Epilogue – Part 2
Another six years later…
Kyle's POV
"DAAADDDDDDDDYYY!!!" Haley came rushing into the room and crawled onto my lap. "Charlie is being mean! Tell him to stop or you'll tell Uncle Drew."
One thing was for sure. She was the spitting image of her mother. She had the same hair tied up in pigtails, just like Sammy did when we were in high school.
"Charlie's being mean? How?" I didn't know what I was going to do with those kids. They were always at each other's throats.
"He's being a poop-head." She got up and threw a cushion on the floor and lay down on the living room carpet. "I told him that uncle Drew and Brian would get mad."
"Don't say poop-head. How many times do I have to tell you? It's not nice to say stuff like that." I scolded her. I didn't know where she got her foul language. Ever since she was born I had made a mental note to stop swearing around her.
"Rianna's mom let's us say it. She says that it encourages us to speak our minds and express our true feelings." The expression on her face was smug, as if she had just won the battle between father and daughter.
"Well, maybe I won't let you go to Rianna's house from now on if it's turning you into a horrible little girl." I walked over to the kitchen and started to add the finishing touches to dinner.
"NOOOO!! I promise I won't say stuff like that ever again. Let me go to Rianna's house. Please? Daddy? Rianna's Mommy makes the best cakes ever." Haley jumped up and down on the kitchen floor to get my attention, just as Charlie wondered into the room. The seven-year-old boy pulled out a stool from the breakfast bar and plonked himself down, propping himself up with his elbows as if he had been doing it for years. He looked at me innocently as Haley ignored him.
"What have I meant to have done now?" He asked, tilting his head to my daughter who was still hopping around like mad.
I picked her up and set her down on to the opposite side of the bar so that they were not in hitting distance of each other.
I turned back to Charlie. "That's what I want to know." I raise my eyebrows at him in which I hoped would be a stern manner.
"I was only helping her rearrange her stuffed toys," he said as he gulped down the large glass of orange juice that I had just put in front of him. He put down the glass. "That's all I was doing."
Another voice begged to differ. "He chucked them all in the trash! If I hadn't seen them, the trash collector people would have taken them all. Haley's bottom lip started to quiver and her eyes started to water. "Tell him off Daddy! I don't see why I have to be the one that has to play with him. Doesn't he have any friends? I don't want to be forced to hang around with bullies like him."
"Haley that isn't very nice," I warned.
"I don't care if it isn't nice. I hate him!" She huffed and sipped very lady-like at her juice.
"Haley…" I said in my strictest voice. It was clear that she got her stubbornness from her mother.
"It's okay K.C. I hate her too." Charlie stuck out his tongue at Haley when he didn't think that I was looking.
"K.C.?" I asked him, pausing slightly before carrying on. "And it's not okay. Haley apologise right now or you are not getting any dessert."
"FINE! SORRY!" Even though that didn't really count as an apology I was ready to give up and be defeated.
"Charlie gave me a thumbs up sign. "yeah. K.C. I just made it up. Do you like it? I figured that I can't keep calling you Mr Collin's on account of that being Drew's name as well. That would get kind of confusing after a while. And I can't just call you Kyle, 'cause that just rude man. So K.C. was born." He smiled widely and adjusted his baseball cap.
I laughed at his twisted logic. "K.C. it is then."
"Daddy, you're not meant to be talking to him. We don't like him remember?" my daughter explained to me.
