“Armand Demetrio, you are the kindest, gentlest, most accidentally hilarious, beautiful, hot-as-fuck man I’ve ever met, and I can’t imagine going the rest of my life without you.I want us to be in the samepostcodeforever.Will you do me the extraordinary honor of marrying me?”
Armand’s mouth had dropped open, his eyes gone wide and luminous.“Is this really happening?”he blurted.“This isn’t a hallucination?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure?Because this has been my exact fantasy since I was eleven.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant.I glanced pointedly down at my jeans and boots, then smirked up at him.“Is this because of the cowboy thing—”
“Yes, of course, it’s because of the cowboy thing.”
He was absolutely glowing under the porch light and the holiday bulbs surrounding us.“So”—I put on a thick Southern drawl to see Armand flush red—“what d’ya say, partner?”
“Yes—” Armand broke, his whole face brightening with an enormous, watery smile.“Bloody hell,yes.”
I rose to my feet to kiss him, but he beat me to it.He fastened his arms around my waist and lifted me off the ground in a gentle twirl, grass pollen falling like fairytale snow around us and Dakota softly neighing her support in the background.
Epilogue: Armand and Lucas in Position
February 2
71 Days Sober
I set the boxes down and surveyed the flat.
The walls were blank and the windows were bare, but it wasn’t hard to imagine this place fully Lucas-ed.The fancy fish tank already burbled quietly against the far wall, Timon and Pumbaa floating serenely in their little baggies as they acclimated to the water temperature.
I couldn’t wait to be living in aHomes & Gardensspread again, smearing ink all over Lucas’s pristine world.
“Skyler and Robin are getting the table,” huffed the love of my life as he set down the armchair he’d been carrying, then giggled in protest as I swept in to nuzzle his neck.“Armand, I’m sweaty and disgusting!”
“You’re beautiful and radiant,” I muttered against his temple.He gently extracted himself from my arms and moved farther into the room to check on the bobbing fish.
“Focus, this is serious business.No flirting while navigating heavy objects.”He glanced at me over his shoulder and flashed his ring.“Got it, ‘roomie’?”
I did not point out that this was clearly a double standard.Mostly because I was distracted by the white gold and delicate swirls of lapis lazuli catching the light.Mine was an answering blue with a thin band of gold running through it.They’d been expensive, but only in my world, not Lucas’s, and he’d agreed to split the cost.
I’d worried—very obnoxiously, since it was entirely my damage that required the rings remain within my budget as well as his—that this meant Lucas was perhaps not flashing about the kind of extravagant engagement ring he’d always dreamt of, but he’d assured me that even if that were true, they were always meant to be complemented by an eventual wedding band.
And I was not going to have any say in how extravagantthosewere.
He’d agreed to stop buying me things, generally, but we’d compromised that splurging on his own wedding would not fall under that category.Because Lucas Barclay had, naturally, been planning his wedding since he was six, and my eventual part in it was entirely incidental.Which was fine with me.Better than fine.It was bloody marvelous.
“What are you smiling about?”Lucas gave me one of those shy looks that so utterly turned my head I forgot my name for a second.It was especially impressive—and embarrassing—that he had this effect on me with his hands wrist-deep in a slimy fish tank.
“Everything, love,” I said.“I can’t wait to be your flatmate again.”Not that living with his mother for the past month hadn’t been ...Well, no, it had been wildly uncomfortable, actually.
The Barclay estate was opulent, palatial, even.So, I spent most of my time too frightened to touch anything.Mostly, I missed the soft-yet-firm domestic Lucas who liked things a very certain way and had no qualms about letting me know when I’d messed them up.
“Armand, that’s a kitchen box,” he tutted.“It doesn’t go in the living room.”
I picked up the box—which could have, as far as I knew, more fish in it—and moved it to the kitchen as a voice called behind me: “Incoming!”
I stepped out of the way as Finch and Skyler maneuvered in a large dining room table.
“No, no, that goes in the dining room.This is thelivingroom!”Lucas bustled off to micromanage, while I quietly marveled.For most of my life, I’d only ever lived places where the kitchen, dining, and living rooms all tended to be more or less the same room.Yet here I was, not only engaged to a man who insisted on the difference, but in a position to pay half the rent.
Engaged.Proper cut and carried.Andemployed.At a uni of all places, and me without my bachelor’s.
