I.

New Directions wins Nationals in May of that year, and her duet with Kurt receives a standing ovation from the New York crowd. Having finally seen the light, the club had taken what Artie had dubbed the 'VA route', rehearsing their songs and choreography for months beforehand, perfecting their technique, and delivering flawless performances that finally displayed the talent and heart Mr. Schue loved to boast about, but had never taken the time to cultivate.

She cries and cheers openly when they hand her the trophy, as does the rest of her team, but it is really vindication she feels. Only a week ago she had declined the offer to spend her senior year at a performing arts boarding school in Chicago, a result of the concert back in February. It was an option that her dads had pushed wholeheartedly, wanting to get her out of the toxic environment at McKinley.

Ideally she would have waited to see if they won Nationals before deciding, but she had already stretched the coordinator's benevolence to its limit, and there was nothing else to be done. It's funny how the most important moments of your life often happen to coincide.

After making it clear that she was to take him out of the equation, Jesse had become her neutral ear. The program was undoubtedly an amazing opportunity, but it is her senior year, she finally has friends that make school somewhat bearable, and New Directions was at last on the path to achieving something great. Staying meant another shot at Nationals, and, after all the drama of last year, living her life the way she wanted to. Besides, even if she never explicitly mentioned it to Jesse, boarding school meant a lot less freedom to see him, and she knows she needs him as a constant in her life.

Still, it feels like a much better validation of her decision that they will be defending a National title rather than still chasing one.

After the post-Nationals celebration, she spends the weekend with Jesse, helping him move out of his dorm. Her dads have long given up on the separate hotel room idea, the teens' profound commitment to each other ultimately outweighing Hiram and Leroy's concern.

She doesn't mind. There is a part of her that will always be grateful to this small room, to this twin bed, even if Jesse is more than thrilled to be taking over the lease of his friend's light, airy studio. This was where their relationship had been reborn, where they had admitted their love to one another for the first time; a serendipitous weekend that had spawned a lifetime of love.

She is supposed to be packing, but she keeps getting distracted by memories. Jesse is at the last Coppertones meeting of the year, and even that simple fact is enough to provoke a bout of sentimentality in her. Months ago, she would have made it a point to go to the meeting with him, and she and Lexi would have had fun silently tormenting Meg with their boys on their arm. Yet, when he had woken her up this morning and asked her if she wanted to go, she had only given it a split-second of thought before turning over and going back to sleep.

Not that she doesn't get enjoyment from annoying Meg anymore. The national JELL-O commercial featuring her and Jesse's version of Hungry Eyes had hit the airwaves last month, and it was the headline song on the Coppertone's debut album, with Rachel listed as a featured artist. The album had become a cult hit both on campus and on the internet, and playing the commercial on YouTube never fails to bring a smile to Rachel's face. Needless to say, Meg hadn't been too happy with that little development.

The money they had made from that commercial hadn't hurt either. They had initially planned to save some more and then blow it on a post-graduation trip to Paris, but Jesse and his dad had had a huge falling out over his summer plans, and it had become his financial cushion at school while his parents continued to sort out their legal issues.

Back in the present, she decides to attempt to be productive, and moves to strip Jesse's bulletin board of all the odds and ends attached to it. Her initiative is short-lived, however, because she reaches a picture that always causes her to frown. Valentine's Day weekend, after she thought she had successfully distracted Jesse from their little bet, he had recognized her attempt at subterfuge and insisted he shave his head to uphold his side of the deal.

The slapstick side of him didn't come out very often, but she had witnessed it in all its glory that Sunday morning as she had watched the curls she adored fall to the floor of the barbershop, him insisting on chronicling the event in pictures. After they got back to the hotel room, he had held her face in his hands as he explained to her that she was beautiful, and that he was going to do whatever it took to prove it to her, in spite of her best efforts to 'distract' him.

He walks into the room as she is looking at the picture, using her finger to trace over the hair that thankfully has since grown back. He sets a bag of food down, sees the frown marring her features, and asks her what's wrong. In response, she flips the picture to show it to him, and he legit shakes his head at her and tells her with a smile not to start.

