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"Please?" he asked, more up to the trees that towered over us than to me.
"Are you hoping for a big affair?" I wondered.
To my immediate relief, Brandon shook his head. The movement caused the hair over his forehead to flop around. He really needed it cut.
"Not unless you want it," he said. "Miranda and I had that kind of wedding. It was like a charity event: full of strangers and stiff shirts."
He slung an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to him while he talked. I laid my head on his shoulder, content to bask in the sunlight.
"That was the whole life I had with Miranda," he continued as he played with the ends of my ponytail. "It made sense we would have that kind of thing. But I felt like a stranger at my own wedding. I knew maybe ten people there out of five hundred. We were all dressed like penguins, and the caterers served beef tartar and goose liver."
He wrinkled his long nose at the memory. I had to laugh. Brandon was more of a meat and potatoes kind of guy, albeit he now paid for the best cuts of meat and the fluffiest potatoes.
He looked at me. "Is that what you want, Red? I wouldn't have pegged you for a big society wedding, but if you want it––"
"I do not," I said emphatically. "If it were up to me, we'd call the Justice of the Peace and be done with it."
Brandon snorted. "You make it sound like we're doing your taxes."
I nudged him in the ribs. He braced my head against him for a second with a brief kiss in my hair, then let me go.
"I don't mean it like that," I said. "Just...I'm not really the type for much spectacle, you know?"
"You wouldn't want your family and friends to be there? Bubbe and your dad? Jane and Eric?"
I considered for a moment. "Yes, I'd want them to be there, even though they might kill each other. Annabelle and Christoph too, although that means Janette would probably have to come. And Bubbe would probably fry me for breakfast if she didn't get to help me pick out a wedding dress." I turned to Brandon, who was chuckling. "But that's it. My circle of people is...small. What about you?"
Brandon cocked his head, thinking. "Ray, Susan. Kieran and Pushpa. Mark. Cory, I guess. Probably Harvey, David, and Ana too."
I grinned. "You might be the only billionaire in the world who would put his trainer, driver, and housekeeper on the shortlist for his wedding."
Brandon snorted. "Miranda would have hated it. She never liked it when I 'fraternized with the help'." He rolled his eyes. "But I see them more than almost anyone."
It struck me, not for the first time, how very lonely Brandon's life had become as he'd become more successful. Most of the people Kieran had rounded up for his birthday hadn't heard from him in years. Most of his friends, it seemed, had either been made through Miranda, or were people from his old neighborhood whom he'd lost touch with over the years. He still supported his friends from Dorchester financially, the ones who had gone to jail when Brandon had managed to go free. But now, he didn't seek much social interaction, content just to be on his own, around people he trusted.
And yet, looking at him, it was clear just how much it meant to him that we would stand up in front of that short list of confidantes. I wondered too, if he needed to hear it from me: hear me take him as mine, pronounce myself his, in front of the small circle of people that the two of us would do anything for.
Without hesitating, I crawled into his lap so my knees straddled him on the bench. My arms fell easily over his broad shoulders, and his hands slid up my thighs naturally, palming my ass briefly under the hem of my shorts before encircling my waist more innocently.
"I just need you," I said to him solemnly, keeping my green eyes wide so he could see the truth in what I said. "It's always been you, from the very beginning."
Brandon raised a dark blond brow, and his thumbs stroked my hipbones through my shorts. "Has it? You were running pretty hard there for a while, Red. Sometimes I wonder if you'll ever really stop."
I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. When I tried to pull back, he brought a hand to the back of my head, keeping me there while he took his fill. I didn't argue. I never stopped wanting him either.
"Mmmm," he hummed as he finally let me go.
After I caught my breath again, I smiled. Then I cupped his face, stroking my thumbs over the sharp lines of his cheekbones. Sometimes his beauty really did take my breath away.
"I'm all yours," I said softly, touching my nose to his. "Now I'm staying put. For always."
Brandon hummed again, low and content, and pulled me down so I was lying on his shoulder. He wanted me––that much was obvious through his shorts. But for now (and perhaps because we were sitting in a place that could be discovered at any point by other hikers), it seemed he needed a different kind of comfort. His fingers threaded into my hair at the base of my skull, while his other hand wrapped tightly around my waist, keeping me flush against his big body.
"Always?" he asked again.
I smiled into his shoulder. "Always."
Then I sat up again. "What about at the Cape?" I suggested. "We could have a small ceremony on the lawn, or maybe in the grove by the tire swing."
