Thanks to all who reviewed! I'll put up a special chapter with all of you mentioned (readers from the previous and the present chapters)! I just have to think of what to write for that 'special chapter'.
Thanks heaps for reviewing! ;D
I hope the last two chapters and another one coming up would've answered your questions, encyser. :) If not, feel free to PM me again.
Thanks everyone! (C2s included! And updated!) –hugs-
1) The BelongTogether Pairings
2) Lost in the Crowd
3) Naruto and Hinata 4ever. Good stories and Time Travel
4) Sasusaku, nejiten, inoshika, naruhina
5) The Best of Anime
6) The best fanfics available
7) Angel in our eyes!
8) Greatest of All
9) Just CLIICK, dumbass
10) Mai Faivoiraites
11) Ojos del Claro de luna
12) Ren's FanFic's
13) Shadow Sparda's Love of Fics
14) The Best NarutoxHinata Fanfics!
Ho-hum! I've decided to end the story here. (Schools beginning soon and I won't have time to update as frequently, and I'd probably loose the plot if I put it aside for way too long.)
Epilogue: Too In Love With You, Therefore Another Bet
"Where's Hinata?" Kiba looked around expectantly. "I thought she said she'd play today. It's the Gang Super Bowl."
"We're sort of… not talking right now." Naruto shrugged, trying to remain cool and ignore the pain the words brought. "But she's fine, don't worry about it."
"Who's worried?" Kiba frowned, then laughed as realization dawned on him. "Oh, I get it. You pissed her off again, didn't you? What'd you do this time?"
I lost her. "I didn't do anything."
Gaara gave him a quizzical look. "Maybe that's what pissed her off."
Naruto leveled a steely glare at his so-called brother. "Shut up and throw the damn ball, okay?"
The other guys playing immediately started to cat-calling and taunting him before settling down to play some serious football. Half an hour later, their jeers had been replaced with groans of pain.
"Dammit, Naruto," Kiba muttered, rubbing at his ribs. "This is touch football, man, not the NFL. Go easy, will you?"
Gaara grabbed Naruto roughly by his collar. "Time out!" he called to the others, dragging Naruto toward the crashing surf. When they were out of earshot, Gaara let him have it. "What is up with you, bro? You almost killed Kiba, but you haven't caught a single pass I've thrown to you. Where is your head?"
Naruto shook off Gaara's grip with a rough shrug. "I don't know."
"It's the girl, isn't it?" Gaara gave him a rough pat. "What's she into now?"
"It's not so much of what she's into. It's what I'm into. Or not into. What I… that is…" Naruto growled in frustration. "I slept with her."
Gaara simply looked at him, nodding. "Like that's somehow a shock."
Naruto blinked at him. Didn't he understand? "I said, I slept with her."
"So? Hinata's beautiful," Gaara said, smiling wistfully. "I've entertained some daydreams myself. But she's, like your soul mate. I mean, the guys are close and all, but that woman knows your heart. So, you did something about it." Gaara shrugged. "So, what's the problem?"
Naruto stood, silent.
"I mean, you told her you loved her, right?"
Still nothing.
"You do love her, right?" Gaara emphasized his words, as if talking to a child. "I'll kick your ass if you think you don't, because nobody disrespects our girl that way. Least of all an idiot who can't see the truth when it's staring him in the face."
"I don't know what I was thinking," Naruto rasped. "All I know is, I made that stupid bet, and suddenly nothing was the same. She was still Hinata, sure, but she was wearing those clothes, and we were spending all this time together, like we always do… and then something changed. I did everything I could think of to get us to be friends again," he argued, "but it just happened. I couldn't stop myself."
Gaara sighed. "I sense stupidity ahead. What did you do after that?"
"I stopped it before it got worse," Naruto said, closing his eyes. The incident still played through his head every night. "I thought maybe I could catch it in time, that I wouldn't screw up the friendship completely, but I was too late. Now she won't see me or talk to me. I don't know what to do." He opened his eyes, looking over at Gaara. "It was just what I thought it would happen. I don't know what I'm going to do without her."
"Naruto, I'm going to tell you this from the heart." Gaara put a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Bro, you're a schmuck."
Naruto blinked. "Sorry?"
"You heard me. You're in love, man."
