Page 4 of Cherry Moon

Honestly, these things took time to plan. We wanted it to be perfect, and rushing things would have been too much of a ball ache. Declaring our love in front of our nearest and dearest meant a lot to us, so finding the perfect day mattered.

As nervous as I was about everything, I couldn’t wait to exchange rings and sign the marriage register, officially belonging to Gabriel Dawson in every sense. Not that I didn’t already, because he had all of me. I just loved the idea of it being there in ink, the ring shining on my finger.

Didn’t stop my nerves being put through a shredder. What if we were attacked? Strange things did go down in those seven days. With the air being rich with magic, there’d been reports of some weird happenings. Warlocks and witches tripped out on the power, some spells going awry. Like the witch in Paris who made the umbrellas come to life and sing showtunes all week.

I mean, no thanks. I didn’t want my cushions getting up to wail the songs of Annie at me.

Goodbye to the cushions for sure.

And what if I fucked up the cake—a low possibility, but not out of the realms.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the wedding cake I’d be baking. A job I’d almost been banned from undertaking. G didn’t agree at first, thinking about me and the pressure it might put on me. Said I should kick back and let someone else do it.

Bless him. As if I’d let anyone else do it. I’d be their worst nightmare, overseeing everything, a proper backseat driver meddling away. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.

I mean, there’d been a few nights I’d woken up with the cold sweats, all sorts of baking disaster scenarios rolling through my mind.

Dry sponge.

Dodgy icing.

Soggy bottoms.

Lopsided tiers.

Collapse! Collapse! Collapse!

I put my foot down, winning the argument with the deal that G got to choose the type of cake. After lots of negotiation, and me giving him the best head of his life on the bedroom floor, he relented and chose my cherry bakewell cake—a spongy play on the famous tart.

We were defo living in cherrylicious times, eh?

In five days, I’d be making the cake.

Bring it on.

Done with gazing at the sun-drenched hills, I covered the cupcakes and dumped myself on our blue living room sofa to, well, stare at the outside again. Why not? It was such a lovely September morning, so why not admire the shit out of it for a bit?

A gentle breeze blew through the room, keeping the temperature nice and mild. Unlike last week’s mega-hot heatwave, which felt like the country was trapped in a chili pepper’s arsehole—if chili peppers had arseholes. By the tenshi! I’d been sweating in crevices I never knew existed!

Birds sang, some landing in the birdbath up on the elevated grassy section of the back garden.

I smiled, admiring the rainbow spread of flowers in the pots in the lower patioed section directly outside the doors, and the beds along the hedges at the far end of the elevated grassy area, backing onto the hills and meadows beyond.

G worked so hard on all three of our gardens, turning them into floral utopias. Despite the small cottage, the land was pretty vast, making this property the bigger of the two.

Each garden was sectioned off by hedges. What we called the west garden was basically our front garden, the central one was at the back of the house, and the east garden was home to our training area. I kept up with my fitness and combat training in that glass box with tinted windows.

My honey bunny loved to garden, getting seriously passionate about it last year on his thirtieth birthday. I wasn’t quite there with him in the green fingered department yet, but I helped out where I could.

What better place to get married than here?

The central garden was more than big enough to accommodate our wedding gazebo and the aisle and altar section we’d be erecting beside our cherry tree.

It better not rain!

We’d turned this cottage into a paradise, as well as the smaller, second property we owned in North Wales. Our pockets of joy, havens away from the hustle and bustle of the world. I couldn’t ever imagine living anywhere else again, especially not London. Man, those days were done, well in the past. My life as a city boy was left in the dust.

Having been born in Tokyo, raised in London, city-living was in my blood. And I guess a small part of me did miss it. But nope. I wasn’t going back. I just couldn’t live that life again. We got by without ever needing to be in the rat race again.