She grabs one of the cartons of food and sits Indian style on the bed as, in typical boy fashion, he simply unhooks the bulletin board from the wall and dumps it along with all of its accessories callously on top of an open box of clothes she had spent about an hour folding. She bites her tongue, and pops a vegan spring roll into her mouth, having learned early in their relationship to choose her battles wisely.

"We should carve our names somewhere," she says, the idea occurring to her suddenly. She surveys the almost empty room and decides on the underside of the shelf above the desk, grabbing a pair of scissors as her tool of choice. "I feel like we need to leave something."

She does the initials and he does the heart. It's cliché, but perfect.

"We'll leave one in your dorm room, too," he says, despite the fact that that moment is about two years in the future. He winks at her. "We'll leave our mark all over this town."

She chides him for his corniness, but inside she's praying that he's right.

II.

They break up because it is inevitable, because college changes people in ways that they don't see coming, and are powerless to stop.

By the time she gets to NYU, Jesse is in his junior year. They had decided against living together her first year, much to Hiram and Leroy's relief, because she didn't want to miss out on the traditional college experience just because they were together and attended the same school.

Despite the fact that they are finally in the same place and they still share the innate similarities between them that have strengthened their bond for years, now they have completely different priorities. He spends his time religiously attending small, crappy off-Broadway shows and "networking" with theater people while she concentrates on making friends and discovers the freedom that comes with a lack of parents, the ability to choose her own curriculum and become the master of her own time.

At first, he humors her, but the frat parties and the freshman escapades no longer interest him, though they surprisingly now appeal to her. The third time she turns down her girlfriends' invitation for a fun night in favor of trekking to a ratty theater in the East Village for a subpar production, she explodes at him in the subway, telling him that they should take a break and figure out if being together is still what they both want.

Their fights have evolved over time, changing from Shelby and the remnants of that debacle, to more routine couple issues like spending time together and putting each other first. At least in this way they have grown. This particular fight is becoming somewhat habitual, but this time she really means it, turning away from him when they finally reach their stop, and heading back to her dorm.

Her new friends don't spend much time comforting her after the breakup, which makes sense because they were the ones that encouraged her to do it in the first place, though not in so many words. The whole world was her oyster here, they would tell her; there was a whole world to discover outside Lima and Jesse no longer had to be the only good thing in her life.

She had hated being branded as the girl with the BMOC boyfriend, the girl who would never hang out because she was already spoken for, the girl who always had somewhere else to be. Sometimes it felt as if she was back being Finn's girlfriend, dying to break free of a label imposed by others, a label that slowly suffocated her, taxing her every breath.

Jesse had always done his best to convince her that once she left Lima she would see how willing the world would be to embrace her, but witnessing it for herself is an entirely different matter. It's obvious now that guys find her attractive and want to sleep with her, that she's smart and witty, and a complete catch.

Santana comes down for the weekend to cheer her up and to finally meet the friends that Rachel has been telling her about. They are both amused that guys flock to Rachel at the frat parties she can now attend without guilt, showering her with mostly unwanted attention, groping her whenever they feel like they can get away with it.

She's not interested – it's too soon she tells herself – but one Saturday night she finds herself alone, standing against a wall, when some guy drags Santana away to dance. She's grateful that Chloe comes over to check on her, but any promise of company is erased by the fact that Chloe tells her that there are a ton of cute guys at the party, and she should go see if she can find herself a boyfriend.

It hits her then that the rest of them are all here for the same reason: they desperately want what she had been so hasty to give up; what they had been selling as independence, thrill, and self-discovery was just an effort to mask what she remembers as loneliness, self-doubt and the shameless need for attention.

Santana must catch sight of her face, because, before she knows it, she's being dragged outside. She has done a pretty good job of convincing everyone that she was fine post-Jesse, but the façade is crumbling. She lacks the energy to pretend anymore.

She is hyperventilating as she starts walking, Santana almost running to catch up with her, and at one point keeping her from almost being hit by a car. She can tell that Santana is trying to get her attention, but Rachel ignores her, and finally the ex-cheerleader snaps, grabbing Rachel by the shoulders and shaking her.

"Rachel!" Santana demands, "I don't know where we are."

