“And... are you okay? With what we just did?” Forrest asks me. “Was it okay?”
“I’m really so okay, Forrest,” I assure him. “I might be the okay-est I have ever been.”
“I’m glad.” He pulls me closer so that my head is resting against his body. My fingers trail lazily down his chest.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m more than okay.” There’s a long pause. “I’m happy, Ava. It’s simple and uncomplicated, unexpected happiness. And, I’m also a little sleepy. Maybe we should get some sleep. What do you think? But you have to stay here, with me. No going back to your room.”
“You want to sleep?” I say, sitting up. He raises his eyebrows as he looks at me.
“Why, what else did you have in mind?”
“Well,” I say. “There’s something I’ve been secretly fantasising doing to you, and now seems like a perfect time to try it out.” I press my lips to his chest and kiss him, before running my tongue around each nipple.
“What are you doing to me, woman?” Forrest asks. “Whatever it is, I like it.”
“I’m licking you,” I tell him. “I thought I’d start here and see where I end up.”
“Well, if you insist,” Forrest says with a sigh as he sinks back into the pillows.
We did not sleep again. Not until long after dawn.
Chapter Forty-Nine
I’m sitting on the front steps of the castle with Megan, Artie, and Rani, waiting for Megan’s dad to come and pick her up. I’m buzzing with a delicious kind of tiredness that I’ve never known before. It’s a sort of fizzing and popping kind of exhausted, peppered with flashbacks of moments from last night that quietly thrill me as we sit here on the step, under the summer sky. A secret only I know. Or almost only me, anyway.
I’m not sure how much sleep we got, but I think it was just about an hour before I was woken up by the sound of Artie playing next door, singing to her stuffed animals a made-up song about the life of a Viking. Forrest stirred, rubbing his eyes open, smiling sweetly.
“Hello, you,” he said softly as I climbed out of bed, his hand outstretched. “What are you doing?”
“Daddy?” Artie called from next door. “Me and the teddies are invading Paris today, so we need a big breakfast, K?”
“Okay, love, give me a minute,” Forrest called.
“I thought I’d best get going,” I whispered as I pulled my shirt on, with a shy smile. After all that nudity and scenes of a sexualnature we engaged in last night, I felt suddenly shy and a little bit like we only just met.
“Probably for the best,” Forrest agreed. “See you later...”
“Yeah, sure,” I said as casually as I could and I left, running up the hallway to my room before anyone saw. I went straight over to Cecily and Eliza’s portrait as if somehow it might have been altered by the events of last night. But it was exactly the same, mother and daughter caught in an eternal moment of love. I hoped they were happy together now wherever they were.
Then I took a shower, where I began what I think might be my new hobby for the foreseeable future. And that is obsessively thinking, on a continuous loop ever since, about the last thing Forrest said to me before I left. Hesaid,See you later. But what did hemean?
“I’m not gonna lie,” Megan says, interrupting my train of thought for a second. “I could get used to castle life. It certainly makes a difference from Dad and my place.”
“Oh, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I tell her. “The heating bills are enormous. And people are always coming round.” I nod at a group of day-trippers who are walking across the lawn in shorts and sun hats.
“But the outfits.” Rani sighs. “There aren’t that many settings when you can get away with really beautiful outfits just to sit on some steps.” It’s true that she looks resplendent in a hot pink silk kaftan that billows around her like the sails on a ship. But I know Rani, and I know that she would wear exactly that dress to take some packages to the post office.
“I like living in a castle. I played with a ghost and saw fairies,” Artie tells us.
“Sure you did, kid,” Megan says, patting the top of her mop of dark curls. It seems like Artie doesn’t hear teenage sarcasm, as she takes this as an affirmation of her exploits with a satisfied nod.
“Alex took me out to York for late cocktails last night, after the reception wrapped,” Rani said. “We went to this gorgeous little secret bar, with a rooftop garden that has views of the cathedral, and drank negronis. Then we just strolled around York talking and talking for half the night. It was the loveliest evening. I’m really enjoying this taking-it-slow business.”
“How do you take it slow?” Artie asks. “Did you go bleeeoooaugh like a snail?”
Artie accompanies this description with her impression of a snail.
