For a story that started out life as a one shot five years ago, it is deeply satisfying to finally be able to mark this story as complete

Epilogue

Ranger's POV

"Ah!" Abuela exclaimed triumphantly from the kitchen sink where she was hand washing dishes despite the fact that I'd personally installed a dishwasher for her several years ago. I couldn't decide if it was habit, or a love for the work that drove her to do it, but I had to admit that washing dishes with Abuela was a staple of my childhood, so there will always be something calming an nostalgic about coming in through the back door to find her wrist deep in hot soaping water like right now. "Good. You're here," she said without bothering to check that it was, in fact, me entering the house and not a scumbag murder. I had long suspected that I'd inherited my sixth sense from her. "There's mail for you on the counter."

"Gracias," I murmured, moving to her side and picking up the tea towel to start drying the dishes in the drainer. It was a routine from the darkest days of my youth, and one that I returned to whenever the opportunity arose. The way it eased the tension in my body was beyond valuable, especially over the last two years as my mental health had taken a turn for the worse.

That had been an eye-opening experience. For years I had taken my life and everything in it for granted. I'd worked hard to build a successful security business from scratch, worked harder to maintain the reputation of the company, and never stopped advancing and expanding it's reach. Personal relationships had, as always, come second, but when Stephanie Plum dropped into my life I found it harder and harder to maintain the hard and fast rules I'd set for myself to keep those I loved safe. I was falling. Hard. And before I knew it, I was not only actively pursuing a relationship with the woman the media had portrayed as an absolute bombshell, and not in a good way.

Suddenly, there was a portion of my brain focused on relationships that had nothing to do with work. I was dating for Christ's sake. And the more time I spent with Stephanie, the more I felt the need to give her everything she needed. I devoted whole budget lines to her assistance. I commanded my employees to treat her as a priority, an asset to be protected. I wanted to see this absolute mess of a woman succeed no matter what. I wanted to give her the world and everything in it.

I wanted to help her fly.

But it couldn't last. My brain isn't wired to allow me to hold on to a good thing. So inevitably, when the stress inched up past that red line and tragedy struck, logic and common sense flew out the window and I completely fucked up everything I'd worked so hard on for so long. Unfortunately the first casualty was the only woman I'd let past my hard outer shell. My Babe. I lied to her. I lied to everyone. I stacked the deck against myself and when somehow still found a way to be surprised when the deck exploded in my face. I lost a lot by crawling up my own ass, but despite everything I'd put her through, it was Stephanie Plum that forcibly turned me around and set me back on the right path. Without her honest and earnest words the day we met in that diner in LA there's no telling how much damage the damage I was causing would have rippled outwards.

That's when I'd retreated to Florida. To a place where I'd managed to pick up the pieces of my life in the past and where I hoped to do the same again. I knew I needed to find a way to cope with these break downs that did not reply heavily on my aging grandmother, but I was blinded by the chaos Stephanie had opened my eyes to and desperate to make amends.

Unfortunately, all the amends in the world wouldn't bring back the relationship I'd had with Stephanie. I'd ruined that beyond repair. But watching the relationship she had built with Bobby in the aftermath, I could tell that she was happy. I wouldn't want to be the one to ruin her life twice, so I contented myself with the knowledge that we could at least remain friends.

She was such a generous woman.

"You're too quiet, Carlito," Abuela admonished, putting down her sponge and draining the water from the sink. "I know that frown. You need to get out of your head."

"I know," I agreed. "I was just thinking about-"

She shook her head, stealing the tea towel from my grasp. "I know what you were thinking about," she assured me, in that no-nonsense tone she had. "You need to stop beating yourself up over it."

I nodded. She was right, but I couldn't help it. I didn't think I'd ever find a woman who could accept me for who I was, and now that I'd lost her, I doubted I ever would again. It was a fact I'd accepted, but every now and then I was still hit with a sense of loss.

