Indigo Sky

EPILOGUE

And you know what? By some fucking miracle … we were.

A few days after Nate and I had saved Kate and her father, she was released from the hospital, still bruised, stitched up, and bleeding in places no medical team could touch. She went to stay with Saul and Wendy initially while she and I navigated this strange and uncharted territory of our relationship. We quickly learned that being in love after unthinkable trauma was often a hot-and-cold situation, one neither of us could do much to control, but we stuck it out. She was worth it, and I guessed she thought I was too.

During her time at Saul and Wendy's place, her father was moved into a nursing home that could care for him properly. When Kate wasn't with me or at Saul's, she was there with Howard, making sure he was settled and doing well. He never did like change, but this was one he took to easily.

And he asked about me often.

Two months after the attack, Kate asked me to visit him with her. I didn't so much as argue or protest; I just went.

"Revan, ye ol' scallywag!" Howard crowed at the sight of me, his eyes glinting with mirth.

"Hi, Howard," I said, forcing a smile as my mind replaced his bright, happy face with the one from his living room. Wide-eyed, terrified. Splattered with Angela's blood.

My therapist had told me it was normal for the flashbacks to happen frequently, but that it was important to push beyond them.

I was trying.

"Patty tells me you and my Katie girl are getting on swimmingly," he said, nudging his elbow against mine after I took a seat beside him.

My eye met Kate's as I nodded. "We're doing okay, yeah."

"Good, good. That's what I like to hear." His wrinkled hand patted my arm. "But you listen to me, son. Are you listening?"

"Yeah, I'm listening."

"Don't drag your feet. When you know you've met the woman you're gonna spend the rest of your life loving, don't waste any time. Marry her. Give her babies. Remind her every single day for the rest of your life how much she means to you."

I held Kate's unwavering stare as I said, "I'm not really sure the timing's right at the moment."

How could it be? We were healing; our lives were both in an odd, dreamlike state of limbo. I would've gladly had her move in and share my bed, where we could protect each other from the nightmares that haunted us both. But I wouldn't push her into anything—not a single fucking thing—until she was sure and ready.

But Howard held fast to my arm.

"There will never be a right time, Revan," he replied, his tone firm. "Don't make the same mistakes I made. Don't wait. Don't drive her away by dragging your feet."

***

We drove back to my parents' place in silence until Kate sighed and pulled my attention from the thoughts swarming my mind.

"He's right," she whispered.

"What?"

"Dad. He's right. This whole thing is …" She shook her head, as if unsure of what word to use. "I want to be with you, Rev. I'm sick of just, like, dancing around this. We keep each other at arm's length. We're—"

"We're figuring this out," I told her gently. "I mean, it was just two months ago that … you, um … you were—"

"Abducted. Assaulted. Raped."

I flinched at the horrible, vile, disgusting words coming from her mouth, and my hands clenched tightly around the wheel until I thought my fingers might snap.

"I know what happened to me, and I accept it. I can say those words, Rev, but I understand why you can't. I understand you struggle with feeling like you failed—even though you didn't, and that's okay. Like you said, we're healing. But I want to heal with you. Not like this, where … I don't know … we're together, but we're dealing with everything alone. I hate it."

I relaxed my grip and sighed. "I didn't want to push you or—"

"You can't make me do anything I don't want to do," she assured me gently. "But I'm not afraid of you, Rev. I never was. Donny did all those things. Not you."

I took what she had said to heart, and after I dropped her off at Saul's house, I went home to talk to my parents.

***

A week later, Kate moved her stuff into my childhood bedroom.

We spent four months in that house as a couple, working through an ordeal neither of us had planned on coping with. We attended our therapy sessions—both separate and together—and after I started full-time at Mom's gym, we took a leap and moved into the same little apartment Nate and I had once called home.

By some miracle, it had remained vacant in the months since Nate had moved out and into his house with Crystal—Cassie—and her son, Jagger.

