by Ellie Parker
“I love you,” Sven whispered back before his body crashed to the ground.
Now, the cops were all over him. The paramedics too. There was a gash on his head which was likely the reason for him passing out the way he did. There were promises that he would be okay. I didn’t believe them. He wasn’t dying, sure. But none of us would ever really be okay again.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and tried to phone Stone another time. There was no answer, but instead, the sound of a standard iPhone background blasted through the open window.
I found him at the back of the house, slumped over, gun in his hand and tears in his eyes.
“Stone,” Jessa whispered, her hands smoothing over his hair. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “I promise you. We’ll all be okay.”
Again, there was nothing in me that believed that. Not after everything we’d been through. And when it came to Jessa, I knew she would never to okay either.
Epilogue
Jessa
Three months had gone by.
Three months of us all submitting ourselves to therapy.
Three months of growing and trying to heal.
Three months of darkness, with only the smallest glimmer of sunshine.
Three months of the Stark boys apologizing to me.
And three months of me planning the rest of my life with men who claimed they didn’t deserve it.
The Stark household was entirely in their hands now. Like teenage boys, especially three who held a huge fortune in their hands, they dispensed with rules and the entire house became like a frat house. The staff had been let go. “We don’t know what we want yet,” they told me. “You’ll look after us, won’t you?”
I swooned at the idea. All I had ever wanted was them. And despite the fact that I would have given it all up if he meant I could shake away the demons of their past, this was our future now and I was prepared to fight every demon beside them.
Every morning I got up a little earlier than they did and had breakfast waiting for them before we left for school. I learned their favorites and bought recipe books to get the recipes.
I became like a housewife on one of the old ‘60s tv shows. I washed their clothes, ironed and put them away. They had the money to hire a million maids to tackle the tasks, but there was something in the simplicity that I felt as though I needed. My therapist said sometimes mundane tasks help to clear the mind. I wouldn’t be lying if I said I believed every word of that.
At night, I was free to stay in my own room if I so wished, or I could feel the warmth of any of the brother I chose to have beside me.
In the first few weeks, Sven needed me the most and so most of my time was spent holding him, being the shoulder he used to be for me; the shoulder he would be again, one day.
There was something to be said for living with three men in a measured, but sharing way. I learned how to react to their individual personalities. I learned how to please and to allow myself to be pleased. I learned that sometimes fate fucks things up, just to allow us to rewrite the future. Their mom was the one who spoke those words to me. Just like the guys, she took things hard at first. She’d moved back into town, rented herself a condo, and made her self as available as they needed her to be. Time, healed some of her wounds, but not all them.
As I put on my dress for graduation, Mrs. Renshaw leaned on the sofa in my room, turning a smile up at me.
“You don’t like it?” I asked, uncertain about just how it hugged my hips.
“You look great Jessa.”
“You’re smiling like-”
“Like I’m happy?” Well, I guess that was one reason for people to wear a smile. “I am happy Jessa. I’m happy because my sons have somehow managed to keep you in their lives. I’m happy because I know that as long as you’re around, they’ll be okay.”
Tears sprung to my eyes. What Mrs. Renshaw didn’t know was that my heart needed the guys even more than their hearts needed mine.
THE END