“Cheers to fucking that,” I said as Scott also pulled out three small glasses to pour the Scotch into.
“I also have informed our colleagues in the various agencies that we are retired, effective, oh, twenty minutes ago,” Scott said. It was incredible how much more relaxed he seemed compared to before. “No one will contact you for work. At the risk of ruining a perfect night, you all should keep your personal weaponry and armory, but—”
“We’re retired from DOM, not from being doms,” Liam said. “Have a little more faith in us than that.”
Scott, again, to my surprise, laughed. I had never seen him look so loose as he did right now. I guess we really did have retirement to look forward to.
“In any case, I will make sure you two have flights back home,” he said, “and after that, we’ll sell the jets. I’ll again distribute the cash evenly. In short, the three of us have hit retirement.”
“Cheers to that,” I said, holding out my glass and clinking with the other two. “And what a fucking ride it has been, huh?”
The three of us took a seat in chairs that Scott pulled out, and for what felt like the rest of the night, we just reminisced. We talked about the hard times, the good times; we talked about how we’d all gotten into DOM because we were good at what we did, but we stayed in it because of the thrill it gave us.
But it was when we got near the end of the night that it finally hit on the topic that, conspicuously, hadn’t been mentioned at all up to that point.
“And to think,” Scott said, “it was women that did us in.”
He said it as a joke, and we had a chuckle about it. But then a strange silence came over us, one that I broke.
“Did us in?” I said. “Or made us realize there was more to it than that?”
The looks on their faces said it all. All three of us had technically violated “the rules”, but we weren’t going to prison for it. Quite the opposite.
Scott, the gruff founder of DOM who was quick-tempered and hell-bent on killing Snake, had found calm and peace with, ironically, a fiery Kaylie.
Liam, the brooding, reserved other agent who didn’t reveal much of himself to anyone, most especially us, had been peeled open by Kelly and a surprise child—and in doing so, had found himself and his happiness.
And I, a DOM’s dom, the man who always seemed least likely to violate the rules, had found that the joy wasn’t in pretending to use toughness as a shield, but vulnerability as an invitation to a woman, thanks to Emily. I wasn’t especially proud of the bumpy road that we’d taken to get this far, but I was damn proud of what we’d become.
A family.
And while we’d have to leave our DOM family to make our real families as strong as possible, it occurred to us here now that that was a trade we’d all make.
“The latter,” Scott said. “Gents, a toast.”
We all held our glasses up. For the times we’d shared, there was no better way to close out DOM than this.
“To family.”
We clinked. And even though we didn’t say it out loud, I knew what we were all thinking.
To Kaylie.
To Kelly.
To Emily.
THE END
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