Always and Forever (sequel to The Heart of a Pouge)

Chapter 1: The Gold

Third Person POV

JJ finally finishes writing John b Routledge 2003-2020 P4L on the tree with his fire poker. Skylar stares at the box in her hands that had some of her sister's belongings while Kie stands next to her with a box of John b's.

'To John B' JJ says, him and Pope raise their flask and beer bottle to the tree. 'And Sarah' Skylar adds. The boys drink from their beer bottles and Sky and Kiara place the boxes in the ditch that they had dug earlier.

Pope places a flower on the box and the, (now four) Pouges bury it in the dirt.

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The time since John b and Sarah's deaths had caused all four Pouges to spiral into their own pit of sadness and deal with their grief in many different ways. None of them felt like time was moving forward, it seemed like everything stood still to them.

Pope spent most of his time locked away in his room studying, preparing himself for when school started up again or he would just listen to music through his headphones and stare out the window at the Marsh, watching the boats go past every couple of hours. He occasionally would try and text his girlfriend, but she rarely picked up.

Kiara often went out to the Marsh on her paddle board or would vandalise the Cameron's property instead of picking up Popes calls. Her parents would try to talk to her when she came home but it just ended in a yelling match and the teenage girl would run to her room and shut herself away or she would disappear from her house for a couple of days.

JJ turned to alcohol. A silver flask had replaced his red cap as the boy's main accessory and he would be often seen either refilling or drinking from it. After moving out of her fathers house JJ had moved into the Château and to stay afloat, got a job working at the hotel and so far he had managed to keep it.

Skylar left her Kook life behind and moved into the Château with JJ and a whole new look. She took up a job working with Kiara at the Wreck but neither girls really spoke to each other when they were rostered together. After John b and Sarah's funeral Sky decided to get P4L tattooed on her waist just above where her shorts ended while JJ got it on his leg.

All four Pouges hadn't hung out all together in days, instead they would send the occasional supportive smile or head over to each others houses to check in on each other but every time they made an attempt to do the things they used to do with John b, no one could manage keeping a conversation going and if they did it wouldn't take long before either Kie or Sky would start crying or make up an excuse to leave so instead of hanging out as a whole group they would normally split off, JJ and Sky would hang together and Kie and Pope would do the same. JJ and Sky lived together now so they also found a sense of comfort in each other, meaning the couple had a lot of sex. Neither of them wanted to admit that they were doing it to forget about John b and just replaced the happiness he brought with sex. True they were happy but there was still an empty space in their hearts that John b filled.

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JJ had gone to work after the funeral and Kie and Pope had headed home so Skylar was left alone at the Chateau for the time being. She was cleaning up her and JJ's room a little bit because it had become a mess of a bunch of discarded clothes all over the floor from their (what JJ liked to call) 'date nights' and they hadn't been bothered to put away.

Skylar placed the last pile of clothes in the basket and did a quick survey of the room to see if she had forgotten anything. Her eyes fall on a t-shirt that was sitting on her bedside table. She heads over to it and picks it up only to find the envelope from last night sitting underneath it. Skylar picks it up and sits on the bed. She was curious as to where the letter had come from when JJ found it on the doorstep so she began to open the envelope. Inside it was a piece of paper and to Sky's surprise a check for 6 thousand dollars but the name of the giver hadn't been filled in.