Desperation

Epilogue

I'd lost track of him. Chris took the shortcut and I'd followed him through the long way. We were running through a building and he'd went through to the backstreet. When I finally caught up to him, I saw Chris tackling him to the ground and reeling her fist back to hit him. "Gotcha." She smirked. She loved the chase. "That's enough, Chris." I snickered, going and putting cuffs on the guy. His name was Aaron. He was a lead suspect in a case me and Chris was working.
   We took him and gave him to the actual police, we were just detectives. They took him from there. "Nice work. But you were just a bit too slow, Bailey," Chris teased. "Please. I cornered him." I laughed. "Sure thing." "Hey, leave em alone." Zach's voice came from behind me and he wrapped his arms around me. He had my cup of coffee in his hand. He always met me around this time to bring me coffee, everyday. I took it and took a sip, holding his hand with my free one. I traced the engagement ring on his ring finger, watching it glisten in the sun.
   He smiled and kissed the nape of my neck lovingly, and I turned in his arms to wrap my own around him and bury my face in his chest. I listened to the soft thinks of his heart in his chest. It always beat a little faster when I did this, and I thought it was cute. I looked up at him. My handsome fiancé. It'd been four years sense everything went down, four years sense we got together. I don't regret a single thing. If I'd had a different life, a different mother, maybe I wouldn't be where I am today. I thought back to that second night that we slept together. Thought back to the conversation we'd had.
   "Did you ever imagine yourself where we are today? Like, right now?" I asked. I watched the gears work in his mind. "No. Never." He responded. "Did you?" He asked. I shook my head. Even after we met those years ago, I would've never expected to grow up to be this. I was proud of us. Zach became a professional veterinarian, Melvin was his assistant, me and Chris both took to serving justice. Just like dad and Michael had. "Well, there's nothing left for us to do here." Chris broke me from my trance. "Y'all wanna head home?" She asked. Yeah, we all still kind of lived together in the mansion. Dad and Michael didn't mind it. I think they liked the company. I nodded and took Zach's hand and led him and Chris to the mansion.
    We all still lived in the dinky little town of Desperation. We made it back to the mansion and went inside, Amara barking excitedly and running towards me. I lifted her up and kissed her head, Meredith was watching. She spent most of her time with us. She didn't live with us, no, but she was almost always there. After she got Zach and Mel's parents exiled, Chris chose to live with everyone in the mansion so that she wasn't left out, and Meredith liked to come stay with us. She smiled at us approvingly. Dad watched. "You're home early," He said. "Yeah, we caught Aaron. We decided to call it a day." I explained.
   He gave me a proud look. We were following in his footsteps, and that made him happy. I guess none of us could've ever saw it coming. No one could have expected the childhood friends to marry, and become guardians to a group of kids, no one expected the nobodies in school to become successful, no one expected the high school jocks to become vets. But damn were we happy when we did.