He pulled my hands up to his chest and held them tightly against his body. I glanced behind me quickly. This massive public show was not how I’d imagined this going down. I’d imagined something far smaller, maybe just the two of us in bed, whispering to each other. Not this. But here we were. I looked back at him. He was smiling at me in a way that completely and utterly took my breath away.
“Frankie . . .” he started.
“Mark?” I said encouragingly.
“I think I might . . .” He paused and looked at me for a while.
“You think you might, what . . .?” I asked, leaning in a little.
“Well, that’s wrong. What I meant to say was that IknowI might . . .”
“Know you might, what?” I asked.
He chuckled now. Low and coy and sweet. I found myself chuckling back, feeling just as coy as he was looking right now.
“Truly, madly . . .” he said, and then paused, biting his bottom lip as if he was about to laugh a little, his cheeks had gone a soft shade of pink.
“Like me?” I asked.
He nodded. And then, suddenly, he shook his head. My heart instantly dropped.
“What?” I asked, my voice shaking a bit.
“No. I think I might truly, madly . . .love you.” His face flushed a bright shade of red as he said it and my heart thumped in my chest.
“Seriously?” I asked, giggling stupidly. I mean, this was all so completely cheesy but also amazing and cute as hell. And I was swooning so much, that I thought I might fall over. “You do?” I asked again.
He nodded at me and then I found myself nodding back at him. Our heads got closer and closer as the nodding intensified.
“I . . . I . . . love you too.” The words got stuck in my throat as happy tears welled up in my eyes and he pulled me into a kiss.
CHAPTER 73
After Mark’s and my very public declaration, things carried on as normal. The people with the phones were eventually ushered away by the police that arrived after ASO had called them. Kyle was amongst those ushered away; the last time I laid eyes on him he looked like he was recording a very tearful vlog for all his followers, no doubt about me. Even though they were gone, I was pretty sure that Mark was trending now and millions of people around the world had just seen that video. But he didn’t seem to care. And no one else in town seemed to care that much either. There was an initial rush of people who couldn’t believe it was him, but soon the rush was over and everyone went back very quickly to treating him as Mark the guy from the video store. No one cared that our festival had been disturbed either, because as soon as all the phones left, the town carried on as normal.
Some people had jumped in the spring as tradition would have it. Mark and Faizel were playing some songs, Zack had roasted some lamb on the spit and the whole town was eating and drinking together. I’d had to fill my sister in on everything that had happened to me in the last few weeks, finding it hard to believe how much had changed in such a short time. The party went late into the night, and by the time it was over, I was well and truly spent. The day had been long and possibly one of the best of my life. I had loosened my dress, pulled the top half down and was wearing a small T-shirt as Mark, Jess and I made the walk back to where she’d parked her car. People were waving goodbye to me and calling me by my name now, as if I’d always been part of this town.
“This place is amazing,” my sister said as we walked up the road. “I can’t believe you found it.”
“I’m glad she did,” Mark said, and Jess blushed. She was still blushing every time Mark said anything to her; she too had had many Step To That posters on her wall. Although she had preferred Shane “the goofy one.”
“She’ll stop that blushing soon,” I chuckled at Mark. “I hope so anyway.”
“Or I won’t,” she said, holding her cheeks. “Which would be totally embarrassing.”
She put her arm around me as we headed towards her car.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us now?” I asked, as we reached her big suburban SUV.
She shook her head and then yawned. “I think I’ll go check into the hotel. Thanks for booking me in, by the way,” she said to Mark, who had asked Logan to organize a room with Selma earlier.
He shook his head. “No worries,” he said.
“I need a bath and I need to crash because I’ve been driving all day and I’m exhausted.”
“I’ll come over for breakfast in the morning,” I said to her. She looked at me sideways. “Oh, I eat breakfast now. It’s my new thing,” I joked.
“You seem to have a lot of new things now.” She reached out and ran her hand through my brown hair. “I love it, by the way,” she said.