We made a life in that apartment. We filled the walls with Kate-and-me moments to join the ones I'd shared with Nate. We made dinners, and she taught me how to dance—no, not that kind of dance, but there was plenty of that too. We each had a birthday in that apartment and a handful of inconsequential holidays that meant nothing to us, but everything to my mom, if only for the reason to invite their friends and family over and brag about my mundane life and perfect girlfriend.

But things were far from perfect.

Kate had quit her job at the club immediately after the attack. Nobody fought her decision. In fact, Sam and Saul encouraged it. But in the year since that day, she hadn't yet decided on a career she was content with. She had been happy, dancing. She had come alive on the pole.

And after the edges of her trauma began to fade, I could tell she felt like something was missing. I could sense it in the sparkle that had dimmed in her eyes and the way her smile didn't stretch quite as far across her face. I thought for a while that maybe it was me, like she was no longer happy in our relationship and she was just looking for a way out.

But then, one day, we went down to Midnight Lotus to visit “the old gang,” as Kate had put it. We watched Wendy kill it on the pole, even though she complained of worsening arthritis pains, and we cheered Ivy on.

I looked across the table at my girlfriend to find that glimmer back in her eye, the passion and a touch of desperation, like she'd give anything to be back up there, holding the reins and commanding the crowd. An ache so dull and horrible flooded my chest as I realized she needed to come back to work—and I wanted her to. I wanted it for her, for her happiness and contentedness, and when we left the club early—because I had work at the ass-crack of dawn—I blurted out over Bruce Springsteen on the radio, "You should dance again."

Kate was silent for a moment, startled. She didn't look at me right away, just stared ahead at the dashboard as we drove back to our apartment.

I thought maybe I had said the wrong thing, that I had upset her in some way, so I quickly added, "I mean, only if you want—"

"I'm pregnant."

It was my turn to stare, unblinking, barely seeing the road before us as the words she'd spoken rolled around in my head. Had I heard her correctly? She was on birth control … right? Had she stopped taking it and … what, forgotten to tell me? Was she trying to pull a quick one on me, strap me to her for life without my consent—

Oh my God, stop .

I sucked in a deep breath and glanced at her in time to watch a tear stream down her cheek. Wait, why was she crying? Was she not happy? We had talked about kids on a few occasions. Not in an immediate sense, but as something we wanted someday, and, yeah, sometimes, things happened when you didn't quite plan for it, but shouldn't you still be happy ? Yet there Kate was, crying in the passenger seat, her tears flowing quicker and quicker with every dashed line we drove past.

"Hey, hey," I said softly, reaching out to tuck a strand of her pink hair behind her ear. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

She sniffled, dragging both her hands over her cheeks. "I-I told your mom you wouldn't—"

I reared my head back. "My mom? My mom knows?"

She nodded erratically. "I didn't … I didn't know who else t-to talk to …"

It startled me that she wouldn't have gone to Wendy or Crystal. They were her best friends. They were both also mothers who had been pregnant at one point or another. But then I realized that maybe what Kate had wanted wasn't a friend, but a mother—something she no longer had. Not until my mom had come into her life.

And then I wasn't startled.

I was enlightened. Awake. So fucking alive that I hardly knew what to do with this new resounding beat in my chest.

Holy fuck, I was going to be a dad. However the hell it had happened, my kid was going to come into this world, and the only love of my life was going to be his or her mother and …

"Holy shit, we have to get married," I stated, breathless.

The road came back into focus—thank Christ—but the frantic pounding in my chest made me unsure if I should be heading home or to the closest emergency room.

"W-what?" Kate asked, turning to me, confused and bewildered.

"We need to get married," I said, nodding to myself. "We need more space, we—oh God, we need to move! We need a bigger place. Baby shit takes up a lot of room, right? Where are we gonna put all of it?"

"Actually, um … I talked to your mom about that too," Kate said, her voice quiet and unsure, like she was about to drop another bomb on me.

