Anything For Rachel

Epilogue.

Calvin

To Rose,

Five years, five months, two weeks, four days; 47,832 hours.

Five years, five months, two weeks, and four days that I've truly lived.

Truly and fully lived with the ones I love the most at my side.

47,832 hours spent with the reasons for my existence.

I've know from damn near the moment I saw this beautiful creature walk into that ballroom all those years ago, that this woman was going to mean trouble for me. I saw her, and it was like my eyes opened for the first time. I wish more than anything that I hadn't wasted so much time. I wish I would have flown from my seat, up the stairs to meet her. I should have wrapped my arms around her, kissed her endlessly, and begged her to marry me right then and there.

I still feel the pain and torment of the time I'd let her go.

It haunts me in my dreams, a dark and scary world where I exist without her light to guide me through. Every time I wake up to her loving arms around me, her hair cascading down over me, she steadies me. My world turns only with Rachel's help.

I know I'll never make the same mistakes again. I know now what life with her, long and happy, is truly like, and nothing will ever make me leave her side again.

God, Mother Nature, and the universe itself tried to keep us apart, but we showed them just how written in the stars we truly were. Rachel's ferocity bent their will, and the last five years, five months, two weeks, and four days have been nothing but pure, unadulterated, unshakable happiness.

"Calvin, are you sure about this?" Her voice always brought me back out of my own head.

I chuckled at her, shaking my head at her worried expression. "Do you honestly think I'd let you try if I wasn't one hundred and twenty thousand percent sure?"

She crinkled her nose adorably and shook her head as she bit into her lip. "No, but I'm still a little...I don't know." She shrugged.

I put my hand on the back of her neck and pulled her over to me, tipping her head back to make her look into my eyes. Her beautiful, crystal blue, dazzling eyes set in that beyond perfection face of hers. "It's alright to be nervous." I assured her confidently as I rubbed my hand up and down between her shoulder blades. "I certainly was before I did it for the first time, and it has been so long since you gave this all up." I reminded her.

I'd been purely petrified before I'd tried, even though I trusted the science.

She inched up on her toes and kissed me gently.

47,832 hours of her kisses and they never lose their power.

"I haven't regretted it a single time." She whispered to me sweetly. "I'd do it over again."

I sighed in relief. Even though she's told me this plenty of times over the last five years, I always fear that the decision she made in the heat of the moment might eventually come back to haunt her after the threat was gone and nearly forgotten and she was still cursed to the vampire life. It never hurt to hear her tell me otherwise.

"Come on." I smiled, holding out my hand to her and walking towards our door.

Rachel stalled, biting her lip some more. "I, um." She mumbled, then her eyes lit up and she turned back. "I forgot my earrings." She called. "Be right back." She flashed out of the room.

I knew she wasn't worried about her earrings. She was just stalling some more.

She wasn't 'right back' either. She was clearly taking her time looking through her things in our room. I stood in our living room and looked around at all of our family photos on the walls.