Magz: Can you hear anything?

Cherry looked warily towards the living room door. Her father’s study was just down the hall. Certainly close enough to hear him cussing Ruben out. And yet…

Cherry: Nothing. Quiet as a mouse.

Magz: What’s mum doing?

Petra Neita was sitting in the corner of the living room on her favourite sofa, crocheting. What she was crocheting, Cherry had no idea, but the fact that she was doing it at all seemed… vaguely ominous.

Cherry: She’s crocheting

Magz: Since when does mum crochet?

Cherry: Apparently Ms Jeanne from next door has started a club. They all choose something to crochet and spend a month putting it together. And then they go to Ms Jeanne’s house and get wasted and try on each other’s shitty hats. Or something.

Magz: Okay, but is she talking to you?

Cherry: No. She’s crocheting.

Magz: I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Cherry wasn’t either. She’d never brought a boy home. Her sister had never brought a girl home. They had no point of reference for this sort of thing.

Magz: I hope dad doesn’t bite his head off.

Magz: But, all things considered, I think he might.

Because the video they’d recorded in icy terror had turned into a scandal that shook the world—or at least most of western Europe. When the recording of Ruben’s speech and Harald’s guilt reached her parent’s living room via BBC news, Cherry had received a rather concerned phone call from dear old Mum and Dad.

If concerned meant suspicious, furious, and demanding an explanation.

So she’d come clean. About everything. It had just come pouring out, really.

But that was—what, three months ago, now? Things had settled down a little since then.

Ruben was learning to cope with the media speculation, along with the lasting effects of his upbringing. And this time, he was doing so with professional help. Apparently he, Ella and Lydia had made a pact: if they talked to someone, he would too.

Cherry thought it was going rather well.

Cherry herself had spent the past months organising Hans and Demi’s upcoming wedding, and that was going well too. Although, Demi was being very uncooperative about the dress. What she had against silk trains, Cherry would never know.

And, in between all that, Cherry had made regular visits home. Just to reassure her parents that she was A-okay and not… you know, trapped in a false engagement with a foreign prince to pay for her sister’s degree, or anything like that.

But this was the first time Ruben had joined her on one of those visits. Not that he hadn’t wanted to come. Only, after the things her father had said about him over the phone, Cherry was slightly hesitant to put them in a room together.

Magz: Where are you? What’s happening? Did dad kill your boyfriend? Cuz if so RIP, he was cute or whateva

Cherry: Has anyone ever told you that you’re really annoying?

Magz: You, every day since my birth. Jealousy is a disease, sis.

Cherry was hunting down the appropriate emojis for her response when her mother spoke over the soft hum of the TV.

“So,” Petra said, her eyes still on her crochet hook. “That’s your gentleman friend, then?”

This was Petra’s first mention of Ruben since he’d arrived at the house with Cherry almost an hour before. Cherry took the odd timing in stride. Her mother liked to unnerve people.

“Yes. That’s him.” She swiped her palms against the front of her jeans. They felt suddenly clammy.

“Mm.” Petra said. She imbued that single syllable with a wealth of meaning that Cherry could not begin to decipher, but was slightly worried by. “He sort out him family problem?”

“Yes,” Cherry said, for what felt like the thousandth time. “He and his family have been granted indefinite leave to remain.”

Petra looked over the top of her silver reading glasses. “His poor sister all good?”

Cherry didn’t bother to say that Lydia was Ruben’s sister-in-law, or that soon she wouldn’t even be that, once her divorce went through. It didn’t seem pertinent. “Yes. She’s doing quite well. So are the children.”

Petra nodded, her lips pursed. She had dimples rather like Cherry’s, but they were no indication of good will.

“Mum, could you stop being all mysterious and just tell me if you like him or not?”

Petra looked up at her daughter in apparent surprise. “Why wouldn’t I like him?”

“Um…” Cherry floundered. “I don’t know. You weren’t very happy when you found out about… The engagement.”

“The fake engagement,” Petra corrected with a sniff. “He isn’t my own blood who lied to me and disappeared out the country without warning! Why wouldn’t I like him?”

Cherry sighed. “Would you like me to apologise again?”

Petra snipped off the end of her yarn. “It couldn’t hurt, Cherry Pop. Keep going ’til I tell you to stop.” She flicked her gaze over to her daughter, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “And come over here. Sit by me. I want another look at that ring.”

Just as Cherry settled down beside her mother, the door to the study finally opened.

