Epilogue
EPILOGUE
SOME TIME LATER…
“That’s a good fuckin’ catch, baby.” Gunner praised his wife.
They were on their boat in the lake, fishing.
The two of them fishing together had become a monthly thing.
He loved this time with his wife, the woman whom he never saw coming.
Just as much as he didn’t see her coming, she didn’t see him coming either.
Belle smiled as she laid the fish on the table.
There was one thing about fishing that she just couldn’t and didn’t want to do.
Gunner came over, kissed her temple, then told her to go sit down.
After he got a firm hold onto the fish, he reached for the fish bat.
These were used to kill fish quickly and humanely.
Belle’s catch was their dinner tonight.
Belle took a seat on the lounge chair that was on the deck.
Seconds later, My Boy, Stitch, Keki—My Boy’s baby mama, and Cookie—Stitch’s baby mama—surrounded her feet to lie down.
There was never any intention to breed My Boy and Stitch, but Belle never got them fixed.
She moved into Gunner’s house a year after their relationship started.
Four months after she moved in, Keki was pregnant.
Keki and My Boy’s litter was the first mixed breed of any of Gunner’s dogs.
The mix of My Boy’s Chesapeake Bay Retriever blood and Keki’s German Wirehaired Pointer made for interesting puppies.
Gunner and Belle kept the runt and planned to give the rest away.
When Nadine put a picture of the new litter on his social media as an ‘awe, they’re cute’ picture, people sent inboxes of inquiry.
The mutts ended up going for five hundred dollars, which wasn’t bad at all.
My Boy got up, climbed onto the lounge between Belle’s legs, then lay down comfortably with his head on her protruding belly.
Out of all their babies, and they had many, My Boy was the most protective over Belle.
If you’d let Gunner tell it, their dog babies knew that Belle was pregnant before anyone else.
“My Boy, you better get off my woman,” Gunner chastened him.
“Leave my baby alone.” Belle leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder after he sat next to her on the lounger.
“Gabrielle is going home today.”
Gunner chuckled before he shook his head.
“About fuckin’ time. I was about to curse Toolie’s ass out. He had one more day to have that big ass RV in front of my house.”
Belle erupted in laughter.
Her best friend’s husband was a fool.
Toolie and Gabrielle were married a year before Gunner and Belle.
Gabrielle came over to her best friend’s house a few weeks ago with her daughter and hadn’t left since.
The only information about why they fought that Belle could get out of Gabrielle was that Toolie owed her a whole new wardrobe.
After that, Belle didn’t want to know what he’d done, but she knew it was ignorant.
When Gabrielle came to their house, that meant that Toolie wasn’t too far behind.
There was no way he could be without his wife and daughter, Joy.
It took three days for him to drive his RV, that he didn’t own until a day before, to Gunner’s house and park it in his front yard.
The shit was huge. Every morning, Toolie was in his cousin’s kitchen to cook breakfast for the house.
Joy never disappointed her daddy when she woke up to immediately use her two-year-old little feet to run to him in the kitchen.
It got on Gabrielle’s nerves, but in the same breath, she loved him for it.
Gunner prayed that he would be the great father to his daughter that Toolie was.
His parents and Belle’s parents were elated about having their first grandchild.
Nadine had already bought more stuff for her niece than her brother and sister-in-law had.
She and Tink made a room for the baby rin both of their houses.
“Don’t do Toolie like that, baby. He shouldn’t have gone through her clothes and donated the stuff that he didn’t like. I would bop you in your head if you did that,” Belle told her husband.
He snickered at her lil make believe threat.
“First, you know better than to wear some crazy shit with your thick ass. Your body and your best friend’s body are set up differently. If you wore what she did, I would have our dogs going everywhere with your ass. Niggas would be out here with dog bites and bullet wounds.”
There was that toxic shit that she loved.
Gunner had no reservation about nutting the fuck up when it came to his wife.
Belle also had no reservations about doing the same.
She’d done so a time or two at fishing competitions.
According to one of the most popular fishing magazines, Holden and Belle Beckett were Black royalty in the fishing world.
There was an entire article and picture spread on them in the magazine.
Of course, Toolie and Gabrielle were included in the spread, as they were an important part of their success story.
Belle side-eyed her man.
“You know I like that kind of talk. Get fucked on this boat.”
Her appetite for him was sensational and everlasting.
Over the years, she’d willingly leaned into who she was as a country girl.
Belle found that it was much easier to be nice and genuine.
She often thought back to who she was when she was in California.
There was so much self-hatred.
It took love and therapy for that realization to smack her in the face.
Gunner allowed her to be who she was without the pretense of trying to impress anyone around them.
She was asked by a popular Black magazine why she loved him.
Her answer was simple yet complex.
“I love him because he loved me when I didn’t fully know who I was yet.”
Gone were the days that she spent frivolously.