"What?" I shot another glance in her direction, the streetlamps casting shadows across her face and glinting off the streaks of drying tears.

"I don't know when I'll be able to work again," she said, barely audible over the music so I turned it off entirely.

There was nothing left to focus on now but the road and her. The woman carrying my child.

Holy fuck.

"I know we will need more space. Maybe not right away, but eventually. And I don't know how we'll afford it on your salary alone. I-I mean, not that you don't do enough, but—"

"I'll start bouncing again," I declared. "I'll find a way to make more money."

"I know you would," she said, reaching out to lay a hand on my shoulder. "But I also want you to be there. If you're always working, I … we would miss you, and I want our baby to grow up knowing that he … or she … has both of us, not … one of us while the other works themself to death just to put a roof over our heads."

I cocked my head, considering this as we neared the apartment. "There's nothing wrong with that life, Kate. Some people have no choice, and if I have no choice and that's what I have to do, then—"

"Or we could move back in with your parents," she interjected softly.

It was almost comical, the thought of ending up back in my childhood bedroom … again, like I was meant to be a ping-pong ball, bouncing between the house I'd grown up in and this small apartment on Main Street above the Chinese place.

"Are you serious?" I snorted an unamused laugh.

"Your parents and I talked—"

"My dad knows too?!"

Kate sighed, but didn't elaborate as she continued, "There are four bedrooms and a bathroom on the upper floor of your parents’ house."

I grunted with a nod, unable to believe this conversation was happening at nearly midnight on a Wednesday. Fuck, life had the ability to change so quickly. I knew this better than a lot of people, yet it never ceased to fuck me up.

"The ground level has two bedrooms," she went on, explaining the floor plan of my parents' house as if I hadn't spent most of my life there. "Your parents were telling me that, especially now that they're older, they don't want their bedroom to be upstairs anymore. They're tired of always climbing the stairs."

This was true. Mom had been complaining more often about the arthritis in her knees, and Dad … he was just tired.

"They thought about selling the house since it's just them in this giant six-bedroom place."

This was also true. I remembered thinking it was ridiculous that my parents had even bought such a huge house in the first place. Sure, they had utilized the rooms in one way or another—Mom and Dad both had separate home offices; I’d had a playroom, growing up; the TV was in a den and not the living room; and of course, once Nate had moved in, there had been no trouble making space for him. But now, it was just a big, empty house with only my parents to inject life into it.

Well, most days anyway.

Sundays were a different story—when Nate, Cassie, Jagger, Kate, and I went over for dinner. There was plenty of life in those walls then, and I knew my parents—especially Mom—loved it.

"So …" Kate sighed as I parked the car and turned to finally give her my full attention. "When I told them I took a few pregnancy tests—all of which were positive—"

"Mom cried, didn't she?" I asked, smirking.

“Oh, yeah," Kate replied, her lips twitching reluctantly into a grin. "She's been dying to say something to you, but I kept telling her I hadn't told you yet."

"Why didn't you tell me right away?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I didn't think you'd be happy. The timing is—"

"Listen, I have no idea how this even happened in the first place—"

She interrupted with a sardonic huff. "Yeah, about that. Remember when I had that respiratory infection a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah …"

"Well, apparently, antibiotics can make the pill less effective. I had no freakin' clue until my period just … didn't show up."

I couldn't help but laugh, blown away by the way things just happened. And, sure, maybe it was just a faulty interaction of a couple of medications … or maybe it was fate interrupting our plans to say, Ready or not, here I come.

"Sweetheart," I said softly, reaching out to take her hand from her lap, "the timing might not be perfect, but this is. I could never be unhappy about this."

"That's what your mom said you'd say," she whispered, swatting a tear away. "She told me we could take over the upstairs. We could share the kitchen, but otherwise, we’d have all the space and privacy we need up there. They would move their bedroom downstairs, which they wanna do anyway. And I know it's probably not what you want to do, Rev, but I think it's actually a—"

"Okay."

