A/N: I am all finished with the series (it took me a week of serious binge-watching) and I was so pleased at the reunion of Tim and Tyra. In my opinion, they are so perfect for each other. I love how their relationship finished on a note of promise for the future. Without further ado...
For the first time in too long, he doesn't feel a bit of shame. Tyra's use of jailbird never rattled him much anyway, and she quit using it as soon as she found out the real story. Then something changed in her eyes, growing warm and tender, and it sparked hope inside him in a way that he had thought was gone.
The thing that brought him down in everyone else's eyes is the thing that made him some sort of hero to her. And he realizes, just then, that of all things he's always loved about Tyra Collette, what he loves most is how fair she is.
He doesn't need to keep up appearances for Tyra. She'll meet him where he's at, and if that's good enough, she stays, and if it isn't, she gives him hell.
They've gone down both roads a fair amount in their acquaintance, but after everything—after all the high-school crap and the football crap got cleared away, Tim can let himself hope that they've come full circle.
I've been in love with you since I was five.
He remembers Tyra at five. Eye to eye, just like they'd be for the rest of their lives—he's only got an inch on her, after all—and either fighting for or against each other.
But always together. Truth is, it's only been the past few years that things really fell apart between them, and even then, when he thought there was no coming back what had happened with Lyla, she agreed to be friends with him. She wrote him letters in prison, even though she was succeeding in college and he was a failure in just about everyone's opinion.
"I've got dreams," she says, and he loves that about her too, loves that while she doesn't force their dreams to mingle she's not opposed to the prospect either.
They toast each other with the glassy ring of bottles clinking together, and Tyra smiles, secret and satisfied.
She's smiled that way since she was five.
First time he saw it, Tim thinks, that's when he fell in love too.
She's here now, and she'll go later, but for the first time in his life, he has no doubt she'll come back again, too.
No doubt at all.