Heavy Wears The Crown

Epilogue

"Just close your eyes, the sun is going down, you'll be alright, no one can hurt you now, come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound."

---------- Safe And Sound - TeraBrite (Tswift cover) ----------

Eight Months Later

I rose to my toes to look out the newly installed peep hole my brother and Dad had put in for me. I came back to the flats of my feet and pulled the tooth brush out of my mouth with a sigh. Nolan Doufer. Another round of heavy impatience knocks tapered through the wood before I opened it in Nolan stormed in.

"What are you doing here?" He demanded.

I shut the door behind him. "I live here, what's you excuse?" I popped the tooth brush back in my mouth and walked to the kitchen to spit into the sink. He tailed behind me like the usual pain in my butt he was.

"Coming here for two hours once a week so does not constitute as you living here."

I ignored him for as long as possible as I spit and rinsed, and even cleaned my brush before responding. "Funny, I've been here for at least nine now."

"Only because you're an unbelievable, unfair, little tyrant who snuck out when I fell asleep last night."

"Technicalities." I shrugged and he grabbed my hips and pulled me forward.

"You are so very stubborn."

I rose to my toes and kissed him quickly. "I told you, I don't think we should move into together in the first year. We need to take things slow."

"And I've told you, that's stupid. We lived together on the bus already, we practically live together now, besides, it has been over a year."

"Not since we got together it hasn't."

"My sister didn't make Holden wait a whole stinking year." When I didn't answer he groaned over dramatically and palmed his forehead. "You sleep at my place every night, you shower there, you buy groceries, hell, you have more clothes there than I do!"

"Not true. You have plenty of clothes, it's not my fault you don't put them in the hamper and I'm not going to reward you for piling them up beside the bed by offering them to you clean."

"Cleaning! You do more cleaning than I do too!"

That accounted for very little being he did no cleaning. "I only clean your place because it was so disgusting even the rats were afraid to come in!"

"Bah, the point is you already live with me. Why do you even come here, it's a waste of money, you don't have any clothes here, or food or-"

"Actually I was just about to make breakfast." I opened the fully stocked fridge and he was stunned into silence for several moments. "Scrambled, or sunny side up?"

He sat down at the table and watched me spread butter over the pan to keep the eggs from sticking.

"Look, it's not that I don't want to live with you or anything. I just think you are the kind of guy who gets bored with women, and I'm the kind of girl who runs from men. What we have now is great, I don't want to screw it up. It hasn't even been a year yet, lets just go slow. It's not like we're married and I'm refusing to live with you."