She had respect for the money that came into her household from not only her husband but herself.
Everyone was proud of her accomplishments.
She graduated with high honors with her Bachelor of Science in Fashion Merchandising as well as a minor in business management.
Gunner encouraged her to officially start her own business for her jewelry.
Go Fish jewelry line was born.
Everyone didn’t know how to feel about the name of the line, but Belle had a branding and marketing plan.
She would target the same demographic that had a love-hate relationship with her husband’s success.
One thing she knew was that the whores and wives would want to feel inclusive of something that was created by the Black royalty’s company of the industry.
Dare they not and be considered racist. Plus, her charm bracelets were beautiful.
Gunner’s brow rose. “Belle, don’t play with me. You know I’ll take you downstairs and wear your ass out. I don’t want to hear none of that ‘I can’t take it’ shit either. You’re gonna take this meat or face defeat.”
“What the hell! Why are you like this?” His comedic humor also won her over.
He and Toolie were a lot alike when it came to their humor; however, Toolie took it the extra mile sometimes.
The sun was about to set.
They needed to get back to the house so Gunner could cook dinner.
If Belle caught the fish, then Gunner cooked and vice versa.
On their way back to the dock, she mentioned Kimberly reaching out to her.
A month after the dreadful dinner with Carson, she reached out to Belle to give her an update on the situation.
Belle didn’t really care, but her nosiness wouldn’t let her not take a sip of the tea.
Kimberly had all of Carson’s things by the side of the road when he got home.
He took his things with a tucked tail and went to Daphanie with a storyline of bullshit.
That didn’t last long when Kimberly paid her a visit with her children next to her.
Daphanie was undone to find out not only was her marriage also fake as fuck, but he had another fake wife with two children before her.
Daphanie didn’t take the news as well as Kimberly and Belle did.
It resulted in her shooting Carson a few times.
The shooting resulted in an attempted murder charge that she accepted a plea for assault with a deadly weapon.
Her lawyer argued that her actions were a crime of passion which worked to her benefit.
She was sentenced to the minimum allowed for her crime, which was five years.
It was an unfortunate situation for her son as well as the baby that she found out she was pregnant with while she was on trial.
Her children were with her mother until Carson was able to take them.
“I don’t know why you still talk to that lady. It’s been years since all that shit happened. Didn’t she get married or some shit? Hell, she invited us to the wedding like we were friends with her weird ass. She needs to move the fuck on.” Every time his wife told him that Kimberly reached out, he got annoyed.
He didn’t like that she tried to rope Belle into keeping that shit with Carson on the front of her mind.
Belle felt bad for Kimberly.
She had not moved on from the hurt that Carson caused, although she finally got married.
Carson was a fuck nigga, but he was an excellent father.
That was part of the reason it was so hard for Kimberly to move on.
She had to endure dealing with Carson because they had joint custody.
“Gunner, she just wants someone to talk to that relates to her.”
“Adabelle, how the fuck do you relate to her? Yeah, that nigga fake married you, but you don’t have to deal with him. You don’t have children with him.” He glared at her after he pulled up to the dock behind their house.
“That both of you fucking with a fuck nigga at one point in time is not enough of a denominator for y’all to stay in touch. Her ass needs therapy to get over this trauma bond she has with you. She probably visits the Daphanie girl in prison with her weird ass.”
Belle knew when it was time to change the subject.
“Alright, Gunner.” She turned her body to hug him the best that she could.
“I love you, Holden Gunner Beckett Junior, you know that?” She tiptoed and kissed his lips.
His hand went to her ass to grip it.
“I love you more. You gonna show me how much you love me when we get in the house?”
“As long as you talk me through it.” Their sexual banter was and had always been strong.
Their daughter was the result of a night of sexual banter, a little dress, and some tequila.
Gunner walked around her, grabbed the cooler that he put tonight’s dinner in, then climbed off the boat.
He helped his wife down, and they made their way to their house.
The dogs were on their heels.
The plan for the night was to knock the pregnant pussy loose, shower, cook dinner, feed the dogs, and chill with Belle for the rest of the night.
This was their simple pleasure.
Both of them lived different lives in the past. While Gunner wasn’t expecting to make a catch and Belle wasn’t expecting to get caught, the tide changed.
For anglers, tide influenced the movement of the fish.
It allowed the angler to predict when and where was the best time to fish.
When Carson broke Belle’s heart, it changed the tide in her life, resulting in her moving to warmer waters.
She didn’t have an appreciation for the temperature, therefore was not interested in any bait that was offered.
Eventually, her attitude changed the longer she was in Newsome.
The tide lowered, bringing her closer to the surface, making it easier to catch.
Gunner was in the perfect position with the perfect bait to cast his line.
With love as the bait and patience as the line, he was able to make the biggest catch of his life. All Scootched In