It takes a while for Rachel to get her bearings, but she soon recognizes a familiar alley that Jesse had forbidden her to walk alone at night.

Her feet and mind are plainly complicit in automatically directing her to a safe place; towards him.

"Our apartment is around the corner," she finally manages to explain.

It takes Santana a while to realize that Rachel isn't talking about her dorm.

"This isn't a good idea, Rachel. Take some time tonight, and you can talk to him in the morning."

"No," she says, shaking her head intently.

She wants to be done with listening to other people; with allowing others to dictate the way she lives her life. She just wants him. She wants him to scream at her and yell at her, but most of all she just wants him to take her back.

Across the street, a cab drops a group of partygoers in front of an apartment building, and Santana glances back and forth between Rachel and the cab, finally informing her friend that she was heading back to Rachel's dorm, and wishing her good luck.

Rachel spares a second of remorse for being a terrible hostess, but then she is finishing her journey and letting herself into the studio apartment with the key that she could never bring herself to return.

He's asleep, but jerks awake when she slides into bed beside him.

"Hi," she whispers, watching as he raises his head so that he can look at her. She attempts words, something deep and profound that will forgive her actions, but what comes out is: "Can we just forget the last two weeks ever happened?"

He sighs, and she knows that they will have to have this out tomorrow, but for now, he opens his arms and lets her snuggle up to him.

He kisses her hair, and can't help but whisper cockily. "What took you so long?"

III.

A couple of weeks into her senior year at NYU, he screws up so magnificently she can't even believe it. He's singing one of the songs from an Off-Broadway show he just got cast in loudly in the shower when Caroline calls his phone and asks about his travel plans for the funeral tomorrow.

His father's funeral.

She wastes no time in marching into the bathroom and shoving the shower curtain back, not even caring when water splashes everywhere.

"How could you not tell me that your father died?" Her tone sounds a lot less threatening than she feels, because she can't come up with one explanation that would make what he did okay.

He shrugs his shoulders. "What does it matter? Serves the asshole right."

Her mouth drops open at his response, and she struggles for words.

She knows he and his father hadn't spoken in about five years, and that they parted on less than happy terms, but despite how he feels about his dad, the fact of the matter is that he had known about Vincent's death for a week and hadn't told the woman whom he shared 500 square feet of space with, and, who he claimed to love.

Tears well up in her eyes, and, without a word, she closes the shower curtain, walks out of the bathroom, and out of the apartment.

Two days later, she finally comes home. She's wearing a plain black dress he has never seen before, and slips off new shoes by the door before joining him on the couch where he sits staring at the television.

He hasn't shaved or opened the blinds since she left. Knowing her so well, he had immediately assumed where she had gone, but it still hadn't stopped him from waiting impatiently for her to return.

"Daddy went with me," she begins to explain, laying her head on his shoulder. "There weren't many people there, mostly other businessmen. Everyone was asking about you." She pauses pensively. "You were right; your dad was kind of an asshole."

He snorts, which is so unlike him that it makes her smile.

She sighs heavily, and he looks over at her, sensing that there is something else. She pulls his hand into her lap and intertwines their fingers, turning her head to plant a kiss on his shoulder.

"I think you have a little sister," she tells him quietly. "No one said anything, but Caroline was really pissed off at her mother throughout the ceremony, and, well, it's kind of obvious. Her name is Gabi, and she's 8."

He nods agreeably, not knowing what to do with that information. He can't say that he's surprised, really, but knowing that there is someone out there that his dad probably screwed over just as much as him is unsettling.

"You should have told me that he died," she states softly, but confidently. "I don't like to think that you're keeping secrets like that from me."

"I know." He shrugs away from her and stands up, walks over to the window, and tries to process all that is happening.

"How mad at me are you?" she questions, sensing the tension in his demeanor, the way he holds his body.

She sighs again. "I know I shouldn't have walked out like that, but Jesse he was your dad, and, after everything I went through with Shelby …You don't get to choose your family, you know?"

He sits on the coffee table, facing her, and runs his hands up her thighs, over her dress. "Rach, I'm not mad."

