TWO YEARS LATER

A LOT HAS HAPPENED in these last two years.

First was WEH appointing Millie and I as owners, with us then appointing Pete and Henry as our advocates in each of the main offices. They had done such a great job in steering the ship so far that Millie and I had absolutely no aversion to them continuing to do so.

Second was selling all of Dad's properties. After an audit took place, it came to our attention that Dad had fourteen properties across the world that had been mainly unused, even when he was travelling. So after a long discussion, we decided to sell all but the apartment in New York. And with the sale of all those, came the idea of donating all proceeds to charities across each location, with particular focus on charities helping to support victims of domestic and child abuse. We knew the houses would be worth millions, and with the opening of the foundation too, in the last two years, we have helped a lot of people.

But it wasn't just the foundation and the donations that took the world by storm, it is the company's success. Especially when it was being run by 'two kids who had no idea what they were doing'. By Christmas that year, WEH was operating as one of the most successful business in the US.

But what was almost more of a surprise - a massive surprise for me - was how much of an interest I started to take in it.

With each new report Pete and Henry would send me, I found myself getting more and more intrigued, more and more involved, so much so that I've now taken a couple of business classes at Columbia, alongside my Art and Art History ones. I'm now starting to understand how WEH became Dad's life, but I'm also trying my absolute hardest not to let it rule my life. With the business being as successful as it is, I can focus on school, or on my personal life, and nothing changes. I've found that balance.

My life had essentially taken a turn I'd never expected it would. Four years ago, I expected myself to have graduated, to be starting a job as an entry level museum curator or something. Now? I'm sat in my glass office, staring out from the 50th floor of an office that looks down at Times Square. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to work out whether I'm awake... or whether this is all just one crazy dream.

But WEH isn't the only thing that's happened in the last two years. Lara happened. And that happened almost overnight.

I got home from London, called her, and she basically hasn't left since. She's brought colour into my life - a different kind of colour - and these last two years with her have been surprisingly refreshing. More refreshing than I would have expected.

Having been discharged and living with her brother, after four months of dating, she moved into the apartment with me and Ollie. Although she's taken a bit of getting used to - she isn't the tidiest person in the world, but then who is compared to two men who are extremely OCD - she's been good for me, we've been good for each other, and it's been amazing having someone I could lean on when things got tough.

She finds the WEH work fascinating, saying I was like a superhero who leads a double life. I study Art and paint all day, and then at night I pore over spreadsheets on how numbers add up in non-EU countries. It isn't quite a superhero lifestyle that they talk about in the movies, but hey, it's interesting to us. And if she wanted to call me a superhero, then I wasn't about to stop her.

But in terms of life, I'm ultimately at a place I never thought I'd be. I think speaking to Matt that day, even having that close call with Tessa, was exactly that kick up the butt I needed. Seeing her, seeing her living her life, seeing her happy, made me realise that happiness was possible for me too.

And now? Two years later... Happiness is finally back within my grasp.

***

IT'S HOT OUTSIDE. TOO hot.

The summer weather in New York has been particularly unrelenting these past few weeks, and despite only wearing a pair of boxers and having the doors on either side of my room wide open, I can feel the sweat dripping down my back.

My plans today were supposed to involve a run, but due to the heat, Lara and I have decided a day inside to escape the heat is a much better idea.

About an hour ago she went to go make us breakfast, but I'm starting to worry if she's okay... especially after I hear a rather sizeable crash and some swearing.

"Lo?" I call. "You okay?"

There's no answer, but when what sounds like a tray starts making its way towards my bedroom, I figure she's at least stayed upright and hasn't caused the kitchen to explode like she usually does.

A knock sounds out so I get up, aware she wouldn't have any free hands, and I'm greeted with a stack of american-style pancakes, absolutely smothered in maple syrup, just how I like them.

"Well..." I start, taking the tray from her before I kiss her lightly. "What did I do to deserve this?" I grin as I take in the feast in front of me.

She shrugs as she sits down on the bed, unbuckling her leg before sitting back against the pillows. In the morning light, she looks beautiful, the wave of her hair and the sun on her freckled cheeks... beautiful.

"This is going to sound really..." I start, but stop when I can't find the right word to use. Putting the tray down on the floor, I pinch the bridge of my nose and groan. "This is going to sound really...stupid."