Naruto thought about it for a minute. "I don't believe this," he said slowly, even as the truth began to hit him. "Even if I am… that's not going to help me. I can't make a relationship work. I never have."
"Those other women you thought you were in love with. That was bull. You weren't in love with them. Heavily in lust, addicted to drama, but not in love with them. Heavily in lust, addicted to drama, but not in love."
"I tried to make them wok," Naruto said. "They all just fell apart, no matter what I did. That's when I made the rule – friends over commitments."
"And do you know why?" Gaara's aquamarine eyes bore into Naruto. "Because you always had Hinata. She was always the first person you called when one of the women you believe you were 'in love with' went haywire. If you had a problem, or good news, or if she needed you, then you two were together, no matter who you were dating. They had your body, but Hinata always had your heart."
Naruto stopped, started to speak, then stopped again.
"This time, you've got a shot at the whole thing – marriage, kids, the whole nine yards. And you're scared." Gaara shook his head. "Scared of all that, but even more, scared of screwing up the most important thing in your life and losing her. So what did you do?"
Naruto sighed. "I screwed up and lost her."
"Bingo. So what do you think all this means?"
Naruto stood for a minute, staring at the waves. He never wanted to see Hinata with another man. He couldn't stand all the time he'd spend without her. He needed her smile, her laughter, and most of all, her love.
"It means I'm in love with Hinata, and I'm going to do something about it."
"All this time together, and you're just figuring it out." Gaara sighed. "It's things like this that convinced women we're idiots, man."
Suddenly, Iruka came running down the beach, crowing and waving a newspaper.
"Iruka, don't you wear a watch?" Kiba yelled as Iruka approached the group. "You're two hours late!"
"You've gotta see this," Iruka answered, puffing from his run. The guys crowded around him, and he pushed a tabloid into Naruto's hands.
"What the…" Naruto's gaze fell on a full-colour picture of Hinata and Sasuke in a tabloid. The lurid headline jumped out at him: Lady in Red to Wed Uchiha Sasuke?
"Isn't it a scream?" Iruka's face broke into a wide, foolish grin. "Our honorary girl, getting married to the Most Eligible Bachelor in America?"
Naruto watched, detached, as his fingers twisted the paper, practically ripping it in two. He barely heard Iruka's yelp of protest.
"You've got to go, Naruto." Naruto looked up, and Gaara's face was solemn. "It's not too late."
Naruto made a break for his car, praying Gaara was right.
Hinata was eating lunch outside at Martha's Café with Neji, Kankuro and Temari. She wasn't looking forward to her conversation with them, but it had to be done. They would notice when she suddenly, after a few weeks of mad socializing, stopped dating anyone at all and disappeared from the scene.
What she really wasn't looking forward to was explaining why.
"So, I finally told him, I don't care whose wedding your' working on, you promised me two hundred orchids for tonight's banquet and I don't want to hear another word about it." Neji nodded sharply, and Kankuro glanced over at Hinata. Temari winked at her and laughed. "Now, if it were Uchiha Sasuke's wedding, that would be something else…"
Before Hinata could question that, Temari send her a piercing, inquisitive look. "Speaking of, is there anything you'd like to tell us?"
"Well, yes…" Hinata said, then frowned as the tone of her question sunk in. "Wait a minute. What are you talking about?"
"Hinata, it's been in all the tabloids," Kankuro said, deliberately slow with a widening grin.
"There's a picture of you in that red dress, and there are all these rumours that you're going to get married!" Temari said in a rush.
"We wanted to wait until you told us," Neji said with a brilliant smile. "But you were taking so long, we couldn't hold out! So what happened? How did he propose to you?"
"And when's the wedding?" Kankuro asked, jumping in.
"I'm so excited, I could pop! Imagine, just like you thought, a proposal under a month!" Temari exclaimed giddily.
"Now, hold I just a second," Hinata said firmly. "Sasuke did propose, but I need to explain few things…"
"Hinata."
She stopped, mid-sentence. Taking a deep breath, she turned. "Hello, Naruto," she said quietly. Her fingers tensed on her glass of lemonade.
"Ooh, Naruto, have you heard?" Neji's voice was bright and, to his credit, only a little smug. "He proposed! Sasuke proposed to her!"