She sniffles, and wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. He rests his hand on her cheek and turns her face to him. "Really. I'm not mad," he repeats, then tilts his head, considering, "I just disagree."

She nods forlornly without looking at him, so she completely misses the smile on his face.

"Marry me."

Her eyes snap towards his, and she looks at him in disbelief, because she hadn't expected that, doesn't understand the abrupt shift in conversation. "What?"

"I disagree. You can choose your family, and you, Rachel Barbra Berry, are the only person I would ever want as part of mine."

He slides down onto the floor in front of her, and scrounges for the ring box where he had left it in the crevice of the couch, waiting for her to get home.

"I know we've always said that it doesn't matter, and we don't actually have to do it, but I needed to ask. I need you to know how much you mean to me."

He takes a deep breath, opening the box to display the ring at the same time he asks again:

"So, will you marry me?"

Later, after Jesse is asleep and she has spent hours on the phone with her dads and then Kurt, she is doing the standard 'gaze at my ring in the moonlight' gesture, and she finally notices the tiny engraving on the inside of the gold band.

J.s.J. infinity hearts R.B.

She leans over to kiss him lightly on the cheek. She thinks that sums it up quite well.

IV.

She's got her suitcase open on their bed, packing almost reluctantly for another campus visit when Jesse walks into the room.

Sensing her thought process, he encircles her waist from behind and kisses the back of her neck. "Providence isn't that far away."

"It's not New York," she counters.

"It's a four hour train ride. We'll deal. I've heard somewhere that Brown is a good school," he jives, "Plus, Gabi loved it there."

He lets go of her waist and tosses a box of condoms into her suitcase.

She sputters, finally settling on laughter. "I'm sorry, are you planning on getting it on while your children sleep next to us in the hotel room?"

"They're for Bron. You should give them to her."

Rachel turns around and gapes at her husband.

He raises his eyebrow at her. "Do you remember what we did the weekend you visited NYU?"

She rolls her eyes at him, because she can tell that he's partly doing this just to get a rise out of her.

"The same thing we did last weekend," she deadpans. "Bron's not going to do anything like that. She's fifteen, Jesse!"

"And you were, what? Sixteen and a couple of weeks? Face it, Rach…"

"I will not. She's staying in a girls' dorm and it's only for one night."

"I may be getting up there in age, but I seem to recall that you had a female host and somehow you still ended up in my bed…"

Rachel narrows her eyes. "That was different."

He's up for the challenge. "How so?"

"We had history. Do you think I would have just done that if I hadn't been completely in love with you at the time?"

He fights a smile. "I have my doubts. Didn't you already have a boyfriend that weekend? Weren't you supposed to be a pillar of chastity and virtue?"

She turns back to her suitcase. "I hate you, and I am sleeping with the girls once we get to Providence."

He attempts to play around some more, but she stops him, telling him that she has too much to do. Not only is she chaperoning a dance for their younger daughter's summer camp tonight, his little sister, Gabi, is getting married in Providence in two days, and they leave early in the morning.

Since the whole family was coming to the wedding, Gabi and her soon-to-be-wife had gone to the trouble of setting up a campus tour for Bronwyn, because their older daughter only had one criteria for a college so far: that it not be in Manhattan.

"Why is she so intent on getting away from us?" Rachel questions him, "When we were her age, all we wanted was to live here."

He kisses the top of his wife's head. "I'm guessing she doesn't want to go to college in New York when both of her parents are famous Broadway stars," he offers. "She wants anonymity and freedom. That's not entirely different from what we wanted."

"I suppose."

In fact, his explanation makes perfect sense. Bronwyn was one of those people that Rachel had spent her entire adolescence trying to understand, to the point where she thinks that someone, somewhere is having a lot of fun watching her and Jesse raise this free-spirited child.

At age fifteen, Bronwyn has no definite career goal, but is amazingly good at whatever she attempts. She plays soccer, she draws well, she gets good grades, she even sings, but she still doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, except that she doesn't want to do it here, with them. She's a far cry from the Rachel Berry who had her dream roles picked out at the age of four, and had all of them offered to her at some point in her career.

"Look on the bright side," he tells her. "At least we know that Liv is staying here."

