Always Alchemy: The Ever After Book (Alchemy #6)

6. Clear and Bright and Love-Filled

6

CLEAR AND brIGHT AND LOVE-FILLED

MAX

H orse chestnuts in flower and the man of my dreams strolling next to me.

The presence of our beautiful—and currently absent—girlfriend aside, it’s hard to imagine how one could top this.

The Long Walk at Windsor Castle feels like a different world from London. Even the rarified part of London in which we live, in our brand new, glorious Holland Park villa, can be intense. Here we have sky and space and history, the blue skies and fluffy white clouds as farcically pretty as the castle itself, with its splendid Norman turrets.

I have a picnic basket in one hand and my boyfriend’s hand in the other. We get a few looks as we saunter away from the castle and towards the statue of the copper horse on its hill, but none of them feel ill-meant. Idly curious, more like.

As if I give a flying fuck.

It’s only Darcy’s second Saturday of teaching at her brand-new dance studio. These Saturday morning commitments are a bit of a shame, given my weekdays are intense, but this weekend I have cause to give thanks for her absence.

Because I have a very serious question to put to Dex, and it’s one I cannot ask in Darcy’s presence.

We stop just shy of the copper statue of a mounted King George III. I set down my picnic basket—an old Fortnum’s hamper—and we drop to the grass. It’s mild, if not warm, and the grass is dry.

‘Being out here makes me want a dog,’ Dex muses idly.

I let my gaze linger on him, enjoying the play of sunlight on his face. ‘Couldn’t agree more. What kind of dog do you see yourself with?’

He shrugs. ‘Something big and lean. Athletic. A Vizsla, or a Weimaraner, maybe. I’d like a dog I can really play with.’

‘Me too.’ I brace my weight on one hand and rifle in the picnic hamper. ‘You know Darcy’ll want something tiny and ridiculous, like one of those teacup dogs.’

‘Yeah.’ He laughs. ‘Unfortunately for her, it’s two against one.’

It’s not until I’ve popped a bottle of chilled champagne for us that I pause to consider my opening line. The truth is, I still haven’t decided how to do it.

It’s tricky, proposing to my boyfriend that we propose to our girlfriend. I want this moment to count. I want it to feel special, not tactical. I considered proposing to both of them at once, but some old-fashioned part of me was worried that Dex might resent my depriving him of the opportunity to get down on one knee in front of the woman he loves.

After all, this is a man who’s spent most of his adult life believing he’s destined to settle down with a woman, and the truth is that his relationship with Darcy is the most traditional—the only traditional—part of the amorous dynamic in which he’s found himself. I won’t rob him of a tradition that we may feel inclined to scoff at but which is undoubtedly magical—with the right person, at least.

Nor will I rob our beautiful, attention-loving girlfriend of the opportunity to have two men kneel at her feet and beg her to spend the rest of her life with them.

As we take our first sip of cold champagne, I cast my mind back to that first time at his old flat in the City. To the first time I fucked him, and the first time I told him how deeply I’d felt since I first met him.

I led with my heart that night.

That’s the thing with Dex and Darcy. They make leading with one’s heart feel as safe as it is inevitable.

‘I want you to have all the dogs you want,’ I tell him now, and the emotion choking my voice has him looking up sharply from his drink. ‘I want you to have every fucking thing you want, for the rest of your life—as long as I can be a part of it.’

His eyebrows rise. ‘You okay, hon?’

I exhale sharply through my nose and take his free hand. ‘I will be in a second, when I’ve said what I need to say.’ Once he’s holding my gaze and I’m staring into the clear, gold-green wells of his eyes, the words come more easily. Because I’m incapable of looking at this man and not speaking my truth, not knowing it in my heart.

‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you and Darcy,’ I say. ‘I know this relationship is still new and precious, but I know you both with the most ancient part of my soul. You’re already woven into my DNA. You’re part of my very being and, being the man I am, I want to make that as official as I possibly can. I want us bound so tightly together, the three of us, that nobody can ever prise us apart. What do you say?’

