Page 135 of 2204 Hunter Lane
Love I deserved.
And more than anything, he deserved this. This sunlight. These breaths. The pounding of his heartbeat thumping in his chest.
There was hope.
We healed each other.
And for the rest of my life, I would spend forever chasing after the high he brought me with one single smile. One soft kiss. One breath as long as he was breathing.
“I love you, Hunter.” I promised. With everything in me, I solidified the emotion branded in my heart.
And he smiled. The smile I saw when he looked upon his mom. The smile he shared with very few people, but belonged to me.
“Till my heart stops beating.”
Epilogue
Three Years Later
Bambi and I spent the first five months of my recovery travelling to the places we wanted to go most. At first she thought I was fucking insane, asking how I’d be able to sight-see with the pain in my leg, but I’ll tell ya, Advil works wonders and so does a cane.
Actually, I took more pride in my appearance now that I had one. Personally, I felt like a James Bond assassin or some shit, and that cane became my ride or die.
Bambi’s place of choice was Italy, so for three months we took it upon ourselves to get an Airbnb there where not only did I propose to her in Rome, but I also got her pregnant. Funny that.
It was towards the end of our stay there that we found out, so I swept us off to New Zealand for sixty-four days before returning back to ours in Nebraska.
When we checked in with our doctor, he informed us that there were two little babies inside of my Bambi, and out popped the fraternal twins: Wren and Luke.
Wren, our beautiful baby girl was born five minutes ahead of Luke, the wrestler who rocked out at eight pounds. Who would’ve thought that a boat-ride in Italy would’ve got me so horned up that I pumped two of the most amazin’ critters I ever did see in my whole damn life. My fuckin’ children. My world.
Adam ended up being promoted to the official manager of his financial advisory unit on Wall Street, so he bought a vacation home in Aurora where he spent most Summers.
I was glad to have him around. He became a brother to me, never looked at me like I had some sort of defect or anything and pushed me to exercise with whatever might I could. Those hikes were mighty hard, but I’ll be damned if they were impossible.
Rosy, his daughter, was the best playmate our kids could ask for. They loved the shit out of her and seeing them play together made my life complete. Everything was complete. No matter what happened.
You see, life, it’s a bitch. If someone told ya different, they were livin’ in La La Land high on shrooms. The one thing people never tell you, though, is how important every part of your body is. How much you should cherish the things you often forget.
My leg could’ve been gone, clean off from the impact. I could be sleeping six feet under or a bundle of ash floating off in the river.
But I wasn’t. I was here. I was here, I was breathing, I was alive.
Fuck all the times I wished for death, invited it. What a mistake that is, to believe life isn’t worth living just cause something bad happens to you.
I was moving some stuff out of my old shed to take to our new apartment when the bottle of unopened scotch caught my eye, collecting dust in the back corner of my bar cart.
“Damn, been a while since I’ve seen you.” I sighed, thinking back to my old self shelving that for the day I got to drink it with my mom.
Only it was never for a good reason, and for years I’d been trying to end it all just to share a glass with her.Fuck, Mom, if you saw me now.
Bambi’s laugh rang through the air, flooding through my opened door as she pranced in with my baby Wren by her side.
“Dex needs you to help him lift an old box to the yard sale. Wren wanted to say hi to her daddy, so I let her tag along.”
“Daddy!” Her chubby little arms jumped into mine as she gripped my leg, holding tightly.
I pressed my lips against her silky brown hair and shooed them off. “I’ll be there in a minute, baby.”
