From day one, the moment I kidnapped you and stole your car, I knew you were the girl for me. I've never wanted anyone else. I still don't. Wherever I go and whatever I do, I still love you. Just remember that.
[-]
He had his moments.
She has always known this about him. He's not Max. There is no mooning and panting and begging on her doorstep. There are no chocolates or flowers or love letters. Instead there are warm embraces, kisses on her forehead when he thinks she's asleep, declarations that she only gets when something colossal or life threatening is possibly going to occur.
She doesn't really expect a whole lot from him, but that's okay.
[-]
When they are on the loose, all vigilantes with no place to go, she sees Max and Liz and married life. She envies how easy they make it look. Never mind the fact that their romance story is the biggest clusterfuck, like, ever. She watches how he takes his hand and guides it over familiar grooves in the small of her back. Wedding bands glinting in the sun.
Her heart constricts a beat, pops into her chest. It's lonely sometimes when it's like this. While they are a family, it feels out of order, until Michael tips her chin towards his mouth, half a smirk wrought in defiance, and hot whisps tickle her ears.
And then she feels her stomach fill with hot liquid as she looks at Max and Liz in marital bliss, and she slowly thumbs her finger over the ring on her left hand. It's not much. Just one of the ones that he used to wear. The difference now is that she has one to match.
She does get her happy ending.
[-]
One of the things she misses most about Roswell is the heat. It was dry and fierce and suffocating. Where they are now is cold, frigid in this October month. She can remember how sticky it would be at this time of year at home, Michael's hands hot on her skin.
Sure, it starts out as a kiss.
It's more than that.
[-]
She watches Kyle and Isabel circle each other, pretending that nothing is going on when everything sparks behind their half smiles and sleepy eyes. It makes her giggle a bit, hands fluttering to her chest, pressing her fingers against her creamy skin, golden curls cascading down her collarbone. Light silver breathing on her neck. And she can feel him watching her watch them.
Looking over her shoulder, she can see Michael staring at her, expression full of all those secrets revealed, and that is why she knows what is coming for Kyle and Isabel.
It makes her smile to for once be on the outside looking in.
[-]
A lot of times she wonders how they got here and for some reason all she can think about is the hour before they almost evaporated into the granolith, and she sees flashes that she saw then. And it amazes her how they have never changed.
He loves her. Always has. Always will.
[-]
They are never going to be a fairytale. He's aggravating and pompous and always knows how to push her buttons. She's relentless and melodramatic and a touch of insane. But that's why they work. He knows she is relentless and melodramatic and a touch of insane and he loves her for it. And she knows he is aggravating and pompous and always pushing her buttons and she loves him for it.
A person does not have to be perfect to be exactly what you need.
[-]
Their lives are a consistent mess of six young adults flailing all over the country and then some others. Every now and again they get a break though, and when it happens, the hours are too short. This time the break happens in Vegas.
She gets them all a crap room on the strip and they wear fancy dresses and suits go out to dinner and it feels so seventeen years old and raspberry lips and bribe money that it makes her stomach clench. And when he holds out his hand for a dance and a smirk twitches on the corner of his mouth, she full breaks out in sunshine and he slips her arm over his elbow.
These are the days that remind her that it's worth it.
[-]
Maybe it's never going to be marital bliss or MaxLiz romance, but it is fluttering hearts and sweaty palms and all those clichés that she never expected to last more than six months. She never thought she would be one of those girls that fell in love at seventeen and never got over it. And never wanted to. It ate up her whole life, her whole world, and the crazy thing was that she was okay with it. Better than okay.
She said she would never be her mother. All young and wearing a short skirt with cowboy boots tripping head over heels for a boy that makes her legs feel like jelly.
Ten years later, she is dispelling her theory for all it's worth, and even though there's not a real wedding or a real ring or a real marriage certificate signed with an exchange of her name for his, there is a tiny bump in her belly, kicking against her stretching skin begging to differ. And she finally gets why her mother was all short skirts and cowboy boots and hot cheeks in front of her father. But that's not the important part.
[-]
The important part is three years later and they are back in Roswell. It's August. Hot, sweltering and Michael is in the backyard spraying a hose everywhere, tiny drops of water dripping down the little girl's rotund belly, laughing and screeching "Daddy!" at the top of her bitty lungs.
She watches through a screen door, MaxLiz, KyleIsabel in the kitchen creating dinner out of thin air.
They finally get their rest. And Michael and Maria are not the only ones that are spending that rest in a different way. Max and Liz also have a baby boy and his twin sister to care for. This is part of the important part, but it's not all of it.
The rest of it comes from the fact that he's still there and he's holding their child. A perfect balance of his smoky eyes and her golden curls, that baby space between her teeth. Like father like daughter. And her heart swells because the way he says to their little girl that "Daddy loves Mommy" and pinches her pudgy baby cheeks is the important part.
He's still here. That's what matters.
[-]