Disclaimer: I only own Evie and her parents.

A/N: A big thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed, you guys are a fantastic bunch! I like this chapter because you guys get a little more insight to Evie and her family. Enough babbling, go and read! Enjoy & review!

"Evelyn, honey, you're here!" Nicole James exclaimed. "We were expecting you to be here about an hour ago."

Evie only smiled as she dropped her bag in the foyer and signaled to John to do the same. Once, all bags were dropped to the ground, she went over to her mother and gave her a big hug. It had been a few weeks since she had been home and missed her family greatly.

"Our appearances ran a little longer than expected." She lied, hiding the real reason. "Needless to say, we're here now."

"Yes, you are dear and it's wonderful to have you home." Nicole smiled and then turned towards the young man standing next to her daughter. "Forgive me, I'm so rude! I'm Nicole James, Evelyn's mother. You must be John." She said in a rushed voice, shaking the wrestler's hand.

"Nice to finally meet you Mrs. James." John smiled.

"Mrs. James? Please, call me Nicole." She chirped. "I'm finally glad to meet you. For months we've been hearing about you and we never got to meet you until now. Forgive Evelyn for being so rude in waiting this long to introduce us all."

"She's forgiven." John winked in Evie's direction.

"Mom, where's dad? He said he was going to be home when we got here." Evie noticed that her father had yet to come out and greet them.

"Sweetie, I'm sorry, but dad had to run out for a bit." She apologized. "He should be home soon."

Evie weakly smiled in her mother's direction. She shouldn't have been surprised that he wasn't there. Whenever something happened down at the office he would go running. Her dad's job is usually what caused her parents to get into fights quite often, leaving Evie and her siblings to wonder when a divorce would ensue.

"I'm going to let you two kids get settled." Evie heard her mother say. "And I'm going to start making dinner."

"Did you need help, mom?"

"Oh no sweetie, just get settled in and then go show John around town if you want." Nicole suggested and then walked off, leaving the couple alone.

When she was gone, Evie walked over to John and stood on her tip toes to plant a simple, yet loving kiss on his lips.

"Not that I mind, but, what was that for?"

"For putting up with my mom."

John only shook his head, grabbed their bags and told her to lead the way. When they made it to the second floor landing, Evie dropped her things in her room and then led John down to the guest room.

"I would have you stay in my room, but it still looks like an eighteen year old lives there and I'm really embarrassed by some of the stuff that's still in there, so as much as I hate to, I'm leaving you in this room." Evie explained.

"You're very rude." John said, closing and locking the door behind him. "First, you wait so long to bring me here to meet your parents and now you're leaving me in the guest room, away from you."

A smile spread across her face, she saw what he was doing and decided to play along with him. She slowly stepped towards him and allowed her hands to fall on his chest. "I hope you can forgive me." She whispered, looking away from him.

"I don't think I can." John smiled.

"There's got to be a way."

John pretended to think for a moment and wrapped his arms around her tiny waist. He looked down at her, allowing his eyes to meet with hers. "Well, there is one way, but I don't think you'd be interested."

"Try me."

He picked her up, his lips crashing down to hers. With their lips connected, he walked towards the bed and softly put her down. Just for a second he broke the kiss and looked at her face, one hand running down her side and the other running through her hair. "I'm never going to hurt you."

"Love me." She wrapped her arms around his neck and before she crashed their lips together, she just stared at him, wondering how she got so lucky to have him in her life. "Please, just love me."

\\

Later on, John and Evie finally left the house for his tour around her neighborhood. She had taken him over to her old school, the few local hangouts where everyone got together, and to the park where she had grown up. Truthfully, she felt a little silly taking him to these places, but this was her life. It was all she knew for a while and all she could show him. However, there was one spot she hadn't shown him yet and she was saving it for last.

"Where are we going?"

"You know how you had your secret spot when you were a kid? Well, you can think of this as mine." Evie said, leading the way. "It's nothing like your park, but it definitely had a sense of comfort for me."

"I can't wait to see this place."

A few minutes later, they were walking down a rocky path that would take them to her spot. Finally, they got there and he was amazed. Her own little spot definitely blew his right out of the water. It was very out of the way, but also quaint.

"How did you find a pond?"

"I stumbled across it one day." Evie looked out at the place she had avoided for so long. "Actually, I would always sit underneath that weeping willow over there," she pointed to the tree, "and just think about whatever was bothering me."

"You didn't talk to your brother or sister?"

Evie shook her head. "My brother is eight years old than I am and he always had his own things to do. As for my sister, she was two years older than me and off in her own little world. She had her own clique and as far as she was concerned I didn't exist."

"Wow, you seem pretty close to them now."

"We're close now, but back then we wanted nothing to do with each other because we were all at different phases in our lives." Evie explained. "My parents didn't plan on having kids at all. About four months after my parents got married, my mom discovered that she was pregnant and thus Mark was born. They decided that they would only have one child. However, six years later, my mom decided that she wanted one more baby, a daughter, and then she would be done. That's how Mandy came about."

"What about you?"

"Two years after Mandy, I came about as a big surprise."

"A surprise?"

"They say surprise, I say accident."

John grabbed his girlfriend's hand and led her to the weeping willow that she use to sit under. He allowed himself to fall to the ground and took Evie with him, making sure she ended up on his lap. His arms circled around her waist and she allowed her head to rest on his shoulder.

