Epilogue
Jesse
Four Years Later
It’s still more than halfway dark outside the window when the sound of a slamming door jolts me wide awake. Beside me, Tris lets out a groan of protest that has me laughing as I press a kiss to the curve of his shoulder.
“Fucking hell, sunshine. What time is it?”
At the sound of four small feet tearing down the hall toward our room, Tris rolls over in my arms, burying his face in his pillow. He’s not remotely fooling me though. Much as he hates early mornings, I don’t have to see his face to know that he’s smiling.
I’m not allowed more than a second to breathe in the smell of Tris’s warm, soft skin before the running footsteps are replaced by a surprisingly loud knocking.
There’s barely time for me to sit up before the door to our room is flung open to reveal Mia and Sarah standing in the doorway, identical in their knee-length nightgowns and sleep-mussed curls.
“You have to get up now, Uncle Tristan,” announces the one on the left, while her twin nods in agreement, both of them looking as deadly serious as seven-year-olds can.
“We’re going to run out of time before Mommy and Daddy come for us.”
The girls have been staying with Tris and me for the past two days, while Alex and Ellie went for a long weekend getaway to celebrate their anniversary.
It was last night, just after I’d finished reading to them and was about to switch off their light, when Mia had sat bolt upright in bed and asked if she and Sarah could use Tris’s paints so they could each paint a picture for their parents as a present.
When Tris had eagerly agreed, the girls had been ready to jump out of bed and get to work then and there, and it had taken Tris’s solemn promise that they could start on the project first thing in the morning to get them to give in and go to sleep.
Considering that it can’t be much past six, based on the light outside, it seems they took that promise very literally indeed.
Today’s a Monday, which means I’m giving back-to-back lectures from ten until one, followed by office hours and a meeting with one of my grad students afterward.
So, while the twins scamper off to get dressed and Tris pulls on a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt, I head into our bathroom for a shower so I won’t have to give up time later in the morning getting myself ready for work.
Since the girls’ school is on spring break this week, they’ll be staying here with Tris until Alex and Ellie come to collect them.
As soon as I’m dressed and stepping out into the hall, I can hear the muffled sounds of the twins and Tris’s laughing voices drifting up the stairs from the room off the kitchen which serves as Tris’s art studio. Sure enough, I find the three of them there.
Tris has already supplied Sarah and Mia with brushes and a small palette of paint and a canvas each, and I can’t help smiling at the thoroughness with which he’s covered the table where they’re sitting with sheets of butcher’s paper, tidily folded at the corners and taped smoothly along the edges.
The room is bright and open feeling, lined on two sides with windows that look out onto our small backyard, with the rest of the wall space taken up with built-in shelves.
Last summer, when our realtor had brought us to see the house, Tris hadn’t needed to say a word for me to know how instantly he’d fallen in love with the space.
We’d made an offer that same day, two weeks before our wedding.
It’s going on two years since Tris and three other artists opened a gallery together, and since the four of them trade off days working there, the arrangement leaves Tris with plenty of time to paint.
Most of his pieces end up in the gallery to be sold, but a few of his favorites and mine have ended up on our own walls.
Out of all of them, the one I love most is the one Tris showed me four years ago, the day the two of us moved his things out of his old apartment in the upstairs of Mr. Thorpe’s house and next door into mine.
His sublet still had over a month left, but Tris was already practically living with me.
After what happened with his ex, who, by that time, had been arrested and was awaiting trial on multiple charges of assault and domestic violence, Tris stopped even liking to use the space to paint.
Not that I’d been anything but thrilled by him officially moving in with me.
The painting, which now hangs on the wall in our bedroom, is of two figures embracing.
It’s abstract enough not to be erotic or even blatantly sexual, but there’s something so intensely intimate about the way they’re wound together, with their indistinct eyes locked on each other like nothing else in the world exists, that, with my first glance, I’d felt like I’d walked in on some private, passionate moment.
And then I’d realized, “It’s us.”
I’d known my voice shook when I’d said it, and when Tris had nodded, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from reaching out to sweep my fingers along the canvas, tracing over the twining patterns of color, so much like the shapes of his tattoos, that wrapped around our images. “And that’s your music.”
Those last words had slipped out on accident, suddenly bringing back the memory of what I’d thought of his tattoos the first time I’d really studied them.
He’d shaken his head, giving me a curious look. “They’re your colors, sunshine. The ones I can’t think of without thinking of you.
“Your eyes,” he’d whispered, closing his hand around mine to guide it over a stretch of varied shades of greyish blue.
“Your sexy AF blushes,” with a gentle tug, he brought my fingers down the canvas to brush along a swirl of pink as hot as the heat suddenly rushing to my cheeks.
“That color of green you love,” our hands together moved to a tendril the precise shade of sunlight piercing through deep, still water.
“And,” he’d glanced up at me through his bangs with a devastating, dazzling smile as our hands swept up over curls of bright, faintly shimmering gold, “sunshine. You.”
The girls are completely absorbed in the paintings they’ve already started, but Tris looks back over his shoulder to where I’m hovering in the doorway.