Olivia, unlike her older sister, was a born dancer. They had panicked when, as a baby, she had refused to crawl, until Jesse had discovered that she would rock back and forth on beat whenever music was played, each time with the biggest smile on her face. She had been dancing ever since, and, even at the age of twelve, Julliard was a foregone conclusion.

"Just give them to her," he says, motioning to the condoms. "I would feel better if she had them, even if she doesn't use them. Actually, I would prefer if she didn't use them."

Rachel laughs along with him, turning to bury her face in his shirt. As if on cue, Bronwyn comes waltzing into the room, asking Rachel to borrow a dress to wear to the movies tonight.

Rachel's not exactly thrilled. Bron already has a good four inches of height on her, and always seems to choose the dress that would have caused even high school Rachel Berry to blush.

Rachel tosses the small package at her daughter with a smile. "Your dad bought you condoms for your trip to Brown."

"Really, dad?" Bron asks jokingly, "I was hoping for a car."

"We'll talk about the car when you've gotten into Brown," Jesse specifies.

"But seriously, just because you corrupted mom doesn't mean that I'm going to jump into bed with the first guy I see."

"Ouch," Rachel yells playfully from the bathroom mirror, where she has now started doing her hair.

"And," Bron continues in a devious tone, "Shouldn't you be giving these to Liv? Isn't she the one that's going on the date with Finn tonight?"

Rachel puts her curling iron down and shoots a disapproving look at her daughter from the bathroom, letting her know without words that she has gone too far this time. She often recognizes in her children the same tendency she and Jesse used to have of lashing out at each other when they were insecure or hurt, and she often feels hopelessly helpless in response.

"His name is Flynn!" Liv yells, walking angrily into the room, "And it's not a date. It's just a dance."

Flynn had been the hot topic of conversation after last week, when he had asked Liv to go to their camp dance together, the similarity of his name to Rachel's high school boyfriend reigniting an old family joke. Rachel's Finn was currently the high school gym teacher back in Lima and on his fourth wife, who no one, Kurt included, was sure was old enough to drink.

Rachel remembers waiting up for Jesse to come home from his show so that she could tell him about Liv's first date. His automatic response to the poor kid's name had been, "You're kidding, right?"

"Mom, dad, can we please leave Bron in Providence?" Liv asks cheekily, shooting her sister a mean glare.

"Only if we can leave you too, Scout," Jesse jokes before addressing Rachel. "Then we can go back to life without kids, Rach. Do you remember how great that was?"

"Hey! It's not our fault that you two had hungry eyes and couldn't keep your hands off each other," Bron protests, referencing the now infamous song that JELL-O still continued to use in its advertisements to this day.

Liv giggles despite her previous anger at her sister, and it causes all of them to laugh in response.

Liv starts singing the song, but, thankfully, Rachel gets them back on track since they have only about 45 minutes before they have to leave.

Instead of returning to her room, Liv approaches Rachel in the bathroom, asking in a small voice. "Mommy, can you help me with my makeup?"

Rachel feels her heart swell with affection as she looks at her twelve-year-old daughter, who is clutching a handful of Bonnie Bell lipsmackers and some electric blue drugstore eye shadow.

She settles Liv onto the counter of the vanity, and rifles through her own make-up kit. Rachel tells Liv to close her eyes, and takes a second to gaze at the innocence of her daughter's face before applying a light layer of powder.

This is what she had always wanted. Even though she had had to wait until giving birth to her own children to experience the mother/daughter relationship, it had been completely worth waiting for, easily the greatest experience of her life.

It seems like forever ago that she was pregnant with Bron, debating her relationship with her own mother as she approached parenthood herself. When Bron was about two weeks old, and a lot of the chaos had died down, Jesse had walked into the nursery to find Rachel crying hysterically while rocking the baby to sleep. Throughout her pregnancy, she had schooled him on the signs of postpartum depression, and he had panicked and tried to take the baby from her and calm Rachel down.

It had taken a while to explain to him that she wasn't depressed; she just couldn't understand how Shelby had been able to give her away, to hand her to someone in exchange for money and an agreement never to see her again. Holding Bron in her arms that night, there was no worse thing that Rachel could imagine. Shelby's fate had been sealed that night, and though there had been occasional visits and lunches over the years when Shelby visited New York, Rachel knew that there was no going back. She had long made peace with the reality that she had two dads and a Jesse; had come to terms with the fact that that would always be enough for her.

