A/N: First of all, HUGE apologies to my readers for being TWO WEEKS LATE with this chapter. I am a horrible author! My excuse? Remember my poll? I hadn't counted on getting equal votes! 50% of my voter wanted Laurent killed off and 50% wanted him to live! So I had to rewrite most of the chapter again to try and accommodate both requests and keep all my readers happy! I hope I've done the best job I can on that. Or, maybe I'm just dragging my feet because I knew this was the last chapter. Oh well, it's here now, so read and enjoy.

Chapter Eight

~ Yes I could tell you

His favourite colour's green

He loves to argue

Oh, and it kills me

His sister's beautiful

He has his father's eyes

And if you asked me if I love him...

If you asked me if I love him... ~

I'd Lie by Taylor Swift

Four years later

My mum was pretending that she wasn't crying as she gave me a gentle hug.

"Oh, Vicki!" she almost blubbered, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. "I'm sure it was only yesterday you were a tiny baby in my arms! How is it that time goes so fast?"

"Mum," I said, embarrassed, "cut it out."

"And now you're a college graduate and getting married and... oh!" she burst into tears.

"There now, Beth," dad said, patting mum awkwardly on the back. "Vicki's only getting married. She's not running off somewhere we'll never see her again. Calm down now."

It took mum a while to calm down. When she did, dad quickly ushered her outside before she could have another breakdown. He came back in and smiled at me.

"Your mother's right you know, Victoria," he said. "You have grown up fast."

"Oh no!" I said, staring at my father with barely concealed horror. "Dad! Not you too!"

"Relax, honey," he said, giving me a brief hug. "James will think you've got cold feet if you walk down the aisle looking stressed."

Cold feet. As if I could get cold feet. I'd been imagining this day for God didn't even know how long! Those imaginings had begun to turn from wishful fantasies into serious thoughts four years ago, when I received a call from a then hospitalized James. He'd been agitated and, despite the fact that he could barely string two words together at the time, it had been the best conversation I'd had with him in my life!

My phone rung loudly and rudely, waking me up from where I'd fallen asleep over my Maths homework.

"Hello?" I asked grumpily, not bothering the check the caller I.D.

"Tori!" James' voice was a very urgent half-shout which woke me up immediately.

"James! What's wrong? What's happened? Is it Bella?" The only thing I could think of that would make James so panicked would be if something happened to his precious little sister. What had that jackass Cullen done to her? I'd skin him alive myself if...

"What, Bella, no, no," his voice was distracted, confused. "Bella's, well, she's fine. She's at home. No, not Bella. It's, you see, Vicki, when I was here, well, I still am, but, in the hospital, Laurent, he came to see me and..."

"Laurent?" I interrupted, unable to believe that Laurent would go within ten feet of James by his own violation. "What the hell did he want?"

"He wanted, he said, he told me to ask you something," James said.

"Well, as then, dimwit," I said playfully, wondering why Laurent couldn't just give me the message himself. Seriously, sometimes that guy could be weirder than weird.

"Laurent said to ask you if you love me and that if you tell me no you're lying," James said, without pausing for breath. "Which is really weird because, considering I've been in love with you since we were little kids, I think I would have known if you were..."

"James," I interrupted, my voice unable to rise above a whisper. "James, what did you just say?"

"That Laurent said..."

"No! Not that part, the second part," my throat felt constricted. Had he just said...?

"I love you," he stated bluntly. "I have for ages, since we were little kids."

"I love you," I told him, feeling like my heart might sprout wings and fly free of my chest. To my surprise, he starting howling with laughter, as if my declaration of love was funny.

"Oh man, Vicki, we sound like a bad soap opera!"

I had to laugh at that.

"Oh, by the way," he said, "could you give me Laurent's number? I need to thank him, you know."

"Sure," I said and I said the number twice while James programmed it into his phone.

"So, when I Get out of the hospital tomorrow," he said mischievously, "do you want to go out for coffee?"

"Hell, yes!" I said and we hung up. I jumped into the air and whooped loudly.

"MUM!" I screamed. racing through the house. "MUM! I'm going on a date with JAMES!"