"Good idea. I love your parents’ house. It feels like a home. And I love that it's still close to the nursing home, and it's closer to Cassie, and I'm sure she and Nate are probably going to have more kids eventually, so we could get together for playdates, and—"

“Sweetheart"—I squeezed her hand—"I said, okay."

The car was dark and silent, and although I couldn't see well within shadows this deep, I could feel her gaze on me.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really," I said, nodding.

She pulled in a deep breath, her nose sniffling. "You have no idea how badly I wanted you to say that."

And so, six months after we'd moved into our own place, we broke the lease with the landlord and moved back into my parents' house. For the third time in my life, I stepped through my bedroom door and knew I was home, but this time, it was without an end goal in sight. This place, this house …

This was it. We were home. And I couldn't wait for this next imperfect, wonderful, and wild chapter to begin.

“Babe.”

I glanced over my shoulder to watch Kate walk into my— our —room.

“Yeah?”

She held up her hand, and in it was my phone. “It’s Nate.”

I took the device from her and put it to my ear as I took a seat on the bed.

“Hey, man, what’s up?”

“Well, first of all, let me congratulate you on yet another move back into your parents’ house,” he jabbed, a grin in his voice.

“Thank you,” I grumbled, lying back.

Kate climbed onto the bed beside me, wrapped her arm around my waist, and rested her head on my chest. She was likely to fall asleep in a matter of seconds. She’d been so tired these days. Apparently, that was what happened when you were sustaining life for two.

“And second of all, I wanted to express my deepest gratitude that you replied to the invitation to be my best man via text. Super impersonal, bro. Real classy.”

I barked a laugh as my fingers toyed with the ends of Kate’s silky hair. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a little preoccupied. You know, pregnant girlfriend, the move, work …”

“Uh-huh,” he grumbled, teasing all the way. “It’s fine. And, hey, whenever you decide to put a ring on Kate, just know I’m down to be your best man. You don’t even need to ask. I’m there.”

I pursed my lips. “Hmm … I thought I’d ask Saul, or maybe Joe, or—”

“Yo, Cass has a brother, and I’m sure he’d be thrilled to be my best man if you aren’t up to the task.”

Kate’s breathing evened out as her head grew heavy against me. My lips curled in a half smile as my heart flooded with affection and appreciation and every fucking incredible feeling known to man. God, I was so glad to be here. I was so happy that, after everything, we could end up like this—content and good. Really, truly good .

And I wasn’t just talking about Kate.

Nate too.

We deserved it.

“Ah, I’m just kidding, man,” he said as if I could’ve thought he was serious.

I sighed, smiling serenely. It had been such a long day. Hell, it had been such a long year . Sleep crept in, lulling me toward wherever Kate was in her dreams. Maybe to a place where our baby was already born, and Howard’s memory wasn’t failing him, and we were married, and …

“Hey, so there’s one more thing I wanted to talk about,” Nate said, pulling me back from that beautiful dreamworld.

I cleared my throat. “Dude, I’m two seconds away from passing out over here. I should probably—”

“Yeah, I feel you. Jagger had me running around the park all morning, and I am ready for a fuckin’ nap. But listen, bro, I know you don’t hate your job over at the gym, and if you wanted to stick it out there, that’s cool. But I thought I’d let you know, in case you were interested, I’m looking for a business partner—”

“Wait, what?”

“I want you back, man. I miss you, and I can’t handle the shop on my own. I could ask around, put out some feelers, if you weren’t interested, but—”

“No, I’m interested,” I interrupted, my heart taking off at a gallop as, suddenly, that dreamworld felt closer to reality.

A reality where the Lost Boys had been found and the pirates were the good guys.

Nate huffed a chuckle of gratitude and relief. “Well, yo-ho-yo-ho, Captain! When do you wanna start?”