Page 177 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
My chest felt hollow, like someone had scooped out everything good and left me empty. Hot tears prickled my eyelids—
“Rory, Christ, open your eyes. I’m not breaking up with you!” Teddy practically shouted. I opened my eyes to see deep concern etched across his face.
“Then what’s going on?!”
Teddy’s hand disappeared into his jacket pocket, fingers fumbling with something.
“I was going to do this later, but then I couldn’t wait.”
He pulled out a tiny box. Rectangular. Thin.
My brain short-circuited.
Oh. My. God.
A tiny, ridiculous part of me went absolutely mental. Because Ihadoverheard Teddy’s Ma at Sunday lunch last week, insisting she was goingto give Teddy his father’s wedding ring. “It’s been sitting in my jewellery box for almost two decades, Theodore,” she’d said, whilst I was in the other room. “Your father would have wanted you to have it. Would have wanted you touseit.”
But this box was rectangular. And thin. Not ring-shaped at all.
Also, that would be completely bonkers, wouldn’t it?Teddy proposing after three months? That was mental. Completely mad.
But what if—
“It’s not a ring,” Teddy said through barely concealed laughter. “And please, if I ever propose to you outside a dingy pub, say no.”
My hands still trembled as I took the box. The velvet was soft under my fingertips, worn smooth. I flicked the lid open.
A silver key gleamed against black silk lining. A house key. A key for a house.
I blinked at it, my brain struggling to catch up.
“I want you to move in with me.”
The words knocked me sideways. I stared at the key, then up at Teddy’s face, then back at the key. The metal caught the late afternoon sun, throwing tiny sparkles of light across my palm.
Move in. With Teddy. To his gorgeously tidy, spacious flat with its dozen houseplants that were somehow all alive and flourishing. His spotlessly clean kitchen with the spice rack organised A to Z. His bookshelves arranged by genre and author. His bathroom where the towels were always folded properly and the toilet roll never ran out.
“But it’s only been three months,” I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them.
Teddy’s face flickered—was that disappointment? My chest tightened in response.
Three months.I remembered being so desperate to move in with Dev, forcing myself to wait until nine months to ask so it seemed more acceptable. More normal.
“I know,” Teddy said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “But it physically hurts me to be away fromyou, baby.”
The air punched from my chest. Everything went wobbly—my knees, my vision, the entire bloody world. Dizzy with joy didn’t even begin to cover it. I felt like I might float away if Teddy wasn’t standing right there, anchoring me to the ground.
“I was trying not to stay over too much in case I was annoying you,” I managed to get out, thinking about all those nights back in my own bed. Lying there feeling sad and incomplete, staring at the ceiling for hours, struggling to fall asleep without Teddy’s steady breathing beside me.
Teddy tutted, shaking his head. “If you wanted to, you could have stayed over every single night. But anyway, let’s do it. Move in properly. From tonight.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Teddy’s hand came up, fingertips brushing along my jaw like he was memorising the shape of it. Then his fingers found the hoops in my ear, turning them slowly, absently, like he needed something to fidget with. “As long as Freddy continues to live at Killigrew Street. I don’t want to have to install a lock on my fridge.”
I pouted at him. “I can’t control where Freddy goes. If he happens to follow me home one time…”
“Rory.”
