Epilogue
It’ll be epic and romantic as shit and the angels will fucking weep.
THREE YEARS LATER
Niall
It’s cold outside today, which is hardly surprising as it’s mid-October. I stretch my calf muscles idly while listening to the incredibly cheerful woman who is leading the warm-up for this year’s mud run. Silas, who is next to me and attending to the warm-up much more enthusiastically, nudges me.
“You awake yet, son? I thought the cold and that twenty-vat cup of coffee you inhaled when we got here would have done the trick.”
I turn to smile at him. “I’m awake enough to kick your arse on this run.”
He scoffs and smirks. “In your dreams.” He cranes his neck. “What are you looking at so intently?” Then he smiles. “Ah, I might have known.”
I sneak another look at Milo which once again snags and stays on him.
He’s talking to Oz with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand and the other hand holding tightly to Cora who is bouncing around more than a Teletubby on speed, her eyes everywhere and mischief written on every inch of her.
Milo smiles down at her and says something and she laughs with her curls bouncing around her cute little face like live springs.
My gaze snags on that warm smile on his wide lips.
He’s flushed with cold and buried under several layers of ridiculous clothing including skinny jeans, shocking pink wellies, and an old turtlenecked jumper of mine which swamps his slender figure.
He’s topped it off with an ancient brown cord jacket and huge green scarf, and with that attire, he should, in theory, look ridiculous.
But he has a bohemian flair with his clothes and with his wavy nut-brown hair caught up in a top knot and his thin face flushed with cold, he looks like a model.
I look again at his mismatched clothes. A model dressed like a tramp.
Silas nudges me again, disrupting my memory of how that slanted fey face had looked last night in the moonlight while he hovered over me, rising and falling on my cock in some sort of graceful ballet.
I turn to Silas slightly indignantly. “Are you quite alright, Silas, or is breaking people’s ribs part of that alarmingly peppy girl’s warm-up act? ”
He grins. “No, that’s just making me feel slightly happier about being dragged along to jump through mud and half drown in the freezing cold pond. It’s like going back to school.”
I think back to our school days. “You know, you’re right. That is why I like it. I bloody loved games, especially the cross country.” I smile fondly. “Do you remember old man Masters and how he used to make us run in the pouring rain in our underwear if we moaned about it? So much fun.”
He shakes his head. “They should have expelled you for severe mental problems.”
I laugh. “It’s not my fault that you ripped your shorts playing rugby once and had decided on that day to act out your inner Jezebel and not wear any underwear.”
He winces. “How many times have I told you that I hadn’t got my laundry back? I had no choice.”
“Four thousand times so far, and it’s never made a bit of difference.”
He grins and gives up warming up in favour of joining me in leaning against the fence and watching my beloved.
Because he is that. My beloved. I love every quirky, awkward, and sometimes wilful inch of him.
I always will because he makes me laugh and feel more alive than I ever have, like a bottle of champagne that’s been shaken up and opened on New Year’s Eve.
Full of happy possibilities and a wonderful golden reality.
Just being with him feels like home should always do. I never really knew that feeling before. I was at boarding school by the age of seven, and the only real family I had was the one I made with Silas and Gideon.
I’d been bemused when people told me that when love is real, it feels right.
To me, sex with lots of different people felt right.
Why would I give that up for what sounded incredibly boring?
But I’ve found out that it isn’t. Sex with Lo gets better and better.
We know each other’s bodies so well that anything goes.
But I’ve found lying together afterward is just as sweet.
Curling up around him, listening to him breathe and hearing that indrawn breath and slight catch as he talks in the dark and tells me his secrets makes me feel incredibly privileged and intensely happy.
Our lives together have slotted into each other so easily.
Coming home to him, knowing he’ll be there when I get home or he’ll bang through the door later, his eyes bright and alive and his touch warm and welcoming, makes me settle inside.
I loved the Dower House from the minute Silas gave it to me.
It felt right to me but also as if it was waiting.
So we’d both settled down waiting without realising it was for a wild-haired dreamer to come in and make us a home.
Lo is my family now. He’s the only one for me, and I will protect him and us with everything in me so we can grow old together in our cottage in the woods.
As if sensing my thoughts, Silas nudges me. “Have you decided when you’re going to do it?”
“I trust you’re talking about my marriage proposal and not my sex life.”
