In the Sidelines » Damian Lillard

epilogue.

Four years later

THE FIRE ALARM went off at six in the morning and startled me from my restless sleep. Disoriented and sleep-deprived, I stumbled out of bed and ran downstairs, bracing myself for the worst.

Instead, I discovered there was no actual fire, though the air reeked of something burnt. The only chaos I saw was Damian frantically waving a bright pink oven mitt at the alarm. Sitting on the couch and covering their ears were our four-year-old son, Damian Junior, and two-year-old daughter, Aubree.

"Shut up," he yelled at the alarm. It didn't seem to hear him, because it continued to beep.

"Damian Lillard!" I yelled over the noise, pinching the bridge of my nose. Combined with my lack of sleep, the beeping made my head pound. "What did you do?" I grabbed the other oven mitt and helped him fan the alarm.

Eventually, the beeping ceased. Damian frowned and gave me a kiss in apology. "Sorry, baby," he spoke through the kiss. "I know your flight came in really late last night, so I wanted to do something nice," he said, referring to the meeting I had attended yesterday in New York for all NBA owners.

Compared to when I first became an owner, everyone respected me much more and made amends for treating me unjustly in the past. After it became clear that being married to Damian and friends with his teammates wouldn't affect how I did my job, I was widely regarded as a "players-first owner" and garnered admiration league-wide.

While I didn't mind the meeting much, it concluded late in the evening. By the time I flew across the country back to our summer home in San Francisco, I didn't even make it upstairs before I collapsed on the couch and fell asleep. At some point in the early morning, I vaguely remembered Damian picking me up bridal-style and carrying me to our bed.

Damian scratched the back of his neck. "I was trying to bake some food for us. Key word, trying. Let me tell you, DJ and Bree were no help," he added, pointing to our doe-eyed children. Bree sucked her thumb innocently. "Imma leave all the kitchen stuff to you now."

I smiled in amusement and turned to the kids. "Do chocolate chip pancakes sound good?"

"Sounds perfect, ma," Damian replied instead as he walked towards the couch. He scooped up Aubree and tugged on DJ's hand. "While you're making the pancakes, I'll go get them dressed."

I was confused as to why he'd want to dress them up. Then, I remembered the "surprise" he wouldn't stop talking about. He refused to tell me what it was, so I knew just as much about his plan as our kids. I nodded before going back to making breakfast.

By the time I plated all the pancakes and sat down, I heard Bree's soft voice coming from the second floor.

"Daddy, where are we going?" I looked up from where I was sitting and saw Damian walking down the stairs with Aubree in his arms. Her hair was separated two puff balls on each side of her head, and they bounced whenever Damian went down a step. The complete opposite of Aubree, behavior-wise, DJ bounded down the stairs in front of them with his typical high energy.

"It's a surprise," Dame replied.

Once the young boy had reached the bottom of the stairs, he ran over and hopped onto my lap before nearly inhaling his breakfast. "I hate surprises." He pouted at me. When he pouted, he looked exactly like Damian and reminded me of my childhood memories with him.

"It'll be a great surprise. I promise," I said.

The four-year-old spoke with hesitation. "Okay, mommy."

Damian nodded confidently. "I promise, y'all will love it."

><><><><

"IT'S A FENCE. The surprise was a fence?" DJ was obviously unpleased with the surprise. I, on the other hand, felt completely overwhelmed. It was like my life had come full circle.

When Damian drove us over to Oakland, I was hit with an overwhelming sense of familiarity. And by the time we reached Damian and my's childhood neighborhood, I knew exactly what the surprise was.

Dame squatted down to get on eye level with DJ. "D, it's not just a fence. This is the fence. This fence is really special to mommy and daddy." He pointed to his right. "You see that corner of the sidewalk, right there? That's where we first met. She had just moved here, and I lived down the street so I wanted to say hi.

"When I first saw her, she was staring at this exact fence. She was really shy and quiet, like Aubree, but I asked her if she wanted to write her name on the fence with me. And ever since then, we've been in love."

I laughed at his simplified version of how we fell in love, but I didn't say anything because of DJ's enthusiastic reaction.

DJ's eyes widened. He lumbered over to the fence in excitement. "You and mommy wrote your names right here? That's so cool! Can Bree write her name? And me too?"

Damian and I laughed and exchanged smiles. "Go ahead."

I kept a close eye on my two kids as they intently scratched their names onto the fence.

"I bet I could find our names on this fence," Damian commented.

I scoffed. "There's probably hundreds of names covering ours by now."

"You're probably right," he admitted. "But you know it's there somewhere. It's been there since second grade. It's survived rain, storms, and—" Damian paused and widened his eyes, taking a closer look at a part of the fence where there were holes through it—"and, uh, other things. It's survived other people putting their names over it. People have tried to tear the whole fence down, but it still stayed standing."

I quickly caught on to the fact that he wasn't just talking about our names on the fence any more; he was referring to our relationship, which had withstood so much.

"It's survived distance, the media's criticism, and your teammates making bets about when we'd start dating," I added lightly.

Damian wrapped me from behind, resting his head on the crook of my neck. "It might not have always be visible to other people, but you and I have always been there together, and I promise you we always will be."

---

And that is the end of this story! This was my first story on Wattpad, and so much has changed since I first posted this.

I wanna give a HUGE thank you to all of y'all who have read this till the very end. There were times where I had no clue where this story was going and I wouldn't update for months, but you still bore with me. For real, I wish I could give every one of you a hug.

If you'd like to read more of my works, I also have two other stories: "Letters to Leah » Stephen Curry," a short story, and "Picture This » John Wall."

— Darilyn