Thanks to my beautiful friends: Monica, May, Ciara, Maria, Heather, Jo and Marie who have been endlessly helpful, kept me sane and make me laugh a ton. Couldn't have done it without you.

Weezer - "Feels Like Summer" (Acoustic)

"... Let me see the smile,

stay with me a while..."

Epilogue

Edward

A break between heats and I'm fielding my way through crowds of people. The place is packed, the buzz and hum that soothes when I'm front and center, oddly loud now.

I like it when there's a hush; where there's a whole mass of people falling silent to watch you. The noise falls when the board meets concrete as you push off fast, and then explodes when they know, and you know, you've done something really cool. It fuels me, the struggle of years ago a distant memory now.

I'm asked about it all the time, though. All the damn time. By fans and by press.

"Your performance wasn't so good a few years ago, and then you disappeared from the competition circuit for almost a year..."

I tell the truth these days. My head's in a better place to handle it, to admit that I was struggling, and that that's okay.

My cousin, Jasper, died in an accident. My girlfriend was with him and suffered injuries that changed her life. I lost her for a while. I lost myself for a while. We spent time apart. Too long, but long enough.

I'm okay now. More than okay.

Bella and me. We found our way back to each other. Like fate had a plan all along. Like we needed to fall apart to be able to move forward. And we do. We're always moving forward, and with it we grow stronger and more in love every fucking day.

We're growing—up and together, but never apart. We're too deep for that. Our roots tangled up in something that turned our lives upside down and inside out.

And Jazz. We remember Jasper in the little things. Bella gets scared we'll forget him one day, when our memories fade. It's hard because those memories get fainter with every passing day. They're no longer sharp. I can barely remember the sound of his voice, or what he smelled like. Auntie C and Uncle Al cleared out his room this past summer and turned it into a music room, where Al plays Jasper's old guitar, badly.

He's forever frozen in time, in the pictures and odd videos we have, while we carry on living our lives, doing things he never got the chance to do.

But we try. We remember him by seeing bands he liked, listening to the songs he loved, drinking his favorite beer, and the visits to his grave we make at least once a year. At Rose and Heidi's wedding ceremony, three years ago, they had a chair for him with his picture on it. He lives on like that. In everything.

I try to brush off a group of girls who latch onto me as I'm searching the crowd outside for her. Standing on their tiptoes in tiny shorts and ripped tights as they ask me to sign stuff for them, only caving when they put a pen in my hand and crowd around me so I can't fucking get away. Embry would have a field day. I should be grateful they're fans, but my biggest fan is waiting for me and my hands are itchy.

I sign magazines, photos, the back of a phone case, smiling for a group picture, but when one blonde-haired girl pulls down her top so I can sign the top of her tit, I stop.

"I'm not signing your tit," I tell her, irritated. She pouts over painted red lips at me.

"Why not? Don't you like my tits?" Breathy, flirty.

"My girlfriend's are better," I retort.

Her friends scream with laughter, but it's fucking true. She goes bright red, and I sign a t-shirt in her hands instead.

"No offence," I say, feeling a tiny bit bad.

"Who's your girlfriend?" she asks, sourly.

I look up then, my eyes finding Bella. She's sitting under a tree, not so far away. My smile grows, and she smiles back, glowing and happy.

"Her name's Bella," I tell the girl, nodding my head towards her. "'Scuse me."

I keep my eyes on her as I head her way, like it's just me and her, and there's no one else in the crowd. She's sitting in the shade with Rose and Heidi, out of the way, sipping water through a straw of a tacky water bottle we got at Disneyland Tokyo.

My girl is the only girl I'll ever want, I know that. I picked out her engagement ring the other day. I'm making good on what I always knew, even high, talking to a camera years ago.

Her sunglasses move upward on top of her head and she stands, throwing herself at me as soon as I'm close. Her belly is in between us, my hand reaching for it, possessive.

"I'm so fucking round," she laughs, looking down at my hand. "Like a blimp."

I lean down to kiss her again, hands on her hips, then I duck down to kiss where her little round belly pops out of her dress.

Bella, carrying my kid, and I'm fucking terrified.

"You're a fucking beautiful blimp."

She smacks me on the arm.

"You're embarrassing some of these guys," Bella laughs as she looks up at the screen, at the points on the board where I'm sitting pretty near the top, right where I want to be for the final. I can't stop my smile.

"Hey, I need to do it while I can. I'm gonna be too old for this shit soon."

"That's a lie," she says. "You'll be doing this when you're gray."

"Not like this," I insist. "I'm in my prime."

Her eyes travel over me, her smirk naughty, curling at her lips.

"Definitely in your prime, I think one of those girls practically passed out."

My arm winds around her shoulders and I kiss her temple, throwing a 'Hey' at Rose and Heidi. Rose rolls her eyes at us and then mouths 'when?' at me, her hand rolling in a hurry up gesture.

She knows I'm going to ask Bella to marry me. I've just gotta figure out how… when.

There's a loud announcement over the speakers and I know I've only got a minute or two left before I'm heading back to finish this competition off, with—hopefully—a gold around my neck.

I can practically taste it.

And then I want to taste her.

Bella

Skate competitions are loud. Even louder when you're the one yelling when your boyfriend lands a move that the commentators can't quite work out, until they slow-mo it on the big screen. I still have no idea what to call half the things, even though Edward tries to explain; and he's really been patient with me over the years. I know some, but not all of them. What I do know is… he's magic to watch. He always has been.

Ironically, though...