His face is open and perfect, but it’s shell-shocked. ‘You’re asking—’ he starts, and I hasten to spell it out for him beyond any doubt, the words tumbling out as I articulate them.

‘I want to marry you. I want to marry Darcy. I want to never let you go, I want you to promise me you’ll never let me go, and—I want you and I to propose to her together in the most glorious, romantic, ridiculous way we can possibly concoct between the two of us.’

I stop, breathing heavily and taking in the angelic, flawless creature who holds the weight of my entire life’s happiness and purpose in those slim hands of his.

The eyes that have captivated me since I very first saw him flutter closed for a second. ‘Oh my God,’ he moans. ‘Oh my God. Yes please. ’

I’m crouching up on my knees before he even finishes speaking, setting down my plastic champagne flute so I can hook a hand around the back of his neck and pull his face to mine. ‘I want to raise dogs with you,’ I tell him against his lips. ‘I want to raise kids with you, I want you and I to turn poor Darcy into a fucking baby factory. I want—now that we’ve got our dream home, I want to fill it…’

He kisses me then, stroking my lips with his and letting me feed him my dreams so he can take them, devour them. I’m unleashed, the tentative fantasies I’ve been allowing myself to cultivate in the quietest, most hopeful recesses of my heart threatening to overwhelm me. I want them to take seed; I want him to hear and to know just how beautiful it can be between the three of us.

I know, because I’ve seen our future, clear and bright and love-filled, and it takes my breath away.

DEX

I’m lying in long grass, my head in the crook of Max’s arm as he gazes down at me. It’s too early in the year for us to be sprawled on the earth like this, but I’m barely registering my cold arse. How could I, when his head is backlit against the April sun and he’s gazing at me as if I’m almost too precious to be real?

My relationship with Darcy and Max has progressed in a straight line. When the stakes are as high as they were for me, you don’t mess around. Once I pulled my finger out of my arse and accepted my feelings, once I went public to my dad and to the world at large and committed to this love of ours, there was no dallying. No cold feet or question marks.

The three of us have been all in.

I’ve thought about the future, obviously. Fantasised about it, even. We’ve upgraded our living space from Max’s spacious but bland flat to a more meaningful home that fits us better, that feels more permanent. I handed in my notice at Loeb last month to move to Cerulean, the Alchemy founders’ small hedge fund, and free up more time for my relationship. Max and I have funded Darcy’s dance studio. If all of that’s not commitment, I don’t know what is.

Still.

Marriage is an institution I thought I’d walked away from when I set down this path. I’m not naive enough to think for a moment that the three of us can have a legally binding marriage in this country, but I’ve found to my surprise that Max’s proposal carries with it every ounce of the magic and gravitas and innate hope that I’ve always assumed any more traditional marriage proposal would carry.

Far more, to be honest, because marriage has long been something I assumed I’d have to do, just as settling down has.

One doesn’t settle down with Max and Darcy. One shows up. One commits. One buckles the fuck up and laughingly, gleefully, surrenders to what will undoubtedly be the ride of a lifetime.

I never thought I’d find a single person on this planet about whom I felt strongly enough to marry.

I certainly never thought I’d find two.

And I can say, without the slightest hesitation, that until five months ago, I never thought I’d be courageous and unapologetic and open-hearted enough to say yes to a relationship that I know will make my heart sing for decades and decades, throughout this lifetime and into the next.

Max is staring at me as he often does, all sweet intensity and insane longing and hopeless, hopeless adoration. All this man has done since we’ve met is offer one hundred percent of himself to me. All he’s done is give me absolutely everything I’ve wanted and many, many things I never dared to dream of.

Some day soon, probably this year, he will be my husband , and I will be his, and we will hopefully have a sweet, sexy, lighthearted wife to weave her magic and share our joy and keep us on our toes.

I gaze up at him from the crook of his arm and brush my fingers over his temple. ‘How should we propose, do you think? God knows, she’ll want a fucking enormous diamond.’