He gives a dramatic sigh, although his hands are roaming all over my body. “I’m not sure I have it in me. You’ll be the death of me, Oliver.”
“Oh, I’ll help you rise again,” I tell him, and reach for his cock.
Epilogue
OLIVER
Several weeks later
“When did youknow?” Brandon asks earnestly. He leans in, as though Heath won’t hear him if he does. “Like, when did you first think, ‘Damn, I love this guy’?”
Heath gives me a sympathetic look and shakes his head in aThat’s so Brandonway. Elliot and I have just finished eating with Brandon and Heath at a diner after they picked us up from JFK airport in New York, although thankfully Elliot’s stepped away to the bathroom, so he’s missing the third degree from Brandon.
I don’t mind too much, not even after Brandon has been quizzing me for a solid minute without letting me actually answer any of his questions about how my relationship with Elliot is going. Not that I’m complaining—I’m still firmly in thatcan’t think about anything but himspace as far as Elliot is concerned.
Still, I can’t help messing with Brandon.
“You know what? I think I can time theexactmoment I fell in love to when I first laid eyes on Arden Hall. That place is amazing.”
Brandon reaches over the table to give me a little shove of mock outrage, and Heath chuckles. Elliot choosesthatmoment to come back, asking, “What are we talking about?”, which provokes another round of laughter.
“Love, my lord,” I tell him, tugging him back into the booth next to me. “What else but love?”
I still call himmy lord. But it’s morphed into a pet name these days, a reminder of where we’ve come from, those first awkward moments of our connection.
“It does seem the season for it,” Elliot says, smiling at me. “Is your friend Jon very excited?”
“He’s fuckingpainfullyexcited,” Brandon groans. “You two should’ve stayed over the other side of the pond, saved yourselves the agony.”
“I’mlooking forward to it,” Heath says, pulling Brandon in for a side-hug. “And so are you. You just like pretending that you’re not.”
We’ve flown back just in time for Jon and Cooper’s wedding, a several-days-long affair, with the wedding itself on New Year’s Eve. Heath and Brandon are going to drive us back to Northlake, Cooper’s family estate out in Connecticut, once we finish eating.
Part of me wanted to skip the wedding; I told Elliot that if it was going to bring back any bad memories for him, we wouldn’t go. He’d laughed fondly and told me it was very thoughtful of Jon and Cooper to invite him—and besides, it would be nice to go to a wedding that actually got to the end.
We’ve only been back in the States for a few hours, after spending Christmas at Arden Hall, and it still feels strange being back here. After a little more conversation that night of the masquerade, we settled on a plan: Elliot would stay in LA for now, since the studio wanted more samples from him for a full score. Then for the holiday season, I would take that week of paid vacation leave that Magda offered, and we would have Christmas in England together.
“I have some money saved up,” I’d said. “It should cover a cheap ticket—if thereissuch a thing at Christmas.”
Elliot had straight up refused to let me pay for it. “No, Oliver,” he’d insisted, after a little back and forth. “As your Dominant, I want you to letmedo this for you. And I’m afraid you’ll have to; I simply can’t travel in anything less than first class, and wemusttravel together.”
The arrogance and the snobbery were him all over, but that wasn’t what had caught my attention. “As my Dominant?” I’d repeated, and couldn’t stop my smile. “Well…I guess I can’t argue, in that case. Even if youaretechnically broke.”
“Not anymore,” he’d said with a falsely modest smile. “These Hollywood studios really do pay out a ridiculous amount of money to get what they want, don’t they?”
* * *
Iwasonly kidding when I told Brandon that seeing Arden Hall made me fall for Elliot. But the truth is, I fell hard for Arden Hall itself the moment I saw it. It was poking out of the frosty grounds like a giant, brooding, prehistoric creature, the gray stone walls dusted white with not-yet-melted snow, as the morning sun hid behind thick clouds.
The weather was awful, Elliot said; he apologized profusely, and the whole way from London he’d kept trying to add another coat or extra scarves to my outfit. He was right that I was freezing my whole ass off, but I didn’t care. I was staring not just at what—according to Elliot—was the ugliest ancestral seat in the whole of England.
I was staring at myfuture.
I saw it, clear as the blue sky that I knew were above those dark clouds. As we got out of the car and entered the bare, looming Great Hall, I had an honest-to-Godvision. I could see exactly where the reception area would go, picture the blank stone walls covered with a multitude of paintings to make them more welcoming, and hear the soft sounds of Elliot’s music over a subtle, state-of-the-art sound system to entertain guests as they waited to check in.
Elliot, predictably, absolutely hated the idea when I brought it up over dinner that very night. “But we’ll just get a lot of nosy parkers come to gawk at the two of us. And think of theheadlines, Oliver!”
“Think of thepublicity, Elliot! You can’tbuyhype like that. We can have themed weekends for queer couples—Pride week specials—rainbow weddings—and hell, let the lookie-loos come if they want. They’ll have to pay the big bucks to get their thrills.”