"I'm sorry honey, but I like him. You are going to have to learn to get along. After all, he is practically family now." I chose to ignore Charlie's smirk and Haley's retaliation by sticking her tongue out. I couldn't really believe that Charlie had been with Brian and Drew for almost a year. They had adopted him two years after they had had their civil partnership ceremony to celebrate their love for love another. Not one person thought that it would end up like this, including Drew. The year that we had all left high school was probably the hardest for my brother. He was still stuck their for another two years before he was able to graduate and though Brian and Drew were very much in love, after a failed attempt of trying a long distance relationship, they decided to call it quits. It took Drew a while to get over Brian, though there wasn't any of the usual signs, you could tell that he was really cut up about it. By soon, he was ready to put himself out there again ad got back in the dating game, just as Brian had. Both had their fair share of relationships, but meeting these guys, we could tell that the spark that Brian and Drew had when they were together was not there with these new guys. The next time that they met was at our wedding. It was obvious that as soon as they saw each other again, since the break up, the spark was still very much there and by the wedding reception that night; they were acting as if they had never been apart. We always like to think that we had some part in getting those two together. After the wedding, they had dated for a year before they had moved in together and two years after that, Brian proposed. I would like to say that the ceremony was a mushy affair, but the whole thing was quite tasteful. I always found it funny that neither of them turned to the camp side. They both did guy things like going to ball games and playing on the vintage PS2 that they still kept to remind Drew of the first time that he stayed over at Brian's after the party. They took Charlie to karate lesson's, the park and generally tried to be good dads. It was plain to see that they both loved Charlie to bits and though Charlie would never admit it, he too had grown quite attached to them.
We had moved back to our hometown from New York two years earlier, and the familiarity was just what I had needed, and it was as if I had never moved away in the first place. Living only a couple of blocks from where Sammy grew up, Lou and Jack visited often as well as my own mom and dad, Brian and Drew and Junior. Well Junior would visit as often as he could when he wasn't in another country or too busy in the office. Maddie would also come by once or twice a year with her now fiancée, Jason. He was actually a really nice guy for a hot-shot lawyer and was welcomed into our group three years ago when Maddie first started to date him. It was a relief to find that though we had more or less moved on with our lives, we had all remained close friends.
"You do know that I'm never going to like the guy daddy, don't you?" Haley got down from the bench and helped me to carry the dinner plates to the dining table.
"Never say never. I once thought that I would never like this girl I hated back in high school." I smiled remembering senior year at Westbrook High as if it were only yesterday.
Charlie and Haley both became interested in the story. "What happened to her?" Charlie asked.
I laughed. "I married her."
"No silly, you married mommy." Haley said grabbing the napkins.
"She was your mommy," I explained as Haley tried to understand what I was saying.
Charlie was quicker off of the bat. "Are you saying that you hated S.T.? When you were in high school?" he quizzed.
"S.T.?" I gave him a look before continuing. "But that's exactly what I am saying."
Charlie shrugged again. "What? You expect me to give you a name and not your wife? What ever happened to equal rights between men and women?"
All I knew, was that boy was unique.
"Haley started to feel left out of the conversation. "How could you hate mommy? That's not very nice." She stamped her foot and scrunched her small hands into fists on either side of her.
"The same way that you and Charlie hate each other." I scooped some of the fresh lasagne onto their plates.
Charlie's eyes widened as he realised what I was implying. "Are you saying that me and her might get married?" Both children looked over at each other and made horrified faces.
"NO WAY!" They both exclaimed and stuffed their mouths with food. Dinner was unusually quite with the odd, occasional, evil glare across the table.
After clearing up, Charlie and I settled down in the living room as Haley came out of my bedroom with a large box decorated in football players. I recognised that box all too well. "What's this?" she said as she held out the box to me. I took it and placed it on my lap. Charlie came to sit on one side and Haley the other as I opened the box.
It still smelt the same. "It's a box of memories that your mother made when we just about to start college." I hadn't opened the box in years. I took out the first thing I saw a laughed. It was a CD of Incredible by the English Artist Darius. As the two children looked at me, I told them. "This was the song that I sang to your mother in front of the whole grade when I was trying to get her to pretend to go out with me."
"Pretend?" Charlie asked making me explain the whole story to them, as I emptied the box one at a time. The other stuff in the box included, a shell from the beach near Lee's condo, the t-shirt and boxers that she stole from me and never returned, a foil-wrapped chocolate from her birthday which was now nine years passed it'd sell by date, her corsage from prom and the post-it that she had stuck on my head after our first night together. (I quickly hid this in my pocket remembering what it had said.)
A Framed picture or Sammy and I at prom was the only high school photograph that she had had of us together because apparently she had torn up all the others after what had happened on graduation, but Lou had hidden this picture before Sammy could get to it. As I finished going through the stuff, Haley yawned and quickly fell asleep on my shoulder. I carried her to her bedroom, tucked her in and kissed her goodnight before returning back to the living room, where I found Charlie asleep on the couch. I smiled and covered him with a blanket just as there was a knock on the door.