His eyes catch mine and his lips lift until his beautiful dimple presses deep into his cheek.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve seen his smile a dozen times a day for the past four years, the sight of it lighting his gorgeous face never fails to make my stomach swoop and my pulse sing.
One of the girls, apparently sensing how Tris’s focus has drifted, tugs insistently on the corner of his shirt. After letting our eye contact hold half a second longer, he turns away from me with a last twitch of a smile, returning his full attention to the twins.
Unlike me, Tris can always tell the girls apart. He’s tried to explain how he does it, but the details are vague, and I still only get my guesses of who’s who right far less than half the time. Which, Alex is fond of telling me, statistically speaking, makes no sense.
I think the reason Tris always gets them right is because of the way he actually sees everything—the same reason his paintings capture such beauty, no matter what his subject is.
When I told him that though, he only shook his head and pulled me down for a kiss that resulted in me being late for my morning office hours.
“It’s you who sees things, sunshine,” he’d whispered against the shell of my ear as we’d snuggled on the sofa in the aftermath.
When I’d scoffed, he’d captured my face between his palms, pinning my gaze with his hazel eyes. “You see me, Jesse. All of me. Like no one else ever has.”
I do see him. I see him and I love him, more than I’d ever thought I could possibly love. I love all that we’ve shared, and I love the life we’re building together.
For over half a decade, I didn’t live. I let guilt and grief put my life on hold, and I don’t want to even imagine how much longer I might have carried on like that had it not been for Tris.
Alex was right when he’d asked me what I would have wanted for Stephen if he had been the one to live.
I would have wanted this for him.
And far from the betrayal I at first felt like I was committing, having it for myself has finally brought me peace. Nothing can bring Stephen back, but living the full and happy life I know he would want me to live is the last and greatest thing I can do for him.
“You okay, sunshine?” Tris’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts, just in time for him to slip under my arm, settling his cheek against my shoulder.
“More than okay.” My voice catches slightly as I kiss his silky, warm hair. “I like this,” I whisper so only he can hear me, knowing he’ll know exactly what I mean. “So much.”
“Me too, Jesse.” He spreads his palm against my chest, right over my heart.
Silently, we watch the girls’ concentration as they paint, before Tris gives a quiet laugh, shaking his head without lifting it from where he’s still resting it against me. “You do know that’s why Alex and Ellie went away and left the girls with us, right?”
“To convince us we want kids?”
It’s been years, over four, to be more specific, since Alex has attempted to intervene in my life. But now that Tris has said it…
“You’re telling me you didn’t see straight through them from the start?” Tris laughs again, nudging me with his hip. “Sunshine, you’re supposed to be the smart one.”
Since I know he doesn’t mean it, not like he used to, I ignore his self-directed dig.
“So…” He tips his chin back to flash me an eager grin. “When do you want to break it to them that this was all just a massive waste of their efforts, hmm?”
My stomach swoops at the memory of the call we’d gotten last Thursday. The one from the Department of Children, Youth, and Family Services notifying us that our application to adopt has been approved. That all we have left to do now is…wait.
“Don’t you dare,” I pin him with a look as serious as I can possibly make my face, given the breathless excitement that’s currently making my head spin, “tell them without me. If you do, I swear to god Tris, I’ll—”
With a laugh, he squirms out of my arms, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me out of his studio and into the kitchen where the girls can’t see us, even if they do look up from their painting, which, given their rapt focus, seems highly unlikely.
As soon as he has me safely around the corner, Tris backs me against the wall, pressing his body flush with mine. “You’ll what?”
By the way he arches his pierced eyebrow and the amused heat in his eyes, I can tell that he knows full well that I’d choked back my threat because I’d realized at the last moment that it was one not remotely appropriate to make in the presence of the twins.
“I should totally tell them today, just to find out exactly what it was you were gonna say just now,” he whispers, tugging his lip between his teeth as he smirks up at me. “But how about this instead. I promise not to, if you promise to make my patience worth it tonight?”
“So worth it.”
Tris’s lips part on a soft exhale when I lean down to catch him in a slow, deep kiss that leaves us both silently breathless by the time I finally pull away.
“You know you always do, right Jesse? Everything.”
There’s not a hint of teasing in his eyes now, only so much love and sincerity that my throat tightens around my next breath.
“You make everything worth it. I wouldn’t change even one thing that’s happened in my life if it meant not knowing I’d wind up here all the same. Not one fucking thing. It all brought me here. To you.”
The only thing I can do is kiss him again.
Just kiss him, pouring all that my heart’s too full to put into speech right now into every place my skin meets his.
The faintly stubbly rasp of his jaw under my fingers.
The warmth of his hands on the small of my back where they’ve slipped up under my shirt.
The softness of his lips as they move over mine.
He already knows, and yet, I keep up my wordless telling of everything he is to me.
I’ve kept that promise I made, that I’ll always tell him how much I love him, and I never intend to break it. And so, when I can trust my voice again, I pull back, just enough to whisper against his lips, “I love you, Tris. Always.”
The End
Thank you for reading Color of Sunshine!