Page 106 of The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop
As Christmas Day turned to Christmas night, the skies darkened, cold and clear, with no hint of precipitation in the air: not rain or sleet or snow. But, as Ollie and Max stepped outside, shrugging on their coats and giggling like teenagers absconding from school, she decided she was happy to trade snow for the twinkling blanket of stars that greeted them. It was almost too beautiful, almost too many stars to be believable.
‘Wow.’ She stopped on the grass close to the yew tree, her head angled back to take it all in.
‘It’s a good night.’ Max slid his arms around her waist, and rested his head on her shoulder.
‘Just good?’ Ollie asked lightly.
‘Great, at the very least. Epic, possibly. If I say perfect now, though, then I’m leaving no room for improvement, and with you in my life – and after what you said earlier – I have a feeling things are about to get even better.’
Ollie stilled, then turned around in his arms. ‘What do you mean?’
He gazed down at her. ‘I know it was an off-the-cuff remark, and that you might not mean it right now, but I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I really think that Oxo would get on with Henry. He’s quite tolerant – which I know is surprising, given that he’s a cat – and Henry is a laid-back dog. I’m guessing they’d get along famously.’
His words were mischievous, but his expression couldn’t have been more serious.
‘Did you … have you been sneaking champagne when I wasn’t looking?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to mess with the doctors’ advice, and me being sober means you can’t mistake it for drunken enthusiasm when I tell you, Ollie Spencer, that I would love to move in with you – here, at the barn, or at my place, if you’d prefer – if there was any part of you that meant it. You don’t need to say anything now, but—’
‘Yes,’ she said in a rush. ‘Yes please. Please move in with me – you and Oxo. Here, in the barn?’
His eyes were smiling before it reached his lips. ‘OK. I would have picked the barn too, but I didn’t want to assume.’
‘Oh my God!’ Ollie felt almost dizzy with elation. ‘You, me, Henry Tilney and Oxo, all together in the barn. You can come to Liam’s while I finish typing up his memoir, you can nose around his books some more, because I’m sure—’ She stopped abruptly, her breath hitching.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t think that you can’t talk about it. It happened, and it wasn’t great, but lookwhere we are now. We’re here, together.’ He turned them in a slow circle, Ollie taking in the party still going inside, her friends silhouetted in the glass doors, talking and laughing and drinking; then the land surrounding the farm, the shadows encroaching where the lights didn’t reach, the stars glimmering high above them, the scent of the sea in the air.
‘We’re here, together,’ she repeated, those three words, spoken while she was in Max’s arms, grounding her better than any meditation could.
‘It was the biggest possible reminder that life is too short to put off what you really want,’ he said. ‘And I want you, Ollie. I want us to have a life together. If we delayed moving in with each other, what would we be doing it for? You already feel like the person I was always meant to find.’
She leaned into him, her throat thick with emotion. ‘And you’re my home,’ she murmured. ‘The barn is just fixtures and fittings.’
‘We’re agreed then? No time to lose?’
‘Life is too short not to,’ she said.
Max reached out to push a strand of hair away from where it had fallen in front of her eye. ‘I think that—’
His words were swallowed up by loud bangs, and Ollie jumped, startled, until Max turned her gently so she was facing the darkened countryside, lit up by the red and gold spray of a firework charging up into the sky.
‘Who’s doing this?’ she laughed.
‘No idea,’ Max said. ‘They couldn’t wait for New Year’s, clearly.’
‘Someone else seizing the moment.’
‘Maybe we’re starting a trend.’
His arms tightened around her waist, and they watched the display sending jewels and twirls, sparkles and glitter up into the darkness. The short bursts of explosion lit up the sea in the distance, turning it silvery-grey as if it was made of moonlight, and the trees nearby shivered in the breeze.
It was, Ollie thought, a magical Christmas night. She turned and reached up to cup Max’s face, then pulled him down to meet her, so she could kiss all her happiness, her hope for the future, into the man who had given it to her: who had made her see that she could be herself and be loved; who had shown her that she could achieve all she wanted to, and who didn’t hold back. So she didn’t hold back either, instead kissing him with every ounce of love she felt for him.
Soon, cheers and applause joined the bangs and whistles of the firework display, and they broke apart to find everyone inside standing at the glass, unashamedly cheering them on. Ollie couldn’t bring herself to mind, and when Max pulled her against him and continued their kiss with even more passion, she knew he didn’t mind either.
Why hold back?she thought again, and couldn’t for the life of her come up with an answer.
By the time the sky had quietened, Ollie’s ears were numb with cold, and Max’s hands were like ice. They walked back to the front door of the barn and, just as Ollie was about to push it open, Max stopped her.