"Drew came bustling in with a bag of groceries and chucked them at me. "These are yours," he said as Rhys came waddling with another bag. "Oh yeah, I found these two attempted to carry a year's worth of shopping out of the car." Sammy immerged laughing and kissed me chastely on the lips. From the corner of my eye, I could see Rhys and Drew making faces and giggling.
Sammy busied herself in the kitchen. "Sorry we're so late. Rhys wouldn't leave Jake's house. Then we had to go to the grocery store and there was a mountain of people. Total nightmare. Did you get on alright?"
I nodded. "Yeah. The kid's are asleep. We left you guys some lasagne in the oven." I helped her put the groceries away in the cupboards.
Rhys came running in. It was amazing how he looked like both Sammy and myself. He had most of Sammy's features but he had my dark hair and eyes. "I had pizza at Jake's," he said grinning.
"Alright mister, but no telling your sister. Now go brush your teeth and get into bed." I ruffled his hair as he raced to his bedroom.
"How come Charlie is asleep? He never falls asleep this early." Drew popped his head around the door.
"Maybe throwing Haley's stuffed toys in the trash pooped him out?" I smirked waiting for Drew's reaction.
"He did what?" Drew tried to act angry but you could tell that he wanted to laugh at the situation.
"I'll explain it in the morning. I'll come by and bring him to yours. There is no point in waking him now," I concluded.
"Okay, but remember that he has karate practise at ten so I want him home by nine at the latest." It was funny how much my little brother had grown in the short time that he had become a parent.
"Yeah sure. Home by nine. I got it." I slapped him on the back in a brotherly sort of way.
"Thanks again for looking after him. I owe you. Bring the twins around anytime you want to have some peace and quite around here," Drew said walking down the front path.
"I'll take you up on that offer next week." I closed the door behind me as Drew walked towards his car and headed to our bedroom. Sammy was talking her jewellery off when I entered.
I hugged her from behind and rested my chin on her shoulder. "Remember when you didn't ever wear jewellery?" I asked, which prompted her to turn and face me. She pointed to her neck. "I've always worn this since we've been together and even before that when we technically weren't." She was pointing to the locket that I had given her all those years ago.
"But that doesn't count as jewellery. That's just something that you wear everyday," I said as if it were that painfully obvious. I kissed her neck. "Can you believe that we've been together for over ten years?" It's so weird that before you, I could never have imagined myself with the same girl for that long."
"Can you believe that we have two six-year-old kids?" she countered letting me hold her.
"We nearly didn't," I reminded her.
"Don't. They are both perfectly happy and healthy." She held me a bit tightly, probably imagining what I was.
"Rhys nearly didn't make it though. You don't know how helpless I felt when they were trying to resuscitate him," I started but didn't carry on when Sammy had hushed me. I had been so close to loosing my son that day.
"I showed Charlie and Haley your box," I said changing the subject after a minute or two of silence, to a less depressing one.
"the box with all of the football stickers on it?" Sammy pulled the duvet over herself as she got into the bed.
"Yeah. They couldn't quite believe that we hated each other back in high school." I followed her in and snuggled up to her.
"Yeah, that was fun." Sammy pulled me closer so that she could rest her head on my chest.
"I can't believe that post-it with the note about the condoms was still in that box. I thought you would have gotten rid of it before the children were born." I grabbed my pants that were resting on the chair beside me and pulled the note out of the pocket. Unfolding it, I showed it to her. "I had to hide it so that they wouldn't see it. Imagine if they had."
Sammy giggled. "It was our first night together. I wanted to remember it. You couldn't expect me to keep a condom wrapper for ten years, could you?" She prodded me.
I grinned as I ran my fingers trough her hair. A thought popped into me head. "How about we make another baby?"
Sammy jerked her head upwards so she could see me better. "What the fuck did you just say?"
"Sammy, language. We do have two children in the same house as us, you know," I said telling her off.
