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“I don’t know what else to do with you.” His chest shakes with a slight inhale. “I just… You’re actually serious about this. About me. You want to be with me. Even though you have to give up so much. You’re brazen enough to go wandering through faerie paths with a dream eater. You’ve taken precautions against letting me see the ugliest parts of what I’m asking you to do.” Moving one hand, he looks toward me, tearful. “Beautiful…I am overwhelmed. I don’t know what I’ve done to find myself worthy of you. I’m terrified of failing you when you meet whichever brothers decide to crop up this time alongside Markov. I want what’s best for you. I am in utter awe that you have decided that what’s best for you is me.”
Seating myself beside him on the couch, I fold my hands in my lap and look down at my bare feet. “I know what it feels like to not think you’re enough for someone. I know how much it hurts the more you care about the person who seems to be telling you that you don’t measure up to their expectations.” I glance at him as he rubs one eye. “I didn’t know it could also hurt to watch someone you love think those same terrible things about themself. You don’t owe me guilt, Ollie.” I touch his shoulder. “I want to create a life with you because you are the kind of beautiful person who cares this deeply about your people—even when it’s destroying you. You are more deserving than anyone I’ve ever met. And as far as your brothers are concerned, you can’t fail me any worse than they’ve failed you. They’re your brothers, Ollie. I am quite ready to hate them for how they’ve hurt you.”
He touches my fingers. “I swear I will do everything in my power to protect you from them.”
“Likewise.” I kiss his cheek. “We’re going to protect each other. But first. How many sweaters am I bringing tomorrow?”
“This is really happening?” he whispers, so much disbelief in his tone.
I nod. “And I don’t want frostbite.”
“Again with your impeccable priorities…” A wet laugh escapes him. “Let’s look up the temperature.”
We wind up stuck on many, many vacation websites for numerous hours, concluding in a simple and horrible knowledge that only vaguely has to do with the temperature…
It’s late May.
The Northern Lights aren’t visible at this time.
“Maybe they’ll be there anyway, like magic?” I offer, hopefully. “If this were a fanfiction, they would totally be there.”
“Because if this were a fanfiction, the author wouldn’t have looked it up. Heck, we almost didn’t look it up.”
I set a hand against my chest. Positively wounded.
Ollie’s head whips away from the article he’s been scouring. “I’m not talking about you or your fanfiction.”
“No? Are you sure it hasn’t crossed your mind now?” I arch a brow. “Say everything in my fanfiction has been perfectly plausible, well-researched, and realistic.”
“Everything in your fanfiction has been…” His brows knit. “…entertaining.” Straightening himself, he confidently declares, “I have been enjoying it. Quite entirely.”
“I’ve done research!”
“I occasionally question the physics.”
“What physics?”
“Exactly.”
I let my mouth drop open. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
He flashes a grin, then sighs and cuts his fingers through his hair. “Well, this ruins everything I planned.”
I chew my lip. “Well. I mean. It ruins your plans, but we can kind of go anywhere with decent ease, right?”
“A number of places, yes.”
“So…let’s find somewhere else cool for our wedding?”
After more googling, we discover that it is also not cherry blossom season in Japan.
“What is May?” Ollie snaps at his phone.
“National Salsa Month,” I offer. “Like the food. Not the dance. I can’t find an answer on when the dance day or month is.” I squint. “Maybe in March? But for a different country.”
Ollie swears, but it’s a good swear. A happy swear. A thrilled swear, perhaps.
I perk up and look at him as a giant smile washes across his face.
