Page 179 of Between Never and Forever
I turn to Sharon and find her wringing her hands in front of her, so I reach out and take one of her hands in mine and give it a squeeze.
“Why nervous?”
She laughs awkwardly. “I don’t even know. It just feels so much bigger. It feels real. Permanent. It feels... It feels like...”
“Like forever?” I finish for her, and she purses her lip before nodding.
“Yeah.”
I smile. “It feels good, right?”
Slowly, Sharon’s smile stretches to match mine, and she nods.
“Yeah. It really does.”
She turns her attention back to the stage, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet as we wait for the show to start. I run my eyes over her features. Healthy and happy. Alive and well.
When the firefighter pulled Sharon from the house, she was unconscious and bleeding from a gunshot wound to the upper arm. She’d somehow managed to make it to the mudroom outside of the garage before the roof caved in, and that’s probably the only reason she survived.
Sharon won’t talk about what happened after Brynn’s escape. Terry’s body was burned beyond recognition, but the amount of smoke in his lungs suggests he was dead before the fire took him. We know he set the fire. From what Brynn’s told us, we know he intended to kill Sharon, and we’re pretty sure that he’d have shot Brynn, too, had Sharon not given her the chance to escape. Everything else remains a mystery.
Sharon sees a therapist once a week, and every day she looks a little better.
As the house lights go dim, the crowd starts to scream, and Cameron and Brynn jump up and down.
“OH MY GOD IT’S HAPPENING!” Brynn squeals, and I watch as four shadowy figures move into position behind their instruments on stage. “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!”
“Hey, Los Angeles.” Sav’s voice booms through the arena and somehow the audience gets louder. When she chuckles into her mic, I feel it all the way to my fucking toes.
The lights flash on and a spotlight lands right on Savannah, illuminating her in her black leather pants and pink lace crop top and making her silver hair shine. She grins out at the crowd as they start chanting, then looks right to where we’re standing. She taps the lock resting on her collarbone and sends me wink, and though she probably can’t see it, I wink back. Then she turns her attention back to the more than seventeen thousand fans hanging on her every breath.
“We’re so happy you could make the time to be with us on such short notice. We promise to make it worth it.”
More screams and cheers. Another soul-quaking fucking laugh.
“We got an announcement for you, L.A., but what do you say we play some songs, first?”
It’s past one in the morning by the time Cameron and Brynn finally fall asleep.
Brynn’s adapted quickly to Sav’s house on the other side of the country. I was already considering the best way to bring up moving to California before the house fire. Before Sav even invited us, to be honest. In the end, I didn’t even have to breech the topic. Brynn did it herself in the hospital waiting room before the embers of our old house had gone even cold.
I guess there’s nothing keeping us from moving in with Sav, now.
I guess she was right.
Savannah sits on my lap on the couch, hair still wet from her shower, and I wrap my arms around her before she brings her lips to mine. I kiss her slowly, taking my time to taste her. To savor what’s finally mine.
“How’s the build?” Sav asks, and I pull out my phone to show her the most recent photos that Dustin sent me.
“Doesn’t look like much right now. We’ve still got a lot to do.”
All that was left after the fire was the large tree and the rope swing. Nothing in the pile of charred rubble was salvageable.
But now, just beyond the tree with the swing, sits a new foundation. Next, there will be framing. Then, sometime over the next year, there will be a house. One I’ve designed for us. Me, Sav, and Brynn.
For now, we are keeping Sav’s place in L.A. We haven’t decided if we’ll move back to North Carolina full-time when the house is finished or if we’ll use it as a vacation home, but Mabel has already purchased Savannah’s old rental house in Wilmington, and Hammond has been on my ass to make sure the music studio in the new house is top tier. And then there’s the fact that Sharon still owns the house right down the street.
We have a lot of options, but every single one of them allows us to be together, and that’s what matters.
