Buttercup [H.S]

Epilogue Part Two

*This is part Three of a triple update! Make sure you read the previous two Chapters first!*

One Year Later

The ocean is pulling in and out, reflecting a warm orange glow from the setting sun, and all that can be heard is the rushing of waves and cawing of the birds overhead and the music playing gently from the front seat of the rusty old van.

The van had been our home for the last seven days and nights, travelling from Islington all the way up to Edinburg , stopping at little coastal towns where we surfed in each and every sea, read our books laid out on fluffy towels, collecting pebbles and shells and sea glass on every beach we set foot on. We ate dinners in tiny cafes or cooked on our little portable stove.

Each morning I'd wake on the bed Harry had built with his own hands in the back of the van, looking at the buttercup yellow roof he'd painted, and he'd kiss my jaw and laugh at me for sleeping in so late when I'd promised the night before we'd wake early to watch the sunrise.

I hadn't seen a sunrise yet this trip, but we'd seen out each and every sunset, and tonight was no different.

We lay, side by side on blankets and pillows in our little bed, our soup warming on the stove, with the back doors open; like a window to the most beautiful view I'd ever seen.

This was our last night of our road trip, before tomorrow we'd drive back to London to our new flat that still needed painting and boxes unpacking, and real life would beckon us again. Back to our jobs at the restaurant and the market, and breakfast dates on Sundays and evening strolls in the park where we'd faun over the dogs that people walked, dreaming of adopting our own soon.

Harry would teach his classes at the youth centre, and I'd bring along cake if I had the evening off, and we'd visit friends and babysit Mitch and Sarah's tiny little baby, and life would be wonderful.

Everything should be perfect. Except it wasn't.

"I'm so sorry, Riley," Harry's whispering into my hair, his lips brushing my scalp. I think he'd said it a few times, but I couldn't really be sure.

"It was always a gamble," I hear myself say. That's what Marissa, my solicitor had told me when we'd taken Jason to court. She told me that it depended a lot on character statements and witness testimony's and chasing up Jason's other girlfriends to see if any of them had stories of their own.

Two of them did. Jason had abused two further women. Or at least two felt comfortable enough to admit that to Marissa.

I'd felt paralysed with guilt when I found out. I knew that if I'd tried sooner or harder to have Jason convicted of what he did to me, then maybe those two women would never have been through what they had.