Afterglow

epilogue

I stepped out of the stale air of the mental hospital that housed Luciana Suarez and into the crisp and warming spring atmosphere that seemed to sparkle with a luster that the world didn't have before I found my happiness.

"Are you ready, babe?"

I smiled up at Lachlan, placing my hand into his outstretched palm, casting a final glance back at the white sterile building and mulled over my first conversation with Luciana where my birth mother had been coherent and aware of what was going on around her.

She had been clear minded and guilt ridden, but we pushed past it and started building the foundation of what I hoped to be a good start.  I'd come and visit next month, but today was the first day that I decided to visit her.

It was my birthday.

That wasn't lost on her, and through her tears she'd recounted the night she gave birth to me, noting how she'd gone without any epidural or painkillers and had pushed for hours and hours, and I had come out a hefty nine pounds.

We joked about how I had 'ruined' her body, and while it was a unique experience actually meeting my birth mother for the first time in that way, it was also healing and transcendent in ways I couldn't explain, not that I wanted to put it into words.

Lachlan's hand was in my lap the entire ride back to the academy, where we'd be packing up what little was left of my possessions in the dorm room I'd shared with Jenna along with the majority of our things in his cabin, considering we'd be moving into our shared apartment soon enough.

I'd already been accepted into NYU as well as Lachlan, and it was just a waiting game to see if I'd receive a callback after my piano composition audition for the Manhattan School of Music, so we had already committed on an apartment, all that was left was the moving part.

Out of the car and strolling on the Bayfield Academy grounds, our gazes drew us to the lustrous koi pond and suddenly we were sitting on the bench, Lachlan's hands in my hair and mouth on mine.

It was a sensually slow meeting of pleasure and finality, the fact that we could seek comfort in each other whenever we wanted a privilege that we treated as if it could be yanked away from us at any moment, at any time.

Hands twisting my dark brown locks around his fingertips, he angled my mouth so he could take the kiss deeper, his tongue licking the seam of my lips and I parted them wantonly, uncaring that we were full on making out on a bench in public.

Ragged breaths and sharp inhales, our bodies protested from our pulling apart but as he rested his forehead against mine and drew circles on the skin of my neck, I noticed movement in the pond off to our right.

"Lachlan, look," I said, motioning towards the fish.

"They haven't restocked the pond yet, have they?"

"No," he said, eyes wide as he followed my gaze, remembering the tiny creatures that had survived the desolate freeze that had taken more than a few of the fish in the pond.

"So these are the babies that you helped when you broke the ice open that day," I told him, awe coloring my tone as we looked upon the resilient creatures, thriving in the late Spring sun, swimming and bobbing the surface like they hadn't once been trapped under a thick sheet of ice, unable to reach food and had almost died because of it.

"Wow.  They're little survivors, aren't they?"

A thick emotion settled on my shoulders and I blinked back tears, and I wasn't sure if they were for the fish, or for us...

"Come on, we can go to my cabin first then hit your dorm," Lachlan said, and there was a glint in his eyes that had me worried.

He'd told me happy birthday in the morning and had woken me up in a very...pleasurable way, (birthday sex- highly recommend) but he hadn't made a huge deal about it, which didn't phase me.  I loved birthdays, but I wasn't opposed to quiet birthdays spent with immediate loved ones, like the birthday dinner my mom planned for me after I finished up with Lachlan.  Jessie was invited, as well as Ellen and my dad, and I just hoped that their brand new baby boy was going to be in attendance.