"I don't care. You want another baby?" She looked horrified at the idea. "I thought we talked about this. We've already got two kids and I don't think that having more at this time in my life would be the right decision. Kyle, seriously? Do you feel like you need to have another child? Because we can if you really feel like it would be right. After all, we are only twenty-eight, so I guess we've got at least another ten years before I get too old, but still…Kyle are you sure?" Sammy looked at me slightly worried about what my answer would be.
I smiled sheepishly. "How about we only pretend to make a baby?" I didn't think that she was going to take me seriously after all.
"What?" She was thoroughly confused by me reaction.
"Umm…Well I kind of only said the baby thing because I'm really horny right now." I pointed down at the part of my body that was giving me away.
Sammy whacked me around the head and moved as far away from me as possible without actually having to get out of the bed. She huffed. "Oh my gosh Kyle. If you wanted sex, you could have just asked. You just scared the shit out of me. I really thought that you wanted to have another child." She turned away from me.
"Well?" I asked, doing what she had just asked me to do.
" Can't believe your asking me after the stunt that you just pulled." I couldn't tell if she was annoyed with me or just acting annoyed.
"But you just told me to!" I pointed out making her huff once again.
"Kyle, you are so insensitive sometimes."
I poked her as if to say sorry. "A simple no would have done."
"Kyle you are an idiot," she said squirming as my fingers poked her.
"I know. But you still love me."
"No I don't! I hate you," she insisted but started to poke me back so I was pretty much out of the doghouse.
"And I hate you two dear," I said initiating a poking fight, but it was abruptly stopped by someone else.
"DADDY! YOU LIED TO ME!" Haley wondered into the room and punched me on the arm before cuddling up to her mother. "Don't worry mommy. Me and Rhys still love you. We would never hate you." The six-year-old glared in my direction and I pretended to cower in fright.
Sammy chuckled. "It's Rhys and I. But what are you doing up so late?"
Haley shrugged. "I wanted to say hi to you. I haven't seen you all day. And I wanted to make sure that daddy was telling the truth about not hating you anymore." I got another glare in my direction "Why is Charlie sleeping in the living room? He does have his own house, you know. I think that you should tell him to go home right now."
"Well now that you have said hi, let's get you tucked in." Sammy walked out of our room with Haley, holding hands as I drifted off to sleep listening to their conversation in the background. "Charlie has had a though start in life, and I would really appreciate it if you tried harder to be extra nice to him."
"But mommy, I am trying," Haley protested her innocence.
"You need to try harder…"
I had to admit, life in the Taylor-Collin's house was good and I wouldn't have it any other way.
THE END
WHOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
It is overrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!
OMGGGGGGGGGGG Ummm…this is the result of one and a half years of writing when I should have been revising for exams!!! LOL!!!!!!!
Sorry it took me so long to post…I had the story done two weeks ago, but I just never got around to posting it. I know that it's a bit like the HP ending but I promise that I had this done way before I read the book!!! Its just crazyyyyyyyy
NEW STORY HAS ALREADY BEEN STARTED!!! IT'S THE IRAQ ONE!!! I've written 1 and half chapters already but haven't typed them up!!
They will probably be up when I come back from the States….I'm going to new york for a vacation and visiting ma Cousins!!!
Now to all the reviewers!!!
xSecretRainx
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artistic dreamer: Sorry about the cliffhanger thing!! The threat was empty though, there was no way that I was going to have a sad ending!!
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wendy: no one died:P
hopeless-flame
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free-to-dream15: How about this ending??
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dawn's unforgiving darkness
Lula26: Dude I need you to read the new story so far!!!!
broken glass
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Sania: Kyle and Sammy chemistry Is still intact
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Lightning Can you read my mind??? LOL!!!!!! You guessed it alright!! After all I couldn't have a bad ending could I??
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THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU GUYSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!
Also…I have to thank all the reviewers that have been bugging me to post faster!!! I might have just abandoned this story if it wasn't for them!! And also THANK YOU TO ALL THE REVIEWERS THAT CONSTANTLY REVIEW EVERY CHAPTER!!!! I LOVE YA GUYS FOR IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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For the last time in this story…
DDF
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