“So you were saying…I asked you where you see yourself.” I forced myself to say it instead of sliding around the topic, the way I always would have in the past. “In terms of me having a baby. You were saying that you’re very ambitious…”
“Right. I may not think I deserve much in life, but Iwanta lot.”
“Oh yes?”
“So when I told you the future looked bright to me…” He pressed his lips to my hair, thumb circling on my hip. “I meant, I’ve already imagined it. I want it all. I want to live here, with you, and turn that walk-in wardrobe into a nursery. I want to build a cot from scratch. I want to ask you to marry me when we’re here, in front of the fire, on a night as perfect as this one, and I want to love your child like they’re mine. I want them to be mine. However they come into the world.”
He pulled me even closer, arms wrapping around me tightly.
“But we only started dating about”—he lifted his head slightly to check his watch behind my shoulder—“twenty minutes ago. So it’s probably a little soon for all that. I told you: chronically overambitious.”
I was crying again. “Do you know how fuckingrareyou are?” I said, pressing a tearful kiss to his lips.
“Are you kidding? There are three Charlie Joneses on this island,” he said, seeking my mouth again as I pulled away. “We’re common as stoats.”
He laughed as he kissed me, and I felt solucky. Luckier than I thought possible, even when I was at my most willfully hopeful, back when I first arrived here. I’ve made so many mistakes, but if they led me here, maybe they weren’t mistakes after all.
And it’s OK if not everyone sees it like that. I know I’m not perfect. I’mAspen, in a way I’ve never let myself be before—I’m messy and complex and oh, to be loved like this, as Iaminstead of as I think Ioughtto be…
It feels like the perfect way to start.
Isle of Ormer, five years later
Oliver no longer raced because it made him feel alive. The heart-pounding thrill he’d craved as a younger man eluded him now, anyway. It didn’t excite him to take risks—he had so very much to lose.
But he still raced to win.
“You’re going down, bike boy.”
Aspen’s cycling helmet was jammed over the enormous ginger bun at the nape of her neck. She was poised at the starting line Rog had drawn with a stick in the dirt, which had already been disputed several times because tourists kept scuffing it. Tradition was tradition, however, particularly on the Isle of Ormer. At the first Harvest Festival Bramblebay Race, the starting line had been drawn with a stick, and so it always would be.
“Save it for the bedroom, Aspen. Whatwillthe committee say?” Oliver shot back, biting down on a small smile as her cheeks went pink.
He could still make Aspen blush just by looking at her. Sometimes he’d do it at council meetings—she was the Deputy for Health and Emergency Services, now that Doc was scaling back his duties, and Oliver had somehow got roped into being Speaker, because (he suspected) he was the only one who could get anyone toshut up. While everyone argued about the Ormer constitution, Oliver would hold Aspen’s gaze across the table and watch her slowly lose focus on anything but him.
“Ready?” Rog yelled, adjusting his orange bucket hat. A permanent feature ever since his hair had gone from thinning to altogether absent, this hat was now as iconic an element of Ormer life as Toby’s famous harbor mural.
“Ready,” Oliver and Aspen confirmed in unison.
“Set?” Rog shouted.
There was a pause.
“Are you expecting us to—”
“GO!” Rog yelled.
Aspen pulled ahead initially. Her technique was shoddy, but it was that grit of hers—it was as if she could simply will herself into the lead. Tourists and locals cheered from the sidelines as Aspen, Oliver and the rest of the entrants raced down the Rue, ducked low, wholly focused on the finish line, which was just visible between the ears of Oliver’s trusty steed.
“Come on, Maple, old girl,” Oliver muttered, digging in his heels.
The Bramblebay donkey race was now one of the island’s major tourist attractions. It was widely regarded to be Aspen’s idea, but really, it was Galoshes who was responsible. She had told Aspen that the donkeys were untrainable, and so Aspen had decided she would train them all. In her long-running quest to find out who she was beneath her anxiety, Aspen had been delighted to discover that she was actually an extremely stubborn person, something she had announced to Oliver a few years ago, as though he hadn’t known it all along.
“And Toby and Stardust win the prize!” Rog yelled.
“What!” Aspen shouted, straightening up on her donkey as she and Oliver crossed the finish line at what was, essentially, a slow trot.
The donkeys were trained, but they weren’tfast.