Four years ago I'd been excited about going on a date. Now I was waiting for my father to escort me down the aisle so I could marry that same man.

In our four years together, James and I had only broken up once. It had taken a month before we realised how stupid we'd been and got back together. My ex-boyfriend, Riley, had stalked me for a few months after I got back together with James but, when he found out that James was the son of a cop, he disappeared. I was thankful that I never saw him again.

"Ready, sweetheart?" my father asked and I nodded and took his proffered arm. I could feel tears glistening in my eyes as I thought about what was about to happen. I was really about to become Mrs. Witherdale. For a moment I thought of my grade three diary that I had kept under my pillow every night. Scribbled on every page was 'Mrs. Victoria Witherdale' in my messy, childish scrawl. I fought off the urge to giggle insanely as I heard the bridal march begin.

As I walked down the aisle, my hand on my father's arm, I had the strange sensation that I was walking through a sea of blurry, half-familiar faces. Nothing seemed real. Until I saw James at the end of the isle. Everything about him, from his dirty blonde hair to the shiny toes of his new shoes - which I had a feeling Renee had forced him into - was perfect. He looked like an angel, albeit a very mischievous angel, and I felt like giggling again. What had I ever done to deserve such a wonderful man?

The service itself was a simple thing. Traditional wedding vows to appease both parents. As I said 'I do' I looked around at the assembled guests.

Sitting in the front row were mine and James' parents. My parents, happily married for over twenty years, sat smiling and holding hands, my mother dabbing her face with a tissue. Charlie and Renee were there too. They'd finally separated two years ago after Bella attempted suicide again. Her note, found by Charlie, said she didn't want to live if her parents hated each other. It had been the wakeup call Charlie and Renee had needed to seriously re-evaluate their relationship. It hadn't taken much re-evaluating for them to decide that it wasn't working and the current situation was bad for their children. They'd split up and James and Bella hadn't been the only ones to breathe a sigh of relief. The whole of Forks had nodded in approval and watched as both went their separate ways. Renee had moved down to Florida and had met and married a minor league baseball player named Phil Dwyer. He was several years younger than she was, but he seemed to like her. Charlie had stayed in Forks and was currently in a serious relationship with Sue Clearwater, the widow of one of Charlie's close friends.

Another separation that had been for the best had been Bella and Edward. When Bella had, once again, attempted suicide, Edward hadn't come to the hospital once to see her. James, Charlie and Renee had called him, sent him messages and even gone around to his house to see what was keeping him from the hospital. He hadn't answered his phone, replied to messages or come to the door and, eventually, the Swans just gave up on him. To their great surprise, he had waltzed back into Bella's life as soon as she was released from hospital with some bullshit explanation as to why he couldn't see her in hospital. Bella, showing some of her natural feminine superiority for the first time in her life, had thrown a drink in his face. Shocked, he'd asked what he'd done to deserve that and Bella had slapped him. Then she'd broken up with him.

As it happened, Bella went to Jacob and explained to him what she'd done. She'd confessed that she wasn't sure if she'd done the right thing and asked to stay with Jacob for a while. A call had been made to James to let him know that Bella was ok and was going to ground for a few days with Jacob to sort things out. The pair of them had emerged from their few days away as a steadfast couple. Edward had been pissed and, truth be told, I think everyone but Edward had liked it. Until he started stalking Bella. It had taken an IVO by Charlie and a serious beating by James to finally convince Edward that he and Bella were no more. Bella and Jacob were sitting in the front row next to Renee and Phil. Bella had decided that she wanted to spend some time away from Forks and she and Jacob had moved with Renee to Florida. As such, she had a better relationship with her step-father than James did, but James didn't mind.

There should have been someone else in the front row. Thinking about him brought tears to my eyes. Laurent; my patient, supportive and stupid, stupid friend. He should have been here today. But he wasn't. James and I were going to go and see him at the hospice after the wedding. Laurent had been diagnosed with lung cancer late last year. The doctors at the hospital said that, if he stopped smoking, there was something like a fifteen percent chance that they could stop the spread of the disease. A fifteen percent chance that he would live. Laurent had tried to give up the marijuana, I gave him credit for trying. The, one day, after a chemotherapy session he called me.

