Book 5: I'll Wait, Dear (Steven Adler FanFic)

Epilogue

"Hey, honey, how's it going?" I pecked the top of Catherine's head as I passed her in the kitchen.

She didn't let me give her much affection these days, but she was so immersed in her cell phone at the moment that I had a chance to swoop in and plant a kiss right on her. I quickly scooted away towards the fridge before she had a chance to swat at me.

"Mom! You messed up my hair!" She whined, flattening the fly always that my kiss had created using the screen of her phone as a mirror.

"Sorry, dear. Where's your brother?" I asked, searching the fridge for some cranberry juice.

"I don't know. I'm not his babysitter," she muttered, going back to texting.

I guessed that she was texting her date from the other night, Brad. He was a handsome young man from her school, and a wonderful football player from what I had heard. So I was rather disappointed when I first met him and honestly didn't care too much about his attitude. He was arrogant. Charming, but slightly narcissistic. It was obvious that he wasn't too interested about Catherine's personality.

"Are you talking to Brad?" I asked, desperate to make some conversation. I missed how close we used to be. The distance between us only seemed to grow with every year that passed.

"Oh my God," Catherine grumbled, snorting slightly as she continued to text. "Brad isn't my only friend, mom."

I sighed, ignoring her sarcasm as I grabbed a glass from the cupboard. Gone were the days where she called me 'momma' and ran to hug me. These days, I was lucky to even get an 'I love you' let alone a 'hello'.

We both perked up as the front door opened and the dogs began to bark. We sat in silence as we waited to see who it was. Steven had been out on tour with his band Adler's Appetite, and I think Catherine and I were both silently praying that it would be Steven coming home early.

"Honey, I'm home!" His voice had changed since I'd first met him. After slipping into a drug-induced coma and surviving a stroke, Steven had a hard time speaking due to the temporary paralysis of the left side of his face. Still, it had become familiar to me now, and my heart raced as his voice boomed throughout the otherwise silent house. "Look what I found in the front yard!"

He entered the room, our eight year old son Gavin hanging over his shoulder. The little boy was giggling like crazy and punching playfully at Steven's back, trying to force Steven to put him down by pummeling him with his tiny fists. The pugs were running in circles around Steven's feet, yapping excitedly.

Gavin was the spitting image of Steven, and the apple of my eye. How could I resist that tiny, Steven-esque smile on such a cute little face? It didn't help that he was an absolute momma's boy and, with Catherine as uninterested in me as ever, it felt good to still have at least one child who wanted to cuddle.

"Stevie!" Catherine's face lit up as soon as he entered the room. Her phone promptly clattered to the countertop as she abandoned it to greet her step-father.

Steven opened his free arm and pulled Catherine into a tight hug, grunting at the impact of her body against his. If anything about our lives hadn't changed, it was the love between Catherine and Steven, which had surprised me more than I would like to admit.

It was hard to love Steven.

Over the years, Steven would slip in and out of addiction. Despite this, I stayed with him. After all, we had gotten married at that point, and I couldn't bring myself to divorce him. Not only due in part to the way that I was raised, but also for Cathy. Steven was her whole world, and I wouldn't be the one to take that away from her.