"So the papers claim. I thought I'd find out for myself what the story was." His voice was low and dangerously husky. "It took me a while to track you down, but I need to talk to you, Hinata."
H looked like hell, Hinata thought, her heart aching. He had a rough day's growth of beard, and his hair was windblown and careless. It would have made him look more rugged, like Indiana Jones, if it weren't for the shadows in his eyes. He looked like a man fighting demons.
Every fiber in her being wanted to stand up and throw herself into his arms. But she just sat there. "Couldn't believe it, huh?"
"I didn't want to, but yes, I believed it." His eyes gleamed silver and lightning. "I just wanted to hear the truth from you."
Hinata struggled to keep her voice calm. "If you must know, yes, Sasuke did propose to me."
"I see," he said, his voice low.
Hinata barely noticed the excited sounds from Neji and Temari. Kankuro was sitting back on his chair, looking at them attentively. The world had somehow narrowed down to encompass just herself and Naruto.
With a slow, deliberate motion, Naruto reached into his leather jacket pocket and pulled out his checkbook. "I guess you win, sunny. As it happens, I have the check right here."
Neji and Temari high-fived. Kankuro managed a teeny smile, but didn't join in.
Hinata's heart broke, splintering like glass. She showed no outward signs. Her face remained impassive and her eyes were glued to the check on his outstretched hand.
"It's yours," Naruto said, "Just come here and get it."
Like a marionette, Hinata got up and walked to where he was standing. On the front check, in his bold handwriting, was the amount: one thousand dollars. And written in a scrawl on the memo line was a small sentence.
" 'Congratulations to the winner'?" she read aloud.
He nodded.
She would rip it up and throw it in his face, Hinata thought. Then, she'd leave and never see him again.
She reached for the check.
With a quick motion, he grabbed her wrist, pulling her to him, moulding her to him. She looked into his tortured eyes just before his mouth dipped down to hers and she felt the inferno that built whenever they kissed.
"Double or nothing," he whispered against her lips. "I bet you that I can make you happier in the next fifty tears than that guy could have ever made you, I swear."
Hinata felt a wild surge of happiness but pulled back a little, tugging against the hands that caressed her back and looped her in his embrace. "Naruto…"
"Yes?" His voice was tender yet rough.
"Are you saying this because you love me," she asked carefully, " or are you just a sore loser?"
His eyes widened in shock, just before a chuckle emerged, growing into the rich laughter that she loved so much. "Okay, I deserved that one. But let me explain." He pulled back enough to look into her eyes, his blue gaze warm, level and sincere.
"I didn't know this was what being in love was. I always thought that love was this big production, with all the drama and screaming, and everything that went with it. But then I figured out that I was just scared. Scared of screwing up and losing the most important woman in my life. So what did I do? I went ahead and did just what I was most scared of."
"You know, this is why women think me are idiots," Hinata teased.
"What? Am I wearing a sign?" Naruto laughed softly, nuzzling her neck, then turned serious. "Even when I thought I was in love, I never shared myself with those women the way I did with you. Nobody knows me like you do." He stroked her cheek, his smile like the sun. "And nobody matches me as perfectly as you do. I love you, and I'm in love with you. Say you'll marry me, Hinata."
"I told Sasuke I was too in love with you to marry anybody else. There wouldn't be anybody else I'd marry," she said vehemently. She leaned forward and shared a passionate kiss with him, relishing the feeling of his arms tight around her, as if he'd never let go again.
"Um, excuse me?"
Naruto and Hinata turned and looked over at the lunch tables. Women all over the café were misty-eyed, and several were sighing deeply. Neji looked as if she were in shock; Kankuro was grinning broadly. Temari, on the other hand, simply looked flabbergasted.
"Would somebody like to explain what's going on here?" she asked.
I might add some Kiba x Hanabi x Gaara action or a wedding sequel here or maybe some Itachi x Kurenai x Kakashi... so many choices! I'd also liked to finish my SasuHina story Seasons of the Witch. Oh my god! I can't even remember the title correctly. O.o Whichever way it is, thanks to all for reading and reviewing. Although it is the Epilogue, who says I'll end it there:P .
Writing a sequel titled: 'Cinderella Fairytale Rundown'. Penchant for long, strange combination of words for titles :P