"You made the right choice, Carlos," Abuela said firmly, hands on hips. "You let her heal and make her own decisions. Now, I'm very glad you came over because I was at the market this morning buying fresh vegetables for a stew when I bumped in to Maya from my Latin Dance class and she was saying that her gutters are all clogged up. She was lamenting how her husband had passed away and her children all moved interstate, so I told her, 'My Carlito is a good boy. He will clean your gutters for you.'" She brandished the tea towel to accompany the proclamation, and I couldn't help but smile. From the moment I returned Florida a year ago, she'd been renting me out to her senior friends as a handiman. It was her way of keeping me occupied.

"Si, Abuela," I confirmed with a nod, taking the tea towel back so I could continue drying. "Write down the address and I can fix it this afternoon."

"You'll go this morning," she instructed, yanking the towel out of my hand before I'd even managed to pick up my next dish. "And I'll have lunch ready for you when you get back. The address is on top of your mail."

I stared down at her, wanting to glare, but knowing that I didn't want the consequences of such an act of defiance against my strict Abuela. "What if I'm busy this morning?" I countered instead.

"You're not," she said confidently. "You only visit me when you're not busy. Now go on, you're wasting my time."

I shook my head but couldn't argue. Not only would my backchat result in a whipping from that wet tea towel, but she spoke the truth. I did only visit her when I had a few hours to spare. Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to her cheek to say thank you and crossed to the counter to retrieve the mail she'd collected for me in the past week. While I'd been slowly integrating myself back into Rangeman, an important part of my recovery had been putting up a clear divide between work life and home life. The biggest change of which was that I no longer occupied the penthouse apartment of any Rangeman building. I'd stayed with Abuela for a time, but after a while I'd moved into my own place. Still being the security conscious man I was, though, I'd withheld my address from the majority of the world, so Abuela tended to receive any correspondence of a personal nature for me, holding on to it until I visited next, or calling me to come pick it up if she thought it was important.

Slipping the slip of paper with the address on it into my pocket, I quickly flicked through the rest on my way back out the door, stopping dead in my tracks when I reached the silver envelope at the bottom of the pile. Stephanie's even handwriting had printed my name and Abuela's address (which she probably got from Lester) on the front. Filled with dual sensations of hope and apprehension, I strode purposefully down the path to the SUV I'd parked in the back alley, carefully tearing open the envelope as I went. It wasn't until I was safely ensconced within the car that I slid the two slips of card from within.

The first was an elegant save the date notice for Stephanie and Bobby's wedding. My heart stuttered at the physical proof that she was no longer my Babe, but I took a deep breath and moved on. Accompanying the notice was a second card, decorated in the same elegant theme of silver and blue. This one, though, requested my service as one of Bobby's groomsmen. I could hardly bear to look at it. How could they possibly have agreed to include me in their wedding party after everything I'd done? I flipped the card over, maintaining direct eye contact with the steering wheel as I breathed deeply, wanting to distance myself from it, to forget it's existence. I could probably stand to lurk in the back of a room and watch the woman who would always poses a large portion of my heart and the man who'd sewn me back together more times than I could count join their lives in the eyes of state and God, but standing right beside them? Did they really want that?

Deciding that the invitation was an act of pity, since Tank and Lester would also have been selected for the roles and they didn't want to leave me out, I moved to slide the cards into the glovebox when my gaze caught on that same familiar handwriting on the back of the groomsman invitation.

Dear Ranger,

I know you probably have your reservations about accepting Bobby's request to be a part of his groom squad, and I don't blame you for that, but please know that he only extended it after I insisted it would be all right. So please don't let any lingering doubts about how I'd feel stop you from supporting your friend.

Hope you're well,

Steph

P.S. We're organising a day for me to work through my shit list from when I broke my leg, so if you're still up for getting your ass kicked (or, more likely, kicking my ass) let me know how your weekends are looking.

I read the note twice, immensely grateful for two factors. First, that she understood and pre-empted my reservations. And second, that she'd found a way, as she always did, to make me smile. Of course I was still interested in having my ass handed to me Stephanie Plum. She'd been doing it metaphorically for years, and now that she'd gotten training I was eager to see how well she'd manage the task physically. I'm not proud of the actions I took to convince her to get training, but at the very least she'd managed to bounce back stronger than ever.

END


Thank you, as always, to everyone who has supported me throughout this and all my other stories. As mentioned in previous chapter I will now be taking a break to clear my head. Stay safe, and be kind to one another.
~Becleigh