Epilogue: Trust

Neither of the three said a word, while the two women wrapped Callie's arms and hands with cohesive elastic bandages, to reduce the risk of an infection. Stef was glad that all of the cuts stopped bleeding, because explaining a hospital visit to Callie's social worker wouldn't have gone well for any of them, least of all for Callie.

When they were finally done, Stef let out a huge sigh of relief and glanced over Callie's arms again and then at the girl's shirt, which also had bloodstains on it. The teen hadn't been paying attention, until she felt Stef lifting up the hem of her shirt. Reflexively, Callie pushed the blonde's hand away with force. "What are you doing?" she asked fearfully.

"Callie," Stef tried to sound patient, "I need to check if you have any more cuts. There was glass everywhere and—"

"I don't," Callie responded harshly. She hadn't meant to sound rude, but the thought of someone lifting up her shirt made her feel uneasy. She knew that Stef wouldn't intentionally cause her physical harm, but she hated the idea of being touched there.

"And we just wanna be sure, sweets," she tried to reason. "It will only take a second, I promise, okay?" Stef's eyes were silently begging the girl to listen to her, to help ease her mind. And she knew they wouldn't be able to have the conversation they were all needing to have to have, with the thought of another cut on Callie's body going undetected by either of them.

"Why can't you just trust me?" Callie counter argued as she crossed her arms over her body out of anger but mostly to keep her shirt in place.

Stef motioned around the room with her hand, "Are you serious?" she asked sarcastically, obviously bringing up the fact that Callie ran away in the first place as a major reason. Callie's face flashed with anger, as she studied the blonde's face, not caring about the stern look that was being given to her right back.

But Callie's expression suddenly shifted from resentment to concern, when she finally saw the red stain that was being covered up by Stef's hair near her hairline. Without realizing it, she released her hands out of the way and raised one, to remove the blonde hair, and study the damage to the right of the woman's forehead.

Stef shifted her own head after seeing the flush of fear that appeared on Callie's face, "Callie, I'm fine," she assured her. But instead of believing the woman, Callie's eyes began to well up and she covered her mouth in shock.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt," she cried as she was forced to look at what she'd done.

Stef immediately brought her hair back over, to cover the small gash. She knew that it was nothing compared to the cuts on Callie's arms and hands, but it was obvious that it had upset the teen, to see that she had been responsible for hurting her.

"It doesn't hurt, Callie. This," she pointed to the wound, not wanting to cover it anymore, "is nothing compared to the hurt you caused us when you left. It's nothing compared to the hurt you caused when you shut that door on us," she said as she pointed toward the bathroom door. "And it's nothing compared to the hurt that you're causing us now, by shutting us out like this," she answered more sternly. "You can't get upset about this," she pointed to her wound again, "and ignore all of the other stuff that you've done. It doesn't work like that," she shook her head slightly as she waited for Callie to respond.

"I wasn't trying to hurt anyone," Callie muttered as she wiped the tears away from her face.

Lena moved closer toward the teen, so that she could speak, "We know that, honey. And we know that you were just scared about what had happened between you and Brandon."

Callie glanced back down at the thought and sobbed out loud. She tried so hard to forget about what she had done, because she knew that remembering the past wouldn't help her move forward to finish her story.

That was very clear.

But Lena raised her chin up again so that Callie would have no choice but to acknowledge that they couldn't be ignored anymore, "We know that it was a mistake, Callie. You're a kid, and it's all right to make mistakes. We all do… But that doesn't mean that you have to run from us. It doesn't make us love you any less—"

"But Jude—" Callie tried to interrupt.

"This does not change how we feel about him either. We still want to adopt the two of you. I promise," Lena tried to assure her.

"Is that not what you want?" Stef asked. She couldn't help but get the feeling that it might've been something else that was bothering her daughter. And she didn't want to bring Callie all the way back home, without figuring out all of it out beforehand.

Callie opened her mouth to talk, but nothing came out as she kept eyeing the gash on Stef's head. Stef's shoulders slumped down, knowing that the teen wasn't going to be able to answer any more questions without worrying about the small cut on Stef's hairline. So, the blonde stood up from her spot in front of Callie and looked at the gash in the mirror. She grabbed an alcohol wipe packet and opened it, to wipe off the blood.

Immediately afterward she turned to face Callie so that the girl could see that the bleeding had in fact stopped and the cut was barely noticeable, before opening up a Band-Aid wrapper and placing it over her wound.

