Epilogue
TRU
Sometimes you have to start from the very beginning to see how far you’ve come.
It was wild, watching someone grow up into your favorite person, and then watching that person help someone else do the same.
The backyard smelled like cedar mulch and sunscreen.
Dare’s shirt was flung somewhere behind him, and a smudge of blue paint streaked his cheek.
I didn’t tell him. I liked the way it made him look—like the kind of dad who built things with his hands and carried Band-Aids in his wallet. Which, to be fair, he did.
Remy stood a few feet away, squinting up at the half-finished skateboard ramp with his arms crossed and his dark curls plastered to his forehead.
“But, Daddy,” he said, glancing between us, “I don’t even know how to skate. How come I need a ramp?”
Dare didn’t miss a beat. “It’s not about skating.”
Remy tilted his head. “Then what’s it for?”
“It’s about the memories you’ll make beneath the ramp,” Dare said. “That’s what’s important.”
Our kid blinked. “Like… hiding?”
“Exactly,” I chimed in. “Hiding. Thinking. Making secret forts. Kissing your best friend if you’re brave enough.”
“I don’t have a best friend,” he said flatly, but not before a look of pure disgust crossed his face at the idea of kissing anyone. Especially a friend.
“Yet,” Dare said, smiling.
Remy tilted his head again like he was calculating the odds, then bolted for the garden hose. Dare groaned. “Not the tomatoes, dude! Those are for salsa!”
I leaned back on my elbows and laughed, watching him chase our son through the spray. Sunlight caught the dark band on my finger. It had been years—years since college, since that graduation kiss, since the Comic-Con panel where we finally said out loud what the world already knew.
And somehow, even after all that, it still felt like the start of something.
We adopted our boy three years ago. His older brother had been coming to the rec center for months, showing up early for the after-school program Dare started.
He wouldn’t talk much at first. Wouldn’t sit still either.
A wild little orbit of energy, always hungry, always watching.
His mom stopped coming. Then one day, his caseworker showed up, and Dare—being Dare—asked the right questions.
The older boy went to live with his dad, but his much younger half-brother wasn’t so lucky.
And suddenly, there was this four-year-old with too much fire in his eyes and nowhere safe to put it. He reminded me of Dare, honestly. Same stubborn spark. Same big, messy heart. He crawled into both of us like he was born there, and we never looked back.
Now, he refused to take off his cleats—day, night, even at bath time if we weren’t paying attention—and the only way we got them off was after he’d fallen asleep.
And Dare’s old practice jersey, the one I used to steal in college?
It was his pajama of choice, hanging past his knees like he was playing dress-up in our history.
Every time I saw him in it, my chest squeezed.
It was Dare, it was me, it was us—stitched into this little person who was already a pint-sized hurricane with grass stains.
Later that night, after bedtime stories, toothbrushing, and the obligatory “but I’m not tired,” we slipped out the back door like teenagers. The ramp wasn’t done, but the underside was framed in—quiet and shadowy, already perfect.
We crawled beneath it, knees bumping, shoulders brushing, the two of us barely fitting. Dare spread out a blanket, and I dug into the pocket of my hoodie—his hoodie—for my secret weapon: a Sharpie.
He caught sight of it and groaned. “Seriously?”
I shrugged. “It’s tradition. You built the ramp. Let me have this.” I bit the cap off and spit it into my lap. “Someday the walls will be lined with pages from my comics, but for now, we’ll get him started right.”
I scrawled
Tru + Dare 4Ever
on the beam above our heads, just like I had when we were kids. The lines were a little shakier now, but the truth of it was the same.
“You’re such a romantic,” Dare said, nudging my foot. His voice was soft, familiar in the dark. He took the marker from me and added
= Remy
as if that completed the equation.
“Me? You built a ramp just so our kid could crawl under it and make memories.”
“That’s practical,” he argued.
“That’s love,” I said.
He pulled me closer, fingers sliding up the back of my neck. “I draw the line at pissing and spitting on these walls,” he murmured. “This wood wasn’t cheap.”
The kiss was slow, hungry in that quiet way we still got when no one needed juice or to be picked up from camp. I kissed him like I was still learning him, as if I was still nineteen and breathless and desperate to get it right.
When we broke apart, I rested my forehead against his. “Yeah, but that pact was binding for life. We’re still together.”
Dare tilted my head back, his fingers combing through my hair. “We almost lost everything because of my stubbornness and stupidity.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered. “We already have everything. Everything we ever tried to build under that ramp.”
Dare smiled, eyes crinkling. “Yeah,” he said softly. “We really fucking do.”
He smiled so wide it broke me a little. He dragged my shirt over my head, and we added one more memory to the ones this ramp was built to hold.
This isn’t goodbye. It’s just where the extras begin. You didn’t really think I’d stop there, did you?