"You're not an accident."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because people don't love accidents."

She didn't have an answer for him. Instead, she just decided to look out at the scenery and hope he'd drop the subject. This was the most she had told him about her family and she just couldn't continue talking to him about it.

"When do you want to tell my family?"

He saw what she was doing, so he decided to humor her. It had taken her this long to tell him more about her family, so he figured he'd let the little tidbits come in when she decided it was okay to do so. No matter what, he knew he would always love her.

"It's all on you, they're your family."

"Maybe we should have told your family first." Evie thought out loud. "They definitely would have loved to hear the news first."

"Your family is going to be accepting of all this. They love you."

"I know they do." She reassured him. "They always have, they've just had a weird way of showing it. I just don't know how they're going to react to everything."

"How did they react when you told them about Ted and the baby?"

She lifted her head up from his shoulder and looked down at the ground, noting that the grass was looking particularly green on this summer day. When she told John about Ted she had neglected to tell him that nobody knew a thing. Growing the courage to do so, she shifted herself so that she was straddling him, looking into his confused his with her guilt ridden ones.

"I never told anybody. Nobody in my family knew anything about me and Ted. They didn't know I was pregnant and they didn't know that I aborted. Same thing with Ted's family, they didn't know a thing, they still don't." She explained, not knowing Ted had told his brothers. "I took-"

John held up his hand, signaling for her to stop talking. "We'll talk about this another day."

"John, I want to tell you now, before it's too late."

"There's nothing else to tell me. You already told me you were pregnant and aborted, I don't need to know how you got it done. That's not important to me. All I care about right now is you and I being together forever. I want us to be happy."

"I want that too." She agreed. "It's all I've been looking for."

"Look no further than me, baby, you've got it."

"And what about you?"

"Me? I have it now. When I was with Liz, I was miserable. We-you know what, she's not important and you know the deal with her. But, with you, I'm happy everyday and it's something that I found without really knowing I wanted it."

"You're ready for this?"

He nodded his head, allowing his hand to lift up the necklace he had given her the day after her birthday. "I've been ready since I gave this to you. I want this and I know you do too."

"I do." She cried, pressing her forehead to his. "I really do. All I want to do is forget."

"You will, baby, you will." John promised, knowing what she was talking about.

\\

John had won over her mother, but her father, not so much. From the second he had laid eyes on John he had been everything but kind to him. Glares and snarky comments were thrown in John's direction and he just nodded his head and dealt with it. He didn't snipe back or yell, he just took it and continued making conversation with Evie and her mother.

When dinner was done, she pulled aside her father to see exactly what his problem was. He had only met John an hour ago and he was already being rude and treating him like he was dirt.

"What is your problem, dad?" Evie whispered, hoping no one would overhear them. "He did nothing to you and you're being rude."

"I don't like him."

"Why?"

"Look at what he does for a living."

"I do the same thing."

"I don't like what you do for a living either. Evie, I told you to stop all this wrestling nonsense and you didn't listen to me. Now look at you, bouncing around from city to city, hotel to hotel. You don't have a stable life and neither does he."

"What do you want me to do? I knew what I was getting into when I started all of this and so did you."

"I want you to stop wrestling, get a real job and find a boyfriend with a real job. You've lived in the fantasy world long enough, it's time you and him come down to earth."

"Let me get this straight, you don't like John because of his job?"

"That's exactly it."

"Dad-"

"I don't want to hear about it anymore, Evelyn." Richard said sternly.

"Wait a second, dad, I'm confused. You're always telling people that your proud of me and that I'm happy with everything."

"I only say that because I don't want people to know the truth."

"What's the truth?"

"That I don't like the choices you've made in your life. Evie, you're probably thinking that I'm saying all of this to be mean to you, but I'm not. I'm only saying all of this because I love you, I care about you and I want to see you living a stable life."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore." Evie walked off before anything else could be said.

Minutes later, John and Evie had her parents impatiently sitting on the couch. They had some news they wanted to share with them, but were now at a loss for words. Finally, John laced his hand with Evie's and he looked at her, encouraging her to break the news. Her eyes turned up towards John and she nodded her head, gaining the courage to say something.

"Mom, dad, we have something that we want to tell you." Evie began. "I know this is going to come as shock, but John and I are engaged."

She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for all bedlam to break loose, but it never came. Her eyes slowly opened and she caught the shocked look on her mom and dad's faces. Her father was angry while her mother was shocked.

"Get your things and get out of my house." Richard James said in a strained voice. "I don't want to look at you!"

"Rich!" Nicole exclaimed. "She's your daughter, you should be happy for her. Can't you see that he makes her happy?"

"It's okay, mom." Evie whispered, knowing that something like this would happen. "We'll just get our things and go."

Evie, with John following, walked upstairs and got their things together. When they were leaving the house, they heard her mother and father fighting about her engagement. Just before she closed the front door she heard her mother pleading for him to accept things.

"Let's go home." John said, opening the trunk of the car.

John loaded up the car and Evie turned on the ignition. With tears in her eyes, she backed out the driveway and headed towards the airport, they decided to go back to Tampa where she could clear her head.

A/N: This is where I leave you. I bet you weren't expecting that?