice. It really does something, doesn’t it?” He moaned in my ear. “Slap me again.”

I did.

“Yes. Yes. Definitely does something.”

I laughed.

“I can do more and we can test it out.”

“Yes. Intensive testing is required.”

I slipped my other hand over his ass and squeezed both cheeks, while spreading them apart, as much as the jeans allowed.

“Shall we…take this to the bedroom?” he murmured in my ear.

“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve taken you on the kitchen island.”

Ash’s eyes popped wide open. He pulled away, cleared the island and hopped onto it.

“Take me now, Maddie. Fuck me right here, right now.”

I wasted no time to pull his clothes off him and to climb on top of him, the coolness of the marble top giving us both goosebumps.

“Heath was made of the kind of stuff all men should be made of. Minus the defects. Like the fact I’d been pining over him since I was a bud and he never even noticed. But I was pretty certain if more men were made like Heath, the world would be a lot nicer. Definitely safer. Definitely sexier,” Hayden said as I spread Ash’s legs open and pushed inside him.

Ash let out a loud moan that I felt all the way to my core and I steadied myself by cupping his face.

“By the way, I can’t believe you named me Heath!” I said as I worked up the pace, sliding further and further inside him until he’d taken me all the way to the root.

“Do you want me to change it now? Okay, get off me…” He made an attempt to push me off. “And I’ll go get the laptop.”

“Shut up,” I told him. “Stay where you are and shut up.”

He pursed his lips dramatically and only flinched when I slammed into him.

“Pretend you’re angry at me. Maybe slap me.”

And he obeyed fulfilling more than one fantasy tonight.

“God, I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you too, Heath,” he said and raised his head to kiss me like he always did.

As if our lives depended on it.