Three Years Later | ✓

《 Epilogue 》

《 ❝And when your heart knows,
it knows. There's no explaining it.
You can only trust it.❞ 》

— The Better Man Project

Five Years Later

THE CLOSET was a mess. Over the years, we'd let our things pile up, dumping various items in there that we didn't know where to put, and never took the actual time to go through it all.

Figuring that I had some spare time, I took it upon myself to sort through all of our junk, deciding what to keep and donate through a lengthy process.

With Troye Sivan playing in the background, I hadn't realized that the morning flew by so quickly and it was now nearly late in the afternoon. Covered in a thin layer of dust and accomplishing one big pile of things for donation sitting just outside the closet door, I was finally down to the last set of items, which were all cardboard boxes of various sizes.

Inside the boxes were mostly old junk that I didn't really need anymore like school textbooks and old schoolwork I was too lazy to throw away. When I reached the final box, it was large and rectangular, nearly making it up to my mid-thigh. Pulling open the flap that looked like it had gone through some damage, I pulled out the contents of the box, two large paintings.

Excitement filled my veins. "Wow, after all these years, these still look brand new," I muttered under my breath in astonishment.

With perfect timing, I heard the front door close followed by, "I'm home."

Staggering out of the closet with the two giant paintings in clutch, I grinned brightly. "Look what I found."

"There's my wife," grinned Milo from ear to ear, pulling me in close as he gave me a kiss on the lips than on the forehead.

"We're not married," I reminded him, singing the words as I rested the painting on the floor while holding onto the top so that it wouldn't fall over.

"Not yet, but we will be." He stared at me with fierce intensity, making my tummy do somersaults as his hand cupped my cheek and whispered softly, "I'm just waiting for the right time."

Reaching up to give him another kiss, I smiled as waves of electricity surged through my body because of Milo's close proximity, nearly letting the paintings fall from my clutches. It's amazing how after all these years, he still had this effect on me, and I don't think it'll stop anytime soon.

The best way to forget that he existed was to erase every memory of him, or at least I tried to. I unfollowed him, took a break from social media during the summer, and even deleted his contact info.

But all it took was one simple swipe and I was back to square one.

"Hello?" I answered curiously, somewhere deep in my gut nagging me to pick up the phone even though it was an unknown number who could've potentially been a scammer waiting to waste my time.

"Hadley?" Shock laced in his tone as he didn't expect me to pick up.

Butterflies erupted in my stomach at the sound of his voice again after a long summer without hearing it, immediately bringing some moisture to my eyes. "I didn't know if you'd pick up, but thank god you did."