“That’s beautiful,” Aurelia breathes.
His blue eyes hit me with a finality I am not prepared for. “Yes, she is.”
Good granite. Man should have been an actor—or Ineedto scramble to my room and throw open his profile, because he’snotacting, and those offensive question marks have replaced themselves with a full ten hearts.
I cross my ankles to offset the itch.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll survive the whiplash if the question marks remain, scorning me. It’s best I don’t check.
“This is disgusting,” Austin declares—around a mouthful of roasted veggies, from my farm. The ingrate.
“Watch it,” Samson says, “or I’ll kiss her right here.”
My heart skips a beat as my horrible little brain attempts to locate a way to force Austin to do absolutelyanythingbut watch it.
Samson adds, “With tongue.”
Heat swarms into Aurelia’s face as her brother forces himself to swallow. Giving me, perhaps, too much hope, he says, “Are yousureyou even know how to do that?”
“Absolutely. Isn’t that right, dear?”
I think I lose my mind a little imagining it, because all I can do is squeak, “Mhm. Yup. So very…absoluteness.”
Disdained, Austin’s pallor turns deathlike. “Convincing.”
Aurelia puffs a sigh. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be in love. He has a morose outlook on life, and it’s very, very,verysad.”
“Pitiful, even,” Samson adds, separating himself from me to lean forward, pluck a boiled egg from one of the serving bowls, and feed it to Tsuki before retrieving one for Yami. Gentle as ever, he murmurs, “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you out.”
Now that I am no longer attached to Samson’s body, I am feeling left out, but it’s fine. I will get over it. In a few years. Probably.
Dramatically, Austin sets his fork down. “I don’t believe it. You’re not married. I don’t know how Citrus convinced you this would be a fun joke, but there’sno wayif for literally no other reason than you didn’t properly propose. You’ve lived here ten years, and for ten years, you have sold your farm’s products to Kaolin every week on the exact same day at the exact same time. There is no way you’dmarrysomeone without conforming to proper procedure.”
“Unless,” Samson starts, offering me a boiled egg, possibly having sensed how I felt left out, “I fell madly in love.”
“Wouldn’t happen.”
Possibly enjoying this too much, Samson drops his stubbled cheek against the top of my head and says, “Did.”
Austin’s eyes roll up so far and fast they disappear into his head. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t care. You’remarried. After less than six weeks. That’s your story, and you’re sticking to it?”
Samson looks at me.
I nibble my boiled egg and nod.
So, he concurs, “Definitely.”
Austin’s resulting sigh could shake the very foundation of the mines, but you know what?
I could not care less.
Chapter 28
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Realism mod can go @$%^ itself.
“When we wake up tomorrow, the town will think we’re married,” Samson says as I’m helping him with our dinner dishes. Needing to manually heat water just to clean up was a learning curve a few weeks ago, but I’m getting the hang of the minor inconveniences that come with living in my fantasy world more and more each day.