"Did Papa and Granddad teach you how to do this?" Liv asks with her eyes still closed. The girls have always been fascinated by the fact that Rachel grew up with two dads and no mom.

"No," Rachel admits. "Uncle Kurt tried to teach me some stuff, so I just did everything he told me not to do."

Liv giggles, and Rachel proclaims her done. She glances shyly in the mirror. "I'm really nervous," she admits to Rachel. "What if he doesn't like me? Or he can't dance?"

"He already asked you out, which means he does like you," Rachel comforts her, and hopes she is telling the truth, "And you can always teach him how to dance."

Liv jumps down from the vanity and skips back into the bedroom, where Jesse is packing his own clothes for the trip. "Daddy, do I look okay?"

Jesse glances at Rachel, who is leaning against the door of their bathroom, just as interested in his response.

Jesse takes his daughter's hand and twirls her so that her dress flares out as she spins. "You look absolutely beautiful," he tells her. "Flynn," he says, making sure to stress the correct pronunciation of the name, "Is so lucky to have you as his date tonight."

Liv smiles all big and bright, and bounces out of the room to go and show her grandfathers her dress, and her sister her makeup.

Jesse shakes his head at Rachel from across the room and she beckons him over to her with a wave of her finger.

"Hi," he jokes, kissing her on the lips, "You needed me?"

"Always," she responds.

She asks him to help her choose something to wear tonight, and he follows her into her walk in closet, where she strips down to her bra and panties.

He helps her choose a simple black and white dress, and he's zipping her up when he asks out of nowhere: "You'll keep an eye on them, right?"

Rachel turns and wraps her arms around his neck. "I promise."

It's been a tough week for him, she knows. On Sunday, he's walking his kid sister down the aisle, Bron's visiting college for the first time, and Liv has her first date, with a boy named Flynn, no less.

"You know," she teases, "It's still not too late to try for a boy."

Jesse laughs. "I can't tell if you're joking about that anymore."

It's true to an extent. It used to be a joke between them, ever since her dads had shown up unannounced one weekend when the girls were little and treated them to a weekend alone in the Bahamas. All they wanted in return, her dads had said, was a grandson. Instead, she and Jesse, quite comfortable with their family just the way it was, had come home that weekend with a puppy that Liv had insisted on naming Baryshnikov.

But, last year, Kurt and Blaine had finally gotten their shit together, fifteen years after they first broke up, and adopted a little boy, Aden, from Ethiopia. His toothy grin made Rachel's uterus ache for another one of her own, but she knew in her heart that their family was complete.

Now that the girls were older and her dads had moved in with them, she and Jesse were doing shows at the same time for the first time in years. Things they had long forgotten about like dressing room sex and late night cast get-togethers were possible once more, and despite the temptation that Aden provided, she was rather enjoying this stage of her marriage and her life.

"No," she admits quietly, "I'm happy with the way things are."

"Yeah?" he asks, tracing the place where her hip meets her thigh, and the tattoo that lay hidden there.

Bron had been two when her inquisitive hands had snapped Rachel's favorite necklace clean in half, causing tears from them both.

Rachel had declined Jesse's offer to buy her a new one, professing that it wouldn't be the same. Even now, the sacred infinity heart necklace had a place of honor next to the girls' baby teeth in a box in her closet.

Still, she hadn't been able to resist the temptation to have the sign with her somehow. She vividly remembers the night she had surprised him with it; how he had looked uncomprehendingly from the tattoo to her face, before lowering his head in a reverent kiss when the scope of what she had done finally dawned on him. That night still gives her goosebumps, and she is positive that that was when Liv was conceived.

"I'm sure," she confirms, smiling at him. "There's no emptiness inside. You've already made all of my dreams come true."

That's all she wrote, folks! I want to thank all of you who have read and reviewed this story! I have loved every minute of writing it, and have so appreciated your feedback and your words of support and encouragement. I hope this epilogue met your expectations.