“I don’t need you,” Nicholas scoffs.
“You do too. I know Andrew better than anyone in the world.”
“Not better than me,” Nicholas argues, knocking Charlie’s arm off his shoulder.
“He’s literally my twin. I definitely know him better than you.” Charlie’s shit eating grin lets Nicholas know that he’s trying to get under his skin, that he’s doing this just to make him mad, and it’s working.
“Fuck off.”
Charlie laughs, sauntering away to the living room presumably to find Eden, Theo and Emerson, who have been in the other room filling buckets with white rose petals for the last hour. Rose petals which need to be sprinkled on the grass very soon if they want to finish getting this fucking proposal set up before Andrew comes home from his afternoon with Amanda. She’d swept him away for a morning at a local winery, and while he knows that Andrew knows something is happening at home, because Andrew hates surprises, that doesn’t change a damn thing as far as Nicholas is concerned. Just because Andrew knows he’s being proposed to today doesn’t mean he knows how. He won’t be expecting Nicholas to have gotten his brothers’ help, something he admittedly only managed by grunting his desires to Emerson, who set about arranging the entire thing in that quiet, efficient way of his.
This proposal has been a long time coming. Or a long time in Nicholas's head since he’s known he wanted to marry Andrew since that weekend in New York. He knew this man was going to be his forever, he just needed to prove he deserved him, and figure out what kind of proposal would make Andrew happy, get the ring custom designed, and plan something special enough for his princess.
Given that he needed to secretly discover Andrew’s ring size, there was never any hope of it being a surprise. Not that Nicholas would’ve done that anyway. Not knowing how much Andrew loathes them. The best he could manage was having Amanda sweep Andrew away for a relaxing day while he set everything up.
“Are you nervous?” Alec asks, appearing at Nicholas’s side.
“No?”
“Theo says he was nervous to propose to me.”
“I’m not nervous,” Nicholas repeats.
“Andrew won’t say no.”
“I know he won’t,” Nicholas groans.
“Good.” Alec claps him on the back. “Nothing to be nervous about then, just the most important moment of your entire life.”
“Can you go away?”
“Only because I want to find Theo and remind him he probably misses me.”
“You two have only been apart for an hour.”
“I know, I bet he’s dying without me,” Alec replies, all but fucking skipping when he leaves the kitchen.
Grumbling to himself about interfering little brothers, Nicholas nearly shouts when Eden appears out of fucking no where. The sneaky little fucker. For someone with such a loud mouth, he can be deceptively quiet.
“What?” Nicholas demands.
“You two are getting engaged.”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to marry him.”
“Well done stating the obvious, Eden.”
“You’re going to worship the ground he walks on.” Eden jabs one of his bony little fingers into Nicholas’s chest. “You will never, ever hurt him.Ever.”
“I would never,” Nicholas frowns.
“Good. Then I won’t need to kill you.”
Before Nicholas can even begin to formulate a response, Eden is stalking out of the room with heavy steps, his skirt bouncing with every stomp of his Converse. Nicholas isn’t sure he’s ever going to fucking understand Eden, and he’s not sure he wants to. He’ll leave that to Charlie. Speaking of Charlie. The ring box that was sitting on the kitchen island right before he left is noticeably missing.
“Charlie, you fucker,” Nicholas bellows. “Where’s the ring?”