He grimaces. “Definitely the former,” he says quickly.
“You sure?” I cock an eyebrow. “Now you’re a parent and all, maybe you’ve forgotten how it works.”
He raises an eyebrow in return. “Believe me, I don’t need reminding.”
I grin and then turn to look at Milo who’s laughing at something Oz says and completely oblivious to a city type in new green wellies and a Barbour coat who’s eyeing him up lasciviously.
The man obviously senses my gaze because he looks back and blanches when he sees me shaking my head at him before hurriedly moving on.
Satisfied, I look at Silas to find him laughing. “What?”
He shakes his head, a smile still pulling at his lips. “You being all caveman. It still surprises me.”
“Why?” I ask fairly indignantly.
“Because you very charmingly never gave a shit,” he says patiently. “No matter what men and women did to make you jealous, you never moved a hair. Now, Milo manages it without even realising.”
“Well, don’t tell him,” I say hurriedly. “You know what he’s like about bossy men.”
He smiles. “Somehow I don’t think he minds your brand of bossy.”
“I hope not.”
It’s something I’ve tried very hard to work on with him and I think it’s largely been successful. I still have lapses where I’ll start to ride roughshod but usually, all it takes is one raise of his eyebrow and I rein it in.
“I hope I’m what he needs,” I say fervently, and Silas’s smile softens.
“You are because you’ve worked so bloody hard at it, Niall. He knows that he means everything to you, and out of all of us, you were always the one who heard what he wasn’t saying.”
I grin. “He’s a lot more vocal now.”
“Well, that’s being in love, isn’t it?” Silas says simply. “It gives us the courage to show our full self if someone else loves it, warts and all.”
I smile at this gentle man. My brother in all but name. Then I look back at the love of my life.
“I’ll know when the right time is,” I say, starting to stretch as the countdown begins. “Timing is everything. It’ll be epic and romantic as shit and the angels will fucking weep.”
“Oh dear,” he says faintly, but then the gates open and we’re off.
Milo
We stand by the side of the course and wave enthusiastically as the runners go past us, Cora screeching ‘Daddy’ as Silas jogs past with Niall.
I eye my boyfriend. His hair is in its usual elegant mess, the white-blond strands showing off the denim blue of his eyes that I love so much, especially with the lines that radiate from around them showing a lifetime of laughter.
Because that’s what I see around Niall. Laughter.
He’s easy-going and sarcastic and quick-witted, and I love him more every day.
Oz interrupts my thoughts by taking my empty cup and slinging it into the bin. “Next time we’ll bring brandy,” he says in a disgusted tone of voice.
I smile. “This run business is not your thing.”
“You know very well it isn’t,” he says, catching Cora neatly as she attempts to follow the runners.
Slinging her up and onto his hip, he starts to walk slowly and I fall into stride next to him.
“Sunday is the one day that we get a lie in and my mother is staying this week. Do you know what that means, Milo?”
I blink. “You’re having a nice time?”
“I’d be having a nicer time lying in with my husband while my mother looks after Cora.”
“Oh,” I say and start to laugh. He throws me a dark look.
“It’s okay for you, Milo. In your big old house with just the two of you and no one to hear you scream. Last time I shouted during sex, I had my daughter banging on the door demanding to know if I’d fallen over, accompanied by Chewwy howling.” He shudders. “It quite put us off our stride.”
I start to laugh helplessly and he joins in, his expression wry.
We walk along for a bit, keeping to the side of the course while Cora jumps and skips alongside while admiring her new flowery wellies.
“What have you got on this week?” he asks.
I narrow my eyes, thinking. “I’ve got the two portraits from last week to finish. Then they’ve got to be packed up and shipped off. I’ve got a few days then before I’ve got to go to Gloucestershire.”
He smiles as if liking that. “How long will you be away?”
“A week at the most. Or at least I hope so.”
“I hope so too,” he says tartly. “Because Niall will be like a bear with a sore head the longer you’re away.”
I sigh. “I’ll be the same.” I shoot him a look. “I know it sounds silly, but I hate being away from him.”
“Not silly at all,” he says placidly. “You’re in love. That’s a natural side effect, or it should be.”
“I wish he could come with me, but Lord Reid is rather eccentric. He doesn’t like his staff to have guests.”
“He doesn’t want you having a gentleman caller? How very Upstairs Downstairs !”