the bucket list | lrh

41 - july fourth part 2

Okay, so you've been told about what Valentine and Luke got up to on the Fourth of July, but back in Texas there are two more stories for you to hear.

Scout knew he messed up. He knew by all the yelling that Mary and Kellianne were doing. He knew he had really screwed up this time, and he could've sworn he felt the world caving in on him. The man needed to escape. So he politely excused himself from Kellianne's home, and he drove to the only place he knew he could rely on. The one place that would forever be a getaway.

Scout hadn't gotten enough courage to speak to Adeline yet, but he'd spoken to Deleany several times over the years. Luckily, Scout had gotten both graves next to each other.

With tears in his eyes, the poor man stood in the grass and looked down at the ground in front of him. Underneath rested two women that were ripped away from their lives too early on. Two women who had so much fire and so much passion, that the universe couldn't handle keeping them alive. Two women that could've either waged or ended wars with just the bat of an eyelash. To Scout, it was his marvelous wife and eldest daughter. The two women who could accomplish anything they wanted.

"Hey baby," he greeted them, not really talking to either in specific. His mind was much too frantic and panicked to really align his thoughts, but he tried his best as he faced the two most feared women he knew.

"I guess I should start with you," he began, sitting down in front of Deleany's headstone. It was Deleany who had started this for him, brought him to this day. It was Deleany who had picked him up off a deadbeat path at a 9-5 job. It was Deleany who taught him to live. It was Deleany who carried his children. It was Deleany that insisted on keeping their secret. Even from the grave, she had her claws sunk deep into Scout's chest. It was Deleany who did that like no other.

"I'm sorry. I know we said we would tell her when she turned eighteen, but I was a coward. I failed to honor you, and I'm so sorry," he broke down, allowing those tears to spill over the brim of his eyelids. He felt haunted then, plagued by his dead wives wishes.

"I'm so afraid she'll hate me now. She's going to think she barely knows me, and that she's been living a lie. I knew I should've done it when she was younger, it would've been so much easier," the man rambled, heart beating too fast to be healthy. He had gotten his good dosage of karma, and he knew to embrace the failure of it all. That's what Deleany would've told him to do, and that's how he wanted to live. But the persevering and fighting part was getting tiring, and Scout has grown exhausted.

The man turned to his daughter, rest deep in the ground beneath her headstone.

"And you... I'm so sorry I never told you either. I didn't want you to feel less connected to your sister, and I do think some good came out of that. You two had an unbreakable bond, and I just didn't want to hurt that... I'm so sorry, baby..." it was Adeline that had moseyed her way into the parental drama at such a young age. It was Adeline that bit her tongue despite showing obvious signs of knowledge. Adeline always knew, Scout was sure of that. He had never gotten the chance to explain it to her, either.

"It wasn't to hurt you. Or her. I never wanted to hurt anybody... back then, she was a little speckle on a doctors monitor. She wasn't Valentine back then..."

"Scout?"

And there it was. That glimmer of hope he had found. That saving grace, that white flag. The woman he had fallen in love with. Kellianne was always there. She knew where to find Scout, because she knew him like the back of her hand. The two really were in love, amidst all of the secrets and filthy lies polluting their past. She knew to look in the cemetery, because she knew Scout.

"Kellianne..." he called out to her as she frantically navigated her way towards him. He hadn't noticed her car pull up, but he was much too engaged in his helpless ranting to his deceased loved ones.

Of course he would've fallen ignorant to her approach. He nearly squirmed under her touch when she tried to lend comforting hand to his shoulder.

"Scout, honey, please listen to me okay? I am so so sorry. I will do anything to make it up to you. I was an idiot, twice."

"It's not your fault, I just... I made a mistake by hiding it all this time... I feel like an awful father..."

But Kellianne knew how to work some magic. And that is how Scout ended up peacefully sleeping in bed with her that night, not a worry on his unconscious mind.

And there slept the second couple on the night of the fourth.

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A/N

Sus right???