Get Me To You

Epilogue

Jasper

Sunday morning and we've got too many places to be. Still that doesn't stop her from rolling over slow into me, and tangling her fingers into my hair. It doesn't stop me from sliding my hand up under her shirt and palming that perfect breast, the one that was made for my hand. Mine.

I roll onto her and it's her mouth, candymouth, all over me, my face, my neck, my mouth. She kisses my shoulder and bites a little and wraps herself around me and it fits, it fits, a perfect fit. I slide my hand along her hip and it's changed, time will do that, but it's still beautiful. Her body is heavier but still supple, still perfect. It's just the weight of the babies and that's alright with me. It's the weight of our love and she had to carry that, but that makes it so beautiful because she is so beautiful and we are so beautiful, together.

She gasps in my ear and her tongue slides out and sucks at my neck. In the last ten years we've learned how to take this dance slow and how to speed this dance up and we both know that this morning time is not on our side. I push into her and it's perfect, perfect, hot and sweet and god I will never have enough of this woman, I can never get far enough inside, never fill my hands enough with her body, she is perfect. She pushes back at me and in a minute we are almost there and I feel her shift her hips and I know exactly what she needs so I give it and she's so tight around me, her hands, her mouth, her body cleaving to me, burying her head in my neck and a second later it's oh, Jas, oh, oh, oh. She is still always surprised. Except when she's screaming. I'll take it all, and I'll take it right now because hearing that always sends me over the edge and in a second I'm there with her, her name on my tongue, my face in her hair, strawberries still. We whisper, we're quiet. We don't want to wake the girls.

Minutes later our breath is caught and she's giggling, her doe eyes looking into mine. I want to eat her smile, eat that little candymouth up and devour her. Instead I toss her a shirt and she hands me some shorts and we lay back in the bed, in each other's arms. Her smile is still attached to my heart, and I feel it rising with the corners of her mouth. Sunday morning is still so sweet.

A moment later we hear a giggle in the hall and then they are upon us. Seven and five, they are so beautiful it makes my heart ache. When Trix found out she was pregnant our junior year of college it was a shock. We learned then about the fallible nature of birth control and penicillin. It didn't matter though. It took us all of ten seconds to realize that this was joy. This was a gift. It was joy made from my love for Trix and her love for me. Joy realized in ten perfect toes and ten perfect fingers. Joy made tangible in long blond curls and big doe eyes. Joy. So when that baby girl was born we named her Joy. And she is.

Her sister, Stella, came two years later. Trix was taking school slow, and I was just entering my second year of grad school, learning all about politics and theory and strategy. It suited me. It suits me still. One morning Trix came and sat beside me on the bed and smiled sweet and her eyes were all lit up and I just knew. I blew kisses onto her belly and she giggled and Joy slept peaceful while we celebrated our newest gift. When Stella came along she was all dark hair and golden brown eyes and my Mama and Trix's daddy both cried when they finally held her. Both of our girls are perfect, perfect.

Not that life always is.

Stella came into the world hard and early and if it wasn't for Edward being there and holding my hand I think I would have lost my mind. It was dumb luck he happened to be here, way out on the Bayou, visiting us before our lives got too hectic but maybe it wasn't luck after all. Maybe it was fate or God or whatever it is that I say thank you to each night.

Seeing Trix in that hospital bed, covered in tubes and swathed in white gutted me. Seeing Stella in the NICU, the tiniest, frailest human being there ever was? I did not know pain came in so many flavors. But Edward was tough and he spoke the language of the doctors. He talked to them and then he talked to me and he told his life to fuck off for a month while he helped us get through that. I will never forget what I owe him for that. Shit, I'll never forget what I owe him for Trix, for those terrible months back in high school and the fact that he kept her for me, and that he gave her back to me.

These days though what I can't forget is the look in his eyes each time a certain dark haired doctor comes into the room. Cullen straightened up a bit in college, and a bit more in med school. He had a couple of close calls with his heart, but he held himself back for something and he didn't know why or what but he said that when Shelly walked into the ER that day and gave him a ration of shit for his rough bedside manner that suddenly he knew. He knew she was his one, and he knew that she always would be and he knew that she was the reason he could never quite make it with the others. Trix beamed when I told her about it and she beamed again when I told her that he was bringing his girl to town for our annual summer visit. We both love him for what he gave us.

The McCarty mob will be here too. Emmett and Rosalie wasted no time after high school. They went to the same college and got married between sophomore and junior year. They had the big wedding full of flowers and pastels and Rosalie did look stunning and I had never seen her happier. It was good, too, because her big shindig meant that Trix and I could slip away quiet and have a small ceremony with just she and me and a dozen other people who needed to be there. Our folks, the McCarty's and Edward. It's all either of us wanted or needed.