"I can't watch," I tell Rose, as she squeezes my hand, and I turn my face away. "I'm too nervous." My knee bounces, and the baby kicks at my bladder like it's their own personal kickball.

"Yes, you can. Are you honestly going to miss him winning? You're the one who's going to have to look him in the eye and tell him you missed it because you're being a wuss."

I bite my lip, looking up at the screen and then toward Edward, in his baggy pants and tee with sweat on his back and that look in his eye when he knows he's close. He's talking to a few of the other younger skaters, animated. I know a lot of them now, years of travelling with him to these things, they're like a family—sort of.

He takes off his shirt, ink on ink on ink. I can see mine on him. The one he got for me. A turtle over his heart.

It warms me. Everything about him does.

He didn't stay in LA for just a month; he stayed there permanently. We took things slow—or tried to, after the last first time. We dated. We spent time together, and when he went out to do the X Games world tour, I went with him. It was for three months, so I took a sabbatical from my job, and we travelled, hopping from country to country before finally coming back to LA and my tiny factory apartment.

Angela moved out and into Rebecca's, and I asked Edward to to move in.

Next week we move to a house we bought near my brother and Vanessa, with the biggest backyard we could find so Edward can realize his dream of having his very own skate park. He's already got the plans drawn up.

And the week after, all our favorite people will be here to celebrate the move.

The little person growing inside me might have had something to do with it, too.

And, sure. We have a past. We have a history. He's not the same twenty-one-year-old boy I met, and I'm not the same eighteen-year-old girl either. We're life-weathered, and with that has come new perspectives. We learned to let go, to navigate our way through arguments without letting them spiral. We hold on to what's important: each other.

When it's Edward's turn, my hands are holding my face in place, my breath caught in my lungs. I let out a little whimper, because no matter how many competitions I've sat through, I'm always so nervous for him. Nervous, and worried he's going to hurt himself like he did last year, when he broke his left arm and dislocated his knee skating vert. He was an idiot; he said it himself.

He skates a run, and I don't think I breathe the entire time, he lands everything fucking perfectly because he's been practicing this one relentlessly. When it flashes up as a 9.7, it's done. It's won, and I'm screaming, clutching at Rose and Heidi and jumping, even though I probably shouldn't.

He basks in it—the cheering from the crowd, ecstatic to see him on form and fucking happy. He stops in front of me, abandoning his board and leaping over the barrier until his sweaty body engulfs mine and he's kissing me hard. Three words on his lips.

"I love you."

There's four from mine.

"I love you more."

…

"Is his helmet on properly?"

Edward sighs.

"Would you chill, Mama, you're like a flappy little bird. Little dude is all good, right, buddy?"

A cheesy smile and a mop of dark hair looks up at me with the biggest brown eyes I've ever seen. He's cute. He's fucking adorable. He's the perfect mashup of me and Edward. Stubborn and sassy. I bend down and kiss his cheek, still plump from the baby that hasn't all left yet.

"Listen to Daddy," I tell Riley. "He's an excellent teacher. He taught Mommy a long time ago."

Riley nods, his hand reaching out for Edward's. There's something about seeing his tiny hand in Edward's inked one that always makes me melt. In fact, I love it so much there's a black-and-white photo of their hands together up on the wall in the hallway. I see it every time I come down the stairs, and for some reason, it makes me really want another tiny baby again.

Maybe not yet, though.

"I can't believe I'm letting you do this. He's three!"

Edward grins down at me, leaning in to plant a kiss on my lips.

"I've been waiting for this day for forever. Since before he was born."

"Please, please don't break him."

His hand slides warm on my hip, grabbing the fabric of my dress and tugging me toward him, so my body's flush with his.

"I'm not going to break him. I swear. He's a prodigy in the making, Turtle. Just you watch." He squeezes me again, a sly grope to my ass, a silent promise of later and alone time. Date night.

I watch apprehensively as he lifts Riley up onto the half pipe we have in the backyard, cringing as he puts the wheels of the board against the coping, and our little guy steps on it, fearless. He definitely gets that from Edward too. Oz barks at my side dancing round in circles in anticipation.

Riley's kitted out. Helmet, knee pads, elbow pads. He's listening to Edward, as he crouches to Riley's level and talks him through it. Teaching. I'm still worried, even though I know he's in the best hands. The drop isn't big, and he's been on skateboards since he was toddling around. His very favorite is a black deck with a white butterfly. Mommy's board, he calls it. Because it is mine. I take it out sometimes, in the backyard when it's Edward's turn putting Riley to bed.

Edward will come out and watch from the back porch, the biggest smile on his face as I drop down into the pipe. And then he'll come join me.

"Ready?" Edward asks Riley, who nods his head solemnly, with the same determined expression his Daddy wears.

"Ready!" he shouts, his little voice sending my heart soaring.

"1… 2… 3…" Edward counts.

"Go!"

The End

It's been fun! Thanks so much for reading the first complete draft of this. Now to go and edit the hell out of it 😂

That's it from me for a little while. I have a new thing I'm working on, but I want to get it all written first before posting. It's called Red Doves... think Brit crime drama tangled up in love and you're hitting close.

I'm also one half of HotforLoz with LozzofLondon, we're posting a fun crackfic at the moment called Spies in Disguise if you fancy something humorous 😉

Ps.

Twifanfictionrecs has their top 10 for February poll open. Both my fluffy britward one-shot How Soon Is Now? and my short story Flip are in there if you feel inclined to vote.

Take care!

HTFM xx