What The End Looks Like | ✓

epilogue

dean: ten years later

 After all these years, I'd finally found my way here. I always told myself I'd come when it was the right time, but life got in the way. You don't think it does, and then time flies by fast than you can blink.

I worked my way up to Captain, surprising everyone who thought I originally applied to be different from the rest of my family. I met a woman, Victoria, but I call her Tori. She was the social worker that was called after we pulled a little boy from a fire and the rest of his family didn't make it.

Tori calmed him down in minutes whereas the rest of us at the station had struggled for nearly an hour. It was the middle of the night and she was in her pajamas, but walked confidently past all of us to get to the boy.

It was a year and a half after Lacey passed and I didn't think I was ready. I was still carrying the letters with me every day. I didn't think I was ready, but I'd missed enough chances by refusing to act. So I asked her out in her pajamas with soot on my face.

Now we're married with two kids that I love more than I thought I could love anything in the world. I wasn't expecting to marry the first girl I dated after Lacey, but you don't choose when people come into your life.

Tori is everything I could have asked for. She got along great with everyone else which only made me like her more. It took a while for me to admit that I love her. She almost left me because it took too long. I've never been good at discussing how I'm feeling. She makes me want to be better for her though.

Hayes and Sephine had a little boy on the same day that Tessa and Grayson had their daughter. It makes birthday celebrations easy and I have a running bet with Cassidy that they're going to end up together when they're much much older.

Maddox ended up marrying Sephine's high school friend Liv just last month. Liv moved to New York two years ago and it shocked everyone when they got together. Cassidy ended up with Austin, a regular from the bar that asked her out maybe a dozen times before she said yes to get him off her back.

I laughed so hard when she told me that she actually liked him because Cass was so stubborn about not going out with him. I thought it was hilarious, but she didn't find it funny. My arm was bruised for a week after she punched me for laughing and then Beth punched me too because she agreed with Cassidy.

Ruth and Xavier got married but divorced a few years back. Ruth moved to New York and lives down the street from Tori and I.

Hayes is still head of the company but Sephine is now the head director of the American Ballet Company. She stepped back from dancing on stage five years ago due to arthritis in her shoulder from an accident she had over a decade ago.

Grayson and Tessa spend half the year in Italy and the other half in New York to be near Hayes and Sephine. Their daughter is ten and a natural born athlete. I didn't even know ten-year-olds could be that fast.

Now, ten years later, I've finally made it to Bristol to visit Lacey.

I think about her a lot still. I loved Lacey with every bit of me, but Tori is proof that you can have more than one great love. I think they would have been friends if they knew each other.

She didn't lie when she said Bristol was beautiful, but small. You can see the mountains from her plot in the cemetery.

"Hi Lace. It's been a long time and I'm sorry about that. I would have come sooner and more often, but I haven't been able to." I rest my hand on the worn headstone, before taking a seat on the grass next to her.

"I have kids now. I didn't think I'd ever have them. I would have considered it with you, but I don't know. They're great though. Danny is two and Luna is five. They're the funniest kids to be around. I love them so much. Their mom, Tori, is fantastic. She...gets me the same way you did."