Epilogue
Triana – (One Year Later)~
I pulled into the driveway, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get over the giddy feeling of coming home. One year later, and I was an administrative assistant for Barlow Law, and the work was so much more challenging than anything that I’d ever done for my parents.
Things were also going well for Kairo, and with his degree in biochemistry, he had managed to land a job with Broken Arrow Laboratories, and with the final sale of both our houses back home, we’d been able to buy a cute three-bedroom home in Datsun, and since we had moved in together, that had left us both with enough money to create a decent safety net, should anything go wrong.
Now, even though life seemed too good to be true, those first few months had been rough.
Not only had Kairo and I been working on getting settled in a whole new world, but we had also spent a lot of time rebuilding what we had damaged between us, and I could admit that there were still times when I had to remember that I had forgiven him.
As for Tomasco and Sonia, we texted all the time, and we never let a week go by without a video call between the three of us, and I thanked God every day that things had worked out for them, too.
Tomasco worked as a business and financial manager for Tolbert Entertainment, and Sonia was still working as a barista at Pauline’s, but a few months back, she had decided to take a cosmetology class to give herself other options in case she got bored-her words, not mine.
Honestly, with the two most important people in my life happy, I couldn’t ask for anything more, especially with my parents being an official non-factor now.
Kairo was also lucky enough to be able to keep in touch with his family regularly, and even though I could tell that he missed them terribly, especially his twin, Leyden, he didn’t let that keep him from being happy here with me.
Blooming Heights was what I’d always imagined that it’d be, and even though we were still RNA citizens, I didn’t feel as stifled as I’d felt when living in Rancher Hills.
Finally walking into the house, I called out, “I’m home.”
“Hey, come here quick,” Kairo called back. “I want you to look at something.”
Since it was just the two of us right now, Kairo had converted one of the extra bedrooms into a dual office for the both of us, and so I followed his voice to the back of the house, and when I walked into the room, he was sitting at his desk, his laptop open.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I made my way over to him.
As soon as I was standing close enough, his arm came up to wrap around my waist, his hand automatically running up and down my left hip. “It’s been all over the news today.”
“What has?” I asked as I looked at the screen of his laptop. “I’ve been buried in filing all day.”
“There’s a group that calls themselves Re-Movement, and they’re petitioning to remove the 30th US Amendment,” he said, surprising me.
When the powers-that-be had pushed the new movement through, they had added additional Amendments to the Constitution, and the 30th Amendment was the one that dictated prison time for anyone caught crossing the region borders.
“They want people to be able to go wherever they want?” I asked, my curiosity definitely piqued.
“No,” he answered as he looked up at me. “They want to be able to travel between regions, almost like visiting abroad with a passport.”
“Do you think that they can make it happen?” I asked as I reached down to run my hand up and down his back.
“I don’t know, but I think the citizenship lottery started something that the majority of people hadn’t been expecting,” he replied. “Envy is a very powerful motivator, and now that the citizen lottery exists, it’s making people want what others have. Actually, it’s a tale as old as time.”
“I wonder if they’ll be able to make a difference,” I muttered.
“Why not?” Kairo asked, looking up at me. “You did.”
I let out a low chuckle at that. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Us being here proves otherwise, baby,” he said, his hand still rubbing my hip lovingly.
“That’s all you,” I argued. “I was fully prepared to go back to how my life had been.”
“But since you’re the reason behind why I do anything, you’re the one who made the difference.”
Honestly, all that mattered was that a difference had been made.
The End.