Epilogue
Two years later
Justin
After my dad caught me and Tate in bed together, I must admit that it became easier for us to be open about our relationship and to live in our truths.
The cat was finally let out of the bag and the pressure on us to live a life on the down low was finally removed.
It had taken over a year for me to get over the fact that Ava and I were done.
She had moved on with her life, never stopping to look back in my direction once.
Tate was very instrumental in helping me to get over Ava, and I was thankful for that.
There for a slick minute I thought he didn’t want anything else to do with me, but once he finally forgave me, we became closer than ever.
Just as I suspected, my dad had called and told Tate’s dad everything after leaving my house that day, and to say that Tate’s dad was upset would be putting it mildly.
Tate’s dad cussed him out and called him every name in the book but a child of God.
That was fucked up, but at least he hadn’t whooped Tate’s ass like my dad did mine.
As much as I wanted to be angry with my dad, I couldn’t because he reacted off of pure emotion.
I felt like whooping my own ass when he told me how detrimental my situation had been to my mom’s health because she was trying to keep my business secret from him.
Tate and I were taking things one day at a time with our families as we both understood that it was going to be a long process for them to accept our lifestyle choices.
A couple of months after the whole situation jumped off, my mom and I talked.
I apologized to her for giving her my burden to carry, and she explained to me how it had been difficult for her to accept my decisions.
I couldn’t do anything but respect that.
The turning point with me and my mom was when I told her about the HIV.
That truly broke her heart because she looked at the virus as a death sentence.
The whole HIV diagnosis was hard for my dad to accept as well.
I had to sit them down to explain to them that HIV was not a homosexual disease.
Just because I was bisexual didn’t mean I was destined to catch the virus.
The fact that I was not protecting myself and being reckless was how I caught it.
The same with Shane. His homosexuality was not why he caught the virus.
His careless and recklessness with multiple sex partners without any use of protection was the issue.
I believed that my karma for cheating on my wife was me testing positive for the virus.
I had no business having unprotected sex with a man that I knew was out sleeping with multiple people.
Over the past three years, I learned more about HIV than I’d ever known my entire life.
That knowledge was something I was able to share with my parents so that they could understand and know about it as well.
Eventually, my HIV status no longer was the spotlight of my life, and just like my doctor said, I was able to be prescribed the correct medications along with a few lifestyle changes that allowed for me to live a happy life once again.
Now that Tate and I were in a full-fledged relationship, we discussed the possibility of moving from Chicago to Georgia.
We both felt that we needed a new, fresh start.
I wound up losing my job at the fire station, which was okay because I was back in school taking my certification to become an EMT.
Tate was in the process of applying for different EMT positions throughout the state of Georgia, and currently we had been waiting for one of the jobs to go through so that we could pack up and move on with our lives.
As for Ava, I could say that I finally was able to move on from losing her.
I regretted on a daily basis how much I had to go through to see that how I had treated her was wrong.
I really wished that I would have been given the opportunity to apologize to her.
I was truly sorry for all that had I put her through, and I wanted to tell her that, but that opportunity never came.
Once Shane died, I had to put that part of my life to rest right along with him.
I wished Ava and her new man nothing but happiness, and I prayed that one day she would find it in her heart to forgive me.
Dawn
“Who would’ve thought that we’d be married and pregnant at the same time?” Ava asked as we sat back on the beach chairs and watched Troy and Kevin attempt to learn how to surf in the ocean.
“I know, right?” I responded, rubbing my protruding belly. “And to think we’re just a few weeks apart, what a blessing.”
After Monica attacked me and I lost my first child, I didn’t think I was ever going to want to have any more kids.
The grieving process took such a long time for us to get through and to be honest, there hasn’t been one day since our daughter died that I didn’t think about her.
At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through it.
But my village of support was so strong that had it not been for Ava and Kevin, I didn’t think Troy and I would have lasted together this long.
I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have made it out of the grieving stage.
Troy had taken our daughter’s death the hardest. It was taking him longer to get over it than for me.
He felt that her blood was more on his hands than mine being that his ex was the one that took her from us.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t agree to some extent because I felt the same way.
I just could never bring myself to accuse Troy of being responsible for Monica’s actions.
I remember when he and I first started dating.
I had fallen something serious for him, but Monica stayed a constant thorn in our relationship up until the day she tried to kill me and my unborn child.
I really thought that over time she would loosen up and get past the fact that she and Troy were done and that he and I were together, but she never did.
She was truly the baby mama from hell that was a manic psychotic and addicted to Troy.
She wasn’t going to stop harassing us until she had Troy to herself.
During her trial, she was bold enough to take the stand.
When she went into detail about how she planned out the murders of me and my child in hopes that Troy would lose us then seek her to console him once we were out of the picture, it was sickening and hard to sit through.
I couldn’t believe that she had the nerve to actually admit she wanted me and the baby to die so that she could have Troy to herself.
Her actions were reckless and caught her a double life sentence without the chance of parole.
After Monica was convicted, Troy was granted full custody of TJ.
Currently, we were in the process of filing for me to adopt TJ so that I could be his legal mother now that Troy and I were married.
I remember feeling like Monica was Troy’s little secret that got revealed much sooner than he anticipated.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in a relationship because of it, but I was in love with Troy.
Now that everything had taken place, I wouldn’t change anything in the world other than the loss of our daughter.
That was the one thing that I regretted the most. As much as I wanted to blame only Monica and Troy, I carried around some guilt from the day of the stabbing as well.
I remembered approaching Monica not thinking that she was going to attack me.
Every time I thought about that day, it haunted me because I felt that I should have done more to protect our daughter and I didn’t.
Now that Monica was locked away for life and Troy and I were left to raise her son, I must admit that at first, it was bittersweet.
It was hard for me to look at TJ and not think about my baby girl.
It took over a year for Troy and I to get back on track.
Once I adjusted to him having his son full time it, helping him raise TJ became one of the most rewarding things we were gifted to do together.
Moments when I thought we were failing and falling apart were actually keeping us together and strengthening our bond with each other.
Now that we were married and expecting twins, a boy and a girl, I couldn’t be happier.
Today was our one-year wedding anniversary, and we were celebrating in Jamaica with Ava and Kevin who got married the same day we did.
Ava and Kevin were planning a small intimate wedding at first, while Troy and I wanted something a little bigger.
Since our plans kept clashing with theirs, we decided to do a double wedding, and it turned out to be a great idea.
We had the most amazing time at the wedding. It was truly a celebration of love.
We even went on our honeymoons together.
We didn’t spend much time together as we both stayed in our rooms with our spouses, but we were at the same resort.
Then, we found out we were expecting at the same time.
I was expecting twins, and Ava was pregnant with a baby boy.
Both of us were in our sixth month and we couldn’t be happier.
Our lives had changed so much over the course of the past few years, but I wouldn’t change any of it for anything in the world. Why? Because everything happened for a reason. That was something I truly believed.
Troy
The day Monica stabbed Dawn and almost killed her and killed our baby girl was hands down the worst day of my life.
I was so grateful to God when Dawn pulled through, but the pain I had endured over the loss of our daughter had been unimaginable.
Had the police not arrested Monica when they did, and I would have found her first, I probably would have killed her with my bare hands.