She knelt down back in front of the girl, "See it's all better," she said as she tried to smile to lighten the mood and hoped that Callie would too, but she was still satisfied when Callie let out a deep breath instead. "Now that you see that I'm okay, can you show me that you are?" Stef asked as she looked back down to the bottom of Callie's shirt.

She knew that Callie thought that neither her nor her wife trusted her, by asking her to lift up her shirt, after having listened to Callie's say that she didn't have any cuts under it. But she also knew that Callie didn't trust the woman either, when she told her that she wasn't hurt badly by the cut on her head. She hoped that this would at least even the playing field and remind Callie, that the two were more alike than she realized.

After a slight hesitation and just as both women thought that they hadn't made any progress with the girl yet, Callie lifted her shirt slowly and exposed her abdomen, to show them that she in fact, didn't have any cuts on the rest of her body. Stef noticed no signs of blood and looked over at Lena who was examining her back and relaxed when Lena sighed in relief.

Stef pulled the shirt back down for the teen and offered her a smile, "That's good… Thank you." She glanced back over to Lena and silently waited for her permission to continue. Lena offered a small nod that only her wife could see. "Callie," she started and waited for the girl to give her direct eye contact, "…Do you want to be adopted?"

Lena budded in, "We only ask, because we don't want you to feel like we're pressuring you into this… And if you don't we completely understand if you need more time to figure all of this out. We will still adopt Jude, and you don't have to worry about him… But if this isn't something you want right now, you need to trust us enough to tell us."

"What happened, Callie? I thought you were happy with us," Stef asked, completely ignoring Lena's attempt to let Callie take years to process all of this.

"Stef," Lena warned as she shot her a look.

"I was," Callie interrupted. "I just… I don't know what happened. Something's wrong with me."

"Nothing is wrong with you," Lena replied sternly. "It's completely natural to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid," Callie replied forcefully, causing Stef to laugh and Lena to raise her eyebrows at her wife.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't funny. That wasn't funny at all," Stef said as she tried her best to change her expression to a more serious one.

Lena ignored her wife and looked back toward Callie, "…If you're not afraid then, why—"

"Because I didn't feel right about it. It felt forced, like you two were only doing it because you felt bad for me or something… and I couldn't live with that if—"

"Hey!" Stef stopped her. "Our invitation had nothing to do with L—" she paused as she tried to refrain from using his name, "it had nothing to do with what happened in the court or what happened to you. Now that I think about it, the timing was definitely crappy… and I could understand how you would think that, but I promise you, that it had NOTHING to do with what happened to you. So don't you ever think that. We would never do something like that out of pity and we need you to believe it. Understood?"

Callie stared back at the woman, wanting to believe everything that she was telling her, but finding herself not wanting to at the same time.

"You're mom's right," Lena added. "We fell in love with both you and your brother and we wanted to include you into our family because we wanted you. I'm sorry that you felt it came off that way, but I can assure you that it was not because of that…at all," she added for emphasis as she raised her eyebrows and waited for response.

"We do love you," Stef continued. "And I'm sorry that it took you running away, for us to finally say it to you. Not to mention for us to realize just how much we love you, but that doesn't change anything. We still want to adopt you and your brother. But we need to hear that you believe us. This trust thing works both ways, Callie. We're trusting you and opening up about this, but you need to trust us enough to believe what we're telling you. To really hear it…"

Callie wiped her tears away nodded, "Okay… I do. And I'm sorry," she mumbled and allowed both women to wrap their arms around her. All three of them were surprised when she didn't flinch away.

"It's okay," Lena replied as she leaned the girl's head in and planted a kiss on the top of her head, "We're all okay."

It was at this moment, when Callie realized that the ending of her story wasn't as doomed as she thought it would be.

And unfortunately she wasn't at ending of it anymore.

She had already started the prologue of the sequel.

The one she had tried so desperately to avoid, but was now glad she decided to start.

Walk

Walk all the way back to the beginning.

Run

Run back to the ones you left.

Hide

Hide from all of the past experiences you've once blamed yourself for.

Blend

Blend into the new family you have

Disappear

Disappear from all the negativity you've felt.

Forget

Forget all of the mistakes you've made,

All of the bad memories that you let define you,

And all of the things that stopped you from moving on.

Because those chapters were already written.

There was no use in going back to change them now.

After all… isn't the story always at it's best when you don't second-guess yourself?

THE END.

A/N: OMG this chapter killed me to write. But thanks to all of you who have stuck with me while I finished.

And if someone wants to do a sequel or something (not sure how that would pan out, but if you're creative, you can make anything happen) so let me know. I have no problem with someone continuing it, being that some of you are probably pissed off that it's over. I do apologize again :(

Thanks again for reading :)