Lose Your Mind-A Dallas Winston Fanfiction

Love At Last

To live will be an awfully big adventure.-J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

"Do you want to see her?" Dallas asked.

"Who?" I furrowed my brow in confusion.

"My niece. She really isn't mine, you know."

I felt hesitant to take him up on the offer. I didn't feel like I was fit to be around children, who was I to be a role model? But, she was barely over the age of two and Dallas was staring at me in such a way that I couldn't refuse.

We picked her up from some crummy apartment on the other side of town. His brother was there, but he had been asleep when we got there so we just left a note. Dallas carried her the whole way until we got to the car. I had a feeling he was worried something would happen to her if he set her down.

God, she looked an awful lot like Dallas. She could have passed as his, if something ever came up. Although her hair was dark, it fell in small ringlets around her ears that bounced up and down when she giggled and tugged on the necklace around his neck. The only thing different about her, was while Dallas had dark and brooding eyes, hers were almost as light as mine.

She hid behind him when he brought her over to me, peeking out from behind his legs after he set her down. She didn't have anything to be afraid of, it's just something little kids do.

"Up Dally! Up!" She tugged on his jeans, so he had no choice but to pick her up again.

"Can you say hi, Jane? This is Iris." She hid her face in his jacket, "You can say hi, can't you?"

She peeked nervously out from his leather jacket and stared at me warily with her wide set eyes.

"Can you wave?" He asked, poking her in her stomach that was peeking out from underneath her lilac shirt.

She gave me a shy wave, her chubby and clumsy fingers grasping at the air while she giggled and turned her face back into Dallas's neck. For once, he didn't stare at me like I was his universe. Before, I had been the sun to him, blinding and overpowering. But, while I was gone, he had found his moon, a much more muted version of me. Together, we balanced his universe.

"It's nice to meet you, Jane." I smiled at her and then at Dallas.

"Can I go back to daddy now?" She asked, looking at Dallas.

"Sure." He gave her a grin before taking her back upstairs.

After giving her a hug, he set her down and she ran to her dad who was asleep on the couch, but woke up soon after. Dallas wasn't in the mood to stick around, and I wasn't dying to either, so we took off.

"You're different with her." I said.

"I want to be different." He pulled out a cigarette. Some habits die harder than others. "I mean, I can't be around her when I was like that? You dig?"

I nodded, "You want to be better."

"You make me better." He stared.

There I was again, being the sun. I was all consuming to him in a way. The old me would have ran the other way when I saw him looking at me like that, but I wasn't the same person I was before. The whole time I had been saying I changed, and I was right. I had. But, what if it was for the better?

"I love you."  The words felt light on my tongue, slipping out without them meaning to.

He kissed me then, the first time we had kissed since I got back. You would think it would have been full of lust and longing, but it was patient and slow, just like our love. That didn't make it any less beautiful. His familiar scent of cigarettes and fresh air filled my senses again, and the homeless feeling that had been haunting me for the past two years vanished. I had been looking for a home with four walls and a picket fence when all I had really needed were those two arms around me.

"I love you too." He left a butterfly kiss on my forehead. The next words he said weren't unexpected but they still filled my heart with so much love and compassion I felt it might burst right out of my chest, "Always have, always will."

I knew then, that things would turn out alright.  Maybe I believe in destiny and maybe I don't, but I knew that it was not my fate to be without Dallas. We could run off course all we wanted, but he was my end point, he was my forever.

End Of Part Two.