"Victoria," the horrible thing about the voice on the other end was that, for a moment, I didn't recognize it. It was choked with tears and the harsh breathing of someone in hysterics. Then I realised.

"Laurent? Oh my god! Laurent, what's, what's wrong?" I realised that stupider words had never been said. Everything was wrong right now! My friend had cancer! Cancer! He had a fifteen percent chance of survival!

"I can't," he sobbed into the phone. "I can't. I can't. I can't."

"What? What can't you do?" I knew I sounded desperate, but, in truth, I was. In all the time I'd known him, Laurent had never ever cried. Now he was on the other end of the phone bawling his eyes out!

"I need it," he wept. "I don't give a fuck if I die, but I need it!"

It didn't take me long to work out what he was talking about.

"Pot? Laurent! You're doing so well! You have a chance..."

"Fifteen fucking percent is not a chance, Victoria!" he shouted. "It's a lie! It's a fucking lie! I can't do this! I'm tried all the time, I don't even have the energy to eat or drink or walk down the street to get a paper! I don't want to die like this!"

"Laurent, please, talk sense!" I begged him. "This stuff, the giving up, the chemo, it's good for you!"

The tears hadn't gone from his voice when he said, "Sometimes it's not about what's good for you."

He hung up and I spent the rest of the afternoon on his doorstep, banging on the doors and windows. Screaming abuse and curses at him as the smell of marijuana drifted under the door.

As soon as he started smoking again, there was nothing the doctors could do. I'd tried to reconcile myself with his death, but it was so hard. He'd been a part of my life for a long time. It felt like a part of me was dying. He'd been given six months since he started smoking again and had been moved into a hospice a week ago and given two weeks, at most, to live. He'd seemed strangely at peace when I'd visited him before I'd come here. He'd grinned at me from the bed he was all but confined to. He gave me his blessings and said it was a damn shame that he couldn't be there. He also gave me a message for James: "Tell Witherdale that he better take good care of you or I'll come back from the other side and haunt his ass!". I'd promised to pass on a message and, impulsively, I'd given him a hug. He smelled funny; a strange combination of marijuana and the clean, crispness of the hospice. Somehow I known, when I left him, that he had hours. James and I would be at his side when he passed on, he was waiting for me.

I was brought back to reality by the minister intoning the words, "I now pronounce you husband and..."

Before he could finish, James grabbed me around the thighs and lifted me into the air. I gave a little yelp at the unexpectedness of it and mock glared at him.

"James Henry Witherdale!" I intoned crisply, the effect ruined by the sparkling in my eyes and the giggle in my voice. "Put me down immediately!"

"So, Victoria Sutherland," he said, grinning mischievously, "do you love me?"

I laughed. "Of course not!"

He chuckled. "Liar."

He brought my lips down to his and the rest of the world - my dying friend, my parents, my two sets of in-laws (wasn't I lucky?), and the perfect young couple in the front row - were driven from my mind. Nothing else matter except here and now. Here and now, James was kissing me. Here and now, I was kissing James.

"Um..." the minister seemed flabbergasted. "You may kiss the bride, I suppose. But you, already appear to be doing that..." his voice trailed off and I broke away from the kiss and wrapped my arms around James.

"I love you," I whispered in his ear.

"I know," he whispered back.

~ I'd Lie ~

The End

A/N: I want to take this moment to give a thank-you to everyone who read and a very special thank-you to Liyorah and wolverinacullen for faithfully reading and reviewing every single chapter of this story. These two ladies gave me the motivation to keep writing and I want to take a moment to direct you to some of their fabulous stories, hopefully you ladies don't mind and, to all other readers, these stories are well worth checking out:

Liyorah:

The Reason Why (.net/s/5125961/1/The_Reason_Why)

When I was Human (.net/s/4923173/1/When_I_was_Human)

wolverinacullen:

Victoria's Fairytale (.net/s/6006136/1/Victorias_Fairytale)

The Company of Misery (.net/s/5020713/1/The_Company_Of_Misery)