Page 150 of For Real

Laurie eases himself up a bit gingerly, rolls over, and then pulls me against his chest. I’m about to protest that I’m fine, I don’t need him to look after me, but the moment his arms enfold me, it’s like I’m trying to climb inside his skin.

“Darling,” he murmurs. “Darling.”

He calls me darling like eighty times and holds me really tight, and I nearly cry again, but thankfully I don’t.

“It was just…really good,” is the best explanation I can give him.

But it doesn’t matter. I know he understands.

* * *

The rest of our holiday kind of gets away from us, and we don’t really do anything except be together, but that’s okay. We talk a bit about going away, but in the end we don’t.

There’s plenty of time for that stuff, and all I want is to be with Laurie in a place we both call home.

That last Sunday, the day before I’m meant to start work, and he’s due to go back, he tells me he’s got a surprise for me. I guess I’ve been pretty love-spoiled over the past couple of weeks, but we deserve this, Laurie and me. He’s sleek with happiness, somehow, like the man I fell in love with lives on the surface now, not hidden deep inside, and it blows my mind to think that’s for me and because of me.

It’s this crystal-bright day, when it feels like winter is cracking like an egg and spring is spilling everywhere.

We get on the Tube to South Kensington, and Laurie still won’t tell me where we’re going, but he’s excitable like a little kid, so I don’t mind. I like him like this. I like all his secrets, innocent and not-so-innocent.

It turns out he’s taking me to the Chelsea Physic Garden, which wasn’t one of Granddad’s places, though maybe it should have been because I learn it’s the oldest botanical garden in London, founded way back when for trainee apothecaries.

It’s closed during winter, but it’s open on special occasions, and this is one of them.

Laurie says it’s called a Snowdrop Day.

And I can see why. The woods are so thick with tiny white flowers that it genuinely looks like snowdrifts. I’ve never seen so many, and they shine in the fresh-made sun.

I’ve cried a lot recently, mainly for myself, but this is the first time I’ve really cried for Granddad.

We sit under a tree, and Laurie holds me, and it’s not so grim. Because, at last, all the bad stuff—the fear and the anger and the pain and the guilt—is gone, and this is just grief stripped of everything but love. And I’m okay to cry for love.

I really am.

When I’m out of tears, I kiss Laurie and thank him, and I tell him how in love with him I am.

“I love you too,” he says, so easily it’s hard to believe he used to freak out at the very idea of it. “You make me very happy.”

I smile up at him. I’m so proud that I can do this. That I can make a man like Laurence Dalziel happy. “I intend to do it for a long time.”

I guess that’s kind of the wrong thing to say because he frowns. “Toby, I don’t have…expectations.”

“Oh man, don’t start that crap again. Not in the middle of our totally romantic day, which I’ve already cried in.”

He colours a bit and laughs, but the shadow is still in his eyes. “I just mean…Toby, you’re nineteen, I’m thirty-seven. We fit each other now, but the time might come when we don’t. When you’re thirty, I’ll be nearly fifty.” I’m about to cut him down with a scornful “So?” because, honestly, I don’t want to love anyone except Laurie, but he goes on before I have a chance. “Our perceptions of time and distance aren’t consistent. Sometimes the gap between us will seem nothing, sometimes it’ll seem enormous. The day might come when we don’t know how to bridge it.”

Sometimes, for a clever man who’s supposed to be older and wiser than me, he’s kind of a doofus. “That’s just relationships, Laurie. They aren’t consistent either. You found a gap you couldn’t bridge with Robert, and that had nothing to do with what age you were.”

“I suppose, but—”

“Maybe the day will come when you cheat on me or—”

“I will never cheat on you.”

“Okay, okay.” I scramble to my feet and brush the soil off my arse. “Maybe the day will come when you go off my lemon meringue pie or decide my feet smell or find my insecurities annoying instead of adorable. Point is…let’s worry about it when it happens.”

He smiles up at me, squinting through the sun dapple. “I can’t imagine any of those days.”

“Neither can I, so let’s just be in love today.”

“All right.” He rises from the ground, with all that grace and power he doesn’t hesitate to lay at my feet for the asking.

Everywhere around us the world is green and white and gold and waiting.

I hold out my hand, and he takes it, and we walk together into the spring.