That day though, when she said I do? When she promised her love and bound herself to me of her own free will? Top five best days ever. They all are though. Every top five day is her, and every day with her is top five because she is the calm and the storm. We fight, still, but there is never any doubt, never any fear there because we know that this thing? What we have? Nothing in this world can touch it.

That first year after Boston was hard. We'd watch each other, all the time. I was holding my breath, waiting for her to drink too much and let some guy touch her. She held her own breath waiting for me to drink too much and give her a reason to let him. The trust came back though, slow but steady until the one night we went out with friends and I realized that I wasn't holding my breath anymore. She realized she wasn't either and we finally relaxed into this thing, this thing that's held us fast since that fall day when I climbed through her window.

I think back to those days, all the drama and the angst and the sweetness and I'm glad that we still have Edward, and I'm glad that we still have Emmett and Rosalie and that we all have each other. Rosalie is amazing and I never thought I'd see her so. She got pregnant her junior year and Emma Kate is about the same age as Joy. Then came Carter and EJ and finally Alexandra. Alex is the apple of her brother's eyes, and woe unto the boy who tries to kiss that girl first. Rosalie just takes it all in. She is strong and she is more beautiful now than when she was the prom queen. She is more beautiful now than I have ever seen her, and I think that it's because she finally gave in to love. I think it's because she is swimming in it. That night at the beach changed us all, in ways that we couldn't have seen but for which we are still grateful.

Emmett may not have wanted beautiful daughters, but at least he got brothers to help watch over them. It has not escaped our notice though: the irony. Beautiful girls being born to the lot of us, we who were the worst offenders of the females when we were boys. Trix and Rosalie laugh about it, and when Edward's around, he laughs too. I tell him to watch himself. Fate is going to kick that boy's ass and hard. I can't wait to see it. Edward says he can't wait to go to Stella and Carter's wedding, and I told Emmett that I will be nailing the windows shut in my house. Already those two circle each other, he fair and she dark, like two kinds of magnet, pulling and pushing at each other. One day he holds her hand and the next he pulls her hair and she takes him in and pushes him away and I am glad they live so far away.

A small hand wiggles under my arm and the giggles of the three girls I love best bring me back to this Sunday morning. We are sprawled out in the big king sized bed and I flick a switch on the remote and Ella starts singing her songs to us. I sing too and so does Trix and then the girls are giggling and singing and someone produces a box of strawberry pop tarts, which are only allowed on Sunday mornings, and only in bed. Trix looks up at me and says I love you (should we start the day) and I say I love you (give us another hour) and she smiles and Joy bounces and there's strawberry jam ground into the sheet and how I got so lucky, I do not know.

Mad Happiness to krismom, who betas my crap and helps make it magic.

TragicCure listens and reassures. It doesn't get much better than that.

Ya'll…I just don't know what to say. Seriously – I have reviews that are better written than this fic! A couple of them made me a little weepy. Many of them made me produce noises that either delighted or terrified my hubby in the next room. Most of it has been just…overwhelm. Thank you. Thank you, thank you thank you. Thank you.

Some of you are reading my fic Brand New Day. Don't. It's shite. You'll only be disappointed. But it just seems lame to yank it. Like only showing your mom the A's and never the D's. Read The First Cut, which is better, but not magic, and not this good. Or Killing Jessica Stanley, which is lemony and kind of funny.

Musicians are the ultimate storytellers. It took me over 30,000 words to tell this tale. Jack White could have done it in a four minute song and had room left over for a wicked guitar solo.

While writing this, my playlist grew long. Most Notable:

Mint Car, The Cure.

Black Celebration, Depeche Mode.

Ain't No Sunshine, Bill Withers.

Portland, Oregon, Loretta Lynne featuring Jack White.

I Wanna Be Your Lover, and Anotherloverholeinyohead, Prince.

Summertime Rolls, Classic Girl and I Would for You; Jane's Addiction.

Good Old Fashioned Loverboy, Queen.

Gone Daddy Gone and Please Please Please Do Not Go, Violent Femmes.

Beat Surrender, The Jam.

Fell In Love With A Girl and Forever for Her (Is Over for Me), White Stripes. Lots and lots of White Stripes.

Dosed, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Divorce Song, Liz Phair.

Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon, Urge Overkill.

Magic Man and Kick it Out, Heart.

Mary Jane's Last Dance, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Miss You, Blink 182.

Lots of Tragically Hip, Elvis Costello, Phish and Guns N'Roses.