The Soulmate Initiative: Book 3: Next Generation

4. A new home p2

CANDICE POV:

After a group hug and Ash trying to hide her tears, we head out and approach the last building, our new home. Suzie grabs one of my hands and we smile at each other, really looking forward to returning to our lives together, we've all been through so much the past few years, even before the snap, then Suzie, Anna and I left the others behind against our will, returning to discover our family has expanded. It's time to live again. As we approach the mansion, it looks bigger than it was before, as well as facing a different direction, since it used to be in front of where the lookout tower now is. The double doors open and we all hold our breathes. The first room is the entrance room with white ceiling and walls, concrete floor, where our shoes and coats go. So we all quickly strip off what we don't need, then push open the next set of black double doors.

The living room opens up, the room is set out how it was before, but bigger; the kitchen, dinning room and lounge all together, but with walls separating sections a little. All of the walls are covered in stripes that are horizontal this time and only about an inch thick each, rather than 2 or 3 inches. The lowest stripe is darkest, the highest is the lightest, going from black, to varieties of red, orange, yellow and then a white stripe at the top. Anna smiles "It looks like a reverse sunset." Prisha does a handstand "I agree." We all laugh and she cartwheels back to her feet. To match the wall design, the ceiling is white and the carpet is black, the furniture all black, including more seating in the lounge than we had before and the table in the dining room is larger, with 20 chairs surrounding it, some yellow, some orange and some red (some of which are highchairs) "There are more chairs for when the kids don't need the highchairs anymore, they're currently in the second level of the garage, under a black sheet. I tried to keep a lot of stuff sorta like it was, but I made sure to change the kids' stuff around, you'll see later." Also dotted throughout the areas, are orange detailing, the lights are yellow, including low ones over the table, and where the couch and armchairs are, there's a large red rug.

We head through the only door down here, which is black, it takes us into a completely white locker/changing room (like in a public swimming pool), there are white lockers lined up along one wall "I still need to put names on these lockers, and the ones in the garage. Some of them here are going to be for guests to use." There are 20 lockers, then various doors, some saying 'shower' above them, others saying 'changing' and there's a room that says 'toilet' above it, which we don't go into but is most likely entirely white, too. Ash takes us through the white door on the other side of this room, that takes us onto a little walkway, the room is completely white, other than a huge wall of windows, in the room is an indoor pool, a staircase from this walkway going down to the pool. Ash points to two doors going back the way we came from, but off the pool area "One is a sauna, the other a hottub." She then takes us to the end of the walkway and through another white door, into a white corridor with three white doors, two along the corridor, one on the end. The first door we go through takes us into an all white dance studio, the second an all white gym with various pieces of equipment. Then we go into the room at the end, which turns out to be a two storey, all white, training room, with huge windows covering one wall on both floors, a walkway in a crescent on the second floor, a ladder against one wall leading up to it. There are black padded mats on the floor and some ropes hanging from the ceiling "Still got to figure out exactly what we want in here, we can definitely suspend some stuff from the ceiling." We make our way back to the living room, where we all decide to take the staircase rather than the elevator, which are beside each other.

I love this staircase!

At the bottom and top of the staircase has a black child gate, we only had one on the kids' level before, but this is safer incase we have them on any other level and give them some independence as they get a bit older. The frame is black, as is the handrail and the top of each step, but the front panels, that you can only see when going up the stairs, are painted different colours, they match the walls down here, the reverse sunset. When we reach the top, we arrive in a smaller lounge/gaming room, the ceiling is white, the carpet is black and there's a corridor coming off it with black doors. The walls are striped the same as the level below, but different colours; black, dark blues, dark purples, lighter blues, lighter purples, then white. This room contains another black couch and black beanbags, on a large dark purple rug. There's a black TV unit, a large TV on it, with a few different gaming consoles and a large collection of DVDs and games. We follow Ash down the corridor to where there are five doors "The one at the end is a bathroom, white apart from Turquoise flooring. The gaming area is for everyone, but this is actually the guys' floor. Nian and I had a chat, really the guys need their own bathroom and a bit of time away from the rest of us." Warren and Nian both kiss one of Ash's cheeks and Warren says "Only sometimes." Nian deadpans "It's the products everywhere that bothers me." Ash nods "Understandable. You will be sharing this floor with our little boys, yes, they're very young at the moment and will be spending most of their time on the kids' floor, but when they get older, they're not gonna want to share a space with the girls either."