The Reason

Epilogue - The Beginning of the Future

"Do you know how much I love you?" Rex absorbs me with his softhearted spheres, being adorably serious yet wears such a sweetly mild smile as he stares down at me.

My own smile is a rapturous one, rapturously affectionate. "I do." My reply honestly couldn't be any smugger as I pull on the lapels of his handsomely worn suit. "Do you know how much I love you?" My brow playfully rises with my question back to him, before I bring his loving lips greedily to mine. As we deeply kiss, I watch Rex close his content eyes as he saviours the mellow meeting of our tranquil mouths. When they sentimentally do separate, Rex is delayed with lifting his lazily loving lids. It's as though he is re-living our exquisite kiss, over and over again.

As I affectionately swim into attentive focus, his grin is just as lazy as his eyelids and his reply. "I do know." He eventually says, gifting me with yet another one of his knee-trembling smirks. "In about twenty minutes, you will officially be mine." He suddenly tells me, excitement drifting across his elated eyes.

Stroking his smoothly shaven jawline, I smile. "I have always been yours." I say it because it's true. I have always belonged to Rex, even when I thought I didn't. "I love you...but you have to go." My forceful hand reluctantly pushes him away.

Laughing, Rex leans down to steal yet another kiss from me. "You can both get a room after the wedding!" Faith is bossily clapping her hands together, hurrying us both up. "Now please remove your lips from my bride, the ceremony is about to start." Her tone is authoritative but her eyes are full of joyous jest. "Oh Rex, you have Provocative Plum all over you now." Rolling her eyes with a grin, she finds a tissue from out of her silk yellow clutch bag. "Jesus, I leave the two of you alone for just a minute and you decide to play Snog and Smear The Lipstick game." Faith is now frantically rubbing all around Rex's stained mouth.

Laughing but wincing, he keeps pulling away from my overzealous sister. "Don't you even think about licking that tissue and cleaning my face!" Rex protests with a slight grimace.

"Then maybe you should have thought about that before playing Tonsil Tennis with my bride." She teases, still trying to remove the last of my lipstick from all around Rex's mouth.

Amused, Rex throws me a cheeky smirk. "There were no tongues. Tongues are for after we have married." He then winks, his smirk now wickedly crooked in my direction.

Satisfied that his mouth and his face are now respectfully free of all traces of Provocative Plum, Faith starts pushing him into the beautiful room where we are to be married. Once Rex has been forcefully ushered inside, my sister then calls out to the Best Man. "Hey, Aidan? Keep an eye on your groom, his mouth is messing with my brides lipstick out here!" The room promptly erupts into choral laughter, celebratory cheers and many merry whistles and whoops.

Yes, it's a tad embarrassing. But the thing is, none of us care that it is. After everything we have been through, we are all just happy to be here today. This day, is a day that we thought might never come. Yet here we are, laughing and joking about Rex and I making out just before we are about to get married. Being teasingly defiant, my gorgeous groom quickly pops his head back around the door. "I love you." He loudly tells me before disappearing back into the room with our waiting and excited guests.

Faith is soon in front of me, urgently reapplying my snog-smeared lips. "I'm so glad I kept this lippy on me." She grins, carefully gliding the lipstick across my obediently still lips. Once finished, she puts it safely back inside her sweet little clutch bag and then gives the whole me a quick little once over with her very professional eyes. With her chin proudly high, her pleased gaze is soon staring right back at me. "There, you are now fully restored to your former beautiful bride self." Without saying a word, I suddenly clutch so tightly onto my sweet and funny sister. I cling tightly for all that she has done for me and Rex. When I got out of the hospital, we didn't even think there would be a wedding. Everything just got put on hold for us. But Faith was determined to take the organisational reins. She was determined that there would be a wedding for us all to look forward to. Without her, we would have definitely not been here today. "Now stop that, I don't have my waterproof mascara close to hand." She quips with a quivery voice. But I still cling tight, because I want Faith to know how much I love her. "I know, Angel...I know." My darling little sister knows me so well, knows the hell that I have been through, she just knows what my emotional embrace means without me even having to mutter a single word.