It took her a moment to realise that the voices floating down the hall were raised in friendly exuberance rather than disagreement. Cherry pressed a hand to her chest and breathed out a sigh of relief.

“We must cycle. Do you cycle, Ruben?”

“Not really, Sir, but I can. I’d like that.”

“Excellent, excellent. I cycle every morning. Good for my blood pressure, doctor says.” As always, David Neita’s voice entered the room before he did.

Ruben stepped in first, meeting Cherry’s eyes with a grin. She knew by the look on his face that things had gone well.

Then she looked at her dad’s face and realised things had gone really well. As soft-hearted as he was on the inside, his expression tended to hover somewhere between vague displeasure and pained annoyance, unless he was in an extremely good mood.

Right now, he was looking positively joyful. What on earth had Ruben said to him?

Petra set her crocheting aside and clapped her hands. “Well! Now you two are done, I’ll set the table. Come, Cherry, pour the drinks for me.”

“Coming.” Before she followed her mother into the kitchen, Cherry pulled out her phone and replied to Maggie.

Cherry: All good. Dad seems to like him???

Magz: This one’s a real prince charming ;-)

* * *

Ruben was no stranger to high-pressure situations, but meeting Cherry’s parents had taken at least five years off his life.

Still, it was over now. And nothing had gone wrong. In fact, he thought, as he slid into the driver’s seat of his new BMW, things had gone pretty damn right.

Cherry was in the passenger seat, fussing with her hair in the visor mirror. It was late, but there was still some light in the sky. Enough to cast shadows over the soft planes of her face, the curves of her lips, her cheeks.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

She turned to face him with a smile. Her lips were bubblegum pink. He’d spent the whole day wanting to find out if she tasted as good as she looked.

But he wasn’t about to give in to that temptation. Not now. He had something important to say, and if he didn’t get the words out while he was still on a high, who knew when he’d find the courage.

“You’re quite pretty yourself,” she said. “You clean up well, Mr. Ambjørn.”

He’d never get tired of hearing that name. It really was his now, and it suited him better than his title ever had. Especially because it was who he’d been when they’d first met.

Or who he was trying to be. It had taken Cherry for him to finally become that man. A man who was truly free.

He took her hand in his. Her left hand, where his mother’s ring gleamed on her fourth finger. Neither of them had mentioned it over the last few months, in the chaos of adjusting to a new life, weathering the media attention. But every morning, when they woke up in Cherry’s flat holding hands, he felt the stones pressing against his fingers.

“When I gave you this,” he said, “I was in love with you.” He brought her hand up to his lips, kissed it softly. “I’d never been in love before. I thought the way I felt then was impossible to beat. That my heart couldn’t bear anything more intense. But I was wrong.

“Every day I spend with you, my love grows. I go to sleep thinking I can’t possibly need you more than I do in that moment. But every morning, without fail, I wake up and see you and fall all over again, harder every time. I love it. I love you. And I never want to be without you, Cherry. Not ever. I’ve given you the ring, I’ve paraded you in front of family and strangers as my fiancée, but I’ve never really asked you this before. So I’m asking now.”

He took a breath, and it felt like the first one he’d taken since starting this speech. His eyes were focused on the ring, his ring, on her finger. She hadn’t taken it off, and that meant something. It had to.

“Cherry Neita,” he said, and wondered if she could hear his voice shaking, or if it was all in his head. “I have waited my whole life for you.” He forced himself to look up, to meet her gaze as he asked, “Will you marry me?”

Her face broke into a smile. Of all the smiles he’d seen on this brilliant woman’s face, his woman’s face, this was the sweetest. Tears swam in her deep brown eyes, but she grinned helplessly, without restraint, joyous as the sun.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was shaking too. “Oh, my God, yes.” She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him forward, kissing him with reckless passion, still smiling. It was probably the most awkward kiss they’d ever had, teary and laughing with teeth catching teeth, and he’d never been happier.

“Oh, Lord,” she giggled. “Did you tell my dad about this?”

Ruben shrugged, biting back a smirk. “I may have begged his daughter’s hand in marriage…”

“No wonder he likes you so much! Jesus, Ruben, what year is it?”

He pressed a kiss to her nose. “The year I marry the love of my life without her father scowling at me through the service.”

She snorted. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s why you like me so much.”

Cherry cupped a hand against his jaw. “No,” she said, her voice soft. “That’s why I love you.”