Loud: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Male Romance) (85 page)

Epilogue
Pt. 2

Mia

I can feel the warm
breeze running over my skin as Ian asks me a second time to tell him what I
see.

“I see,” I start, “me.
I’m rolling down the ramp and out clean.”

“Good,” he says. “Now,
open your eyes.”

I’m not quite ready, so I
leave my eyes shut a few more seconds as I try to mentally work through this.

Ian’s taken me to the
park as often as possible ever since he found out that I’ve been hiding my own
skating progress, but the biggest thing I’ve dropped into was a halfpipe and
Ian was right: that’s a whole other thing.

“Mia?” he asks, kissing
my forehead.

“Yeah?” I answer, finally
opening my eyes.

“You don’t have to do
this if you’re not ready,” he says. “I don’t want to pressure you into doing
this.”

“Well,” I tell him, “if
I’m going to be your arm candy when you’re traveling across the globe, the
least I can do is know how to bring it on four wheels.”

He grins his
white-toothed grin, saying, “After we do this, we’re going to head back home and
work on your trash talk. You, my dear, have a very long way to go.”

“Whatever,” I tell him.
“Any final pointers before I break my neck?”

“I think between here,
home, and the last year or so, we’ve pretty much covered all the finer points,”
he says. “What I will tell you is that it’ll go so much easier if you’re
relaxed and loose when you drop in. Otherwise, well…”

“Yeah,” I mutter and take
another look down at the concrete, seemingly so far below.

Ours isn’t a perfect
situation, but we’re making it work.

“Will you hurry up? I’ve
got things to do!” Abby shouts from the concrete below.

Going after Ian the way
she did almost ruined our friendship. It would have ruined our friendship if
she’d persisted, but even that quick kiss did its fair share of damage.

Now that I’m living with
Ian, though, being vindictive toward someone who was once so close to me just
didn’t seem like the thing to do. Of course, I didn’t let her off completely
free of punishment.

“You’re on the clock!” I
shout down to her.

“Well,” she calls back
up, “I think the kid’s diaper’s wet, so I’m going to go get him changed in the
car.”

Every new parent should
have a free babysitter.

Yep, that’s right. That
day in the janitor’s closet when I forgot to grab my purse, and with it, my
condoms, was the day that I became pregnant.

That was an uncomfortable
conversation with dad.

He’s really started to
come around ever since I moved in with Ian, though, my dad. Telling him that
that guy he was so worried about knocked me up didn’t go over so well.

Now, though, when Abby
has to work or, more commonly, when I just get sick of having her around, I
send her home and call my dad. It’s been a long road, but I think we’re
starting to make progress.

“You ready?” Ian asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell
him. “Just go over it for me one more time, start to finish.”

Ian runs through it all
with me, answering the few questions I have left: He really has been working
with me a lot since I “came out of the garage,” as he likes to call it.

“Okay,” I tell him
finally, and I roll my board to the lip until only the tail between my foot and
the edge is keeping the board in place. “I’m ready.”

We’re not rich, but we’re
comfortable. What’s more, we’re happy.

That day of the Midwest
Championships, I realized quite possibly the most important thing about my
relationship, not only with Ian, but with others as well: Ian was right. It was
fear.

I didn’t believe him
until I figured out what he was trying to say to me.

“The point is that I love
you.”

“You’ve got this,” Ian
tells me, echoing my own words from a year ago.

There’s no telling what’s
going to happen in the future, but Ian, Emma, and I have got a firm foundation
with each other, a beautiful life.

Right now, there’s only
one thing left to do.

I put my front foot on
the board, and I lean in.

The End

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This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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© 2016 Claire Adams