Page 148 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

Only Rory makes me feel like my very existence matters.

Only with Rory is his absence a physical wound, his touch a physical craving. I want him to be with me always, in school and out of it. He’s my obsession, my madness, made raw.

With that same ghost of a smirk, Rory takes my hand into his and sinks to his knee on the plush hotel carpet.

I blink at him in astonishment, my hand full of a sudden clammy numbness. My ears begin to ring — thick-shelled bells, I think distantly — only clearing when Rory begins to speak.

“I’m not one for romanticizing,” Rory begins gruffly, “but this past year, this summer especially, I find I can no longer help myself. You’ve been my shadow, my compass, the star that navigates me whenever I lose myself. Whenever I believe myself adrift, you’ve steered me back safely. I want you in my life always. I want this summer to never end and I want you to stay by my side forever. I love you, little saint.Visne mihi nubere?”

He seems to be expecting some kind of response. I stare at him, wondering if my ears have failed over my rapidly thundering heartbeat. “Sorry,” I croak. “I didn’t catch that last part.”

“Visne mihi nubere?” A beat, and then a flicker at the corner of his lips as Rory translates, “Will you marry me?”

Heat sears down me from mouth to belly, as though I’ve swallowed Rory’s words like a physical object — a glowing stick, a sword of fire.

I give it consideration — not of being a wife, which sounds somehow old and old-fashioned, but of having a husband, which calls to me in a way I never knew until this moment. To have Rory as mine, to be legally bonded to Rory — my future husband. It’s grown-up and strange, a thoroughly traditional expression of faith, a tie usually nurtured and discussed over the years…

And yet… Wives and husbands. Women and men. Old, ageless realities that have run the world, that Rory is requesting we join. Legions of partnerships, of couples in love from youth until their dying days, celebrating anniversaries beginning with paper, passing through gemstones and pinnacling with diamond. To become one of them. To be part of that loving, undying monogamous march, hand in hand with twinned wedding rings shining. To accept that most dedicated representation of the purest, soul-mated, faithful love. To be married. To be with another.

To make that decision tonight.

“Yes,” I whisper through barely parted lips, and yet the affirmation is as momentous as crying out my release on a tempestuous, rain-lashed mountaintop. “Yes.”

Below me, Rory’s face splits into a broad, boyish grin. It’s a thing of pure joy, a beacon, a radiance that sings in harmony with my soul.

In the background, there’s stunned applause from Finlay. In a tone of surprise, he remarks, “Sassenach, ye must gie him the most legendary fuckin’ blowjobs if this is whit happens after.”

I laugh and I don’t know why, but my spirit is as buoyed as though it dances upon a helium cloud. Danny joins in the applause, like the happiness currently rocking through the room compels him to. Luke just stares at us blankly, like he doesn’t know what’s happening anymore.

Rory stands to his feet, his hand tugging at my waist. My fingers twine over the soft cotton of his dark shirt and through the fair silk of his hair. Our bodies are pressed flush against each other when he pauses. I breathe him in: of the sharp clean scent of neat alcohol and freshly laundered shirts, of fresh pine and unshakable Scottish mountain air.

He watches me carefully before lowering his mouth, a teasing hairsbreadth from mine. I’m close enough to observe the changeable color of his irises. As he looks at me, the gray of his eyes pales beyond silver and into sleety whiteness. It’s like peering through the fog and seeing, with clarity, an iced-over loch.

Rory kisses me with a sense of urgency. His lips come upon mine like a claim, like an act of swift and brutal possession, the same way he tore out my heart and stole it from me, turned it against me and my better judgment.My future husband. His tongue is warm like the arms wrapped around me, his lips soft like the silk of the pillows. He groans into my mouth as he gathers me close, feasting on me in a pose like a painting he once showed me at the National Galleries — of a woman and a man, decorated in chipped gold leaf and rainbows, entwined in a passionate lover’s embrace.

Each brush of Rory’s tongue travels straight to my clit, both directly connected. I moan into his mouth, ragged and gone, clinging onto him by the length of hair squeezed between my fingers.

He breaks away from a moment to mutter roughly, “Hold tight.” I don’t have time to ask what Rory means before I’m hoisted into the air, legs dangling from the edge of his arms. He’s carrying me, I realize dizzily, like I’m already his bride, like we’ve already been married, that the proposal was proof enough of our everlasting love and that the consummation can now begin.

I’m laid gently down on top of the bed, which feels as heavenly as clouds beneath my all-night dancing body. Rory strokes the sides of my face, tracing the outline of my lips in open fascination. I pull his finger past my lips and into my mouth, pinning him in place with my teeth. Rory’s eyes flash with a kind of challenge, and the fascination on his face only grows.

“Luke,” Rory commands sharply, not once looking away from me, “get over here.”

Footsteps approach, slow and cautious. He gazes between Rory and me like he doesn’t know what he’s doing there, like there’s something painful about the way I’m still suckling on Rory’s extended finger.

Eventually, Rory turns around. From my angle, all I see that changes in his expression is the lazy stretch of his smirk. He says nothing to Luke but turns back to me and whispers in a voice that must be audible to everyone in the room, “Cheer the fucker up, saint.”

He withdraws his finger from my lips, as though for propriety’s sake, before standing up and gesturing at the vacated space to Luke. When Luke’s brows descend at him, puzzled, Rory slaps his fellow chief on the back and says, “I want to watch you together. Consider this your engagement gift to me.”

Breath catches in my throat, and I stare up at Rory with a surprised laugh.

“I knew it,” I whisper, everything clicking into place at once. His coyness over the strange non-exclusivity that occurs one-way, from my direction only. The kisses I share freely with the chiefs and now Danny, despite Rory’s clear stakes of ownership.

He gets off on this.

He gets off on it just as much as I do.

“I knew this turned you on.”

---