Stupid wasn't the right word, but I was rolling with it.

"Stupid? You?" She swats the air as if me being stupid was a complete contradiction, whilst also telling me I was utterly stupid.

"Well... yeah. But... With no other way to come out and say it..." I sigh as I smile at her. "I think I... love you."

Her eyes widen as her head snaps across to me, and if I hadn't already taken the tray from her hands, she probably would have dropped it. Her jaw drops, her hands drop from her lap. Everything drops. And from the amount of time it takes for her to say anything, I suddenly want the ground to swallow me up whole. I had overstepped, gone too far, and now she was no doubt searching the room for the most convenient exit.

"I'm sorry. I didn't..." I start. "I'm sorry. You just... you look..." Oh God, now I'm making it worse by not being able to string a sentence together. "You look..."

Mercifully, I can't finish my sentence because she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me softly.

As is always the case in the morning, her lips are silky and smooth, and as she tickles her fingers into the bottom of my hair, a contented sigh sounds from the back of my throat. When she pulls away, her gaze is directly on mine, and I know she might - just might - feel the same.

"No one has ever told me they love me before," she whispers, and I'm shocked.

Her face, freckled from her spending so much time outside as a child, is now flushed and blotchy as a tear rolls down her cheek. I had no idea why she was crying, but as her big, brown eyes glistened with tears, I say the words again, more confidently this time.

"Well, I do love you," I smile as hers gets wider. "You've been here for me for so long now, and you're bright and you're funny... and you're everything I hadn't realised I was looking for."

She is happiness. Happiness personified.

"I didn't do anything," she tells me, wiping her cheeks as she sits back down against the headboard. "I just listened..." She trails off as I cup her cheek, and she tips her face into my hand, kissing my palm before she pulls me closer.

Despite the signals she's giving me, I can tell she's shrinking back into herself as the insecurities around her leg start to creep through again. We'd been through this over and over, and each time we make this connection, it's become easier to pull her back from the dark brink.

It's a defence mechanism she has, and she closes herself off because she's afraid her leg will change things. But what she always forgets is that her leg shows me that she's overcome adversities, and that is proud of who she is. So as she pulls away, stopping the kiss, I hold her gaze and tell her it's okay.

I don't move, I just look at her, my eyes soft as my thumb starts to dance across her cheek. I can almost hear the cogs whirring in her brain, that battle warring between her brain and her heart. But after a few more seconds, I see a small, barely perceptible nod as her heart wins out this time.

I remember back to when we first slept together. I'd only seen her leg a couple of times before that, because she always hides it from people. For the first time in years, she had been exposed, and she was shaking all over as she explained how it tapered off below her knee, and how the scarring around the knee joint was rough, and still quite tender. But this time, she's full of confidence as she guides my hand down her leg, wanting me to touch her rather than me leading the way.

I move down her body, peppering kisses as I go, and she bites her lip as I get to the scarring on her knee. The skin is still sensitive there, so I'm careful as I sit her up. They truly are beautiful. Tessa used to trace mine when she thought I was asleep. I used to hate it, because I believed them to be marks on my body that remind me of when I was at my weakest. But just as she told me it showed how much I had overcome, I told Lara the same. Her scars are a sign of strength, not of weakness. In front of Tessa I had had nothing to hide, and I wanted Lara to feel comfortable enough to do the same.

Leaning down, I trace them gently before she pulls me back up, placing her lips roughly on mine, breathing heavily as my fingers continue to draw patterns into her skin. She presses herself upwards into me as my fingers work, and I smile as she playfully bites my lip.

Soon she forgets about her leg or her insecurities altogether.

We both do.

We're just two people holding one another, feeling every part of the other, and soon we're both coming undone, our bodies both covered in perspiration from both the heat and the effort.

Lara is the first person I had slept with since Tessa, in nearly four years, but it had been the same with her. Because of her accident, the intimacy she'd had wasn't the same. Not knowing what she liked or her knowing I liked, it felt like being a teenager again... doing it for the first time, surrendering to that awkwardness as our fingers fumbled. However that awkwardness made it easier for Lara and I to bridge that gap between us, allowing us to come together, and fit together, perfectly.

After closing myself off from the world, from anyone, not allowing myself to get close enough as if to ever be happy, it felt amazing to be held again. It felt just as amazing as it does now, as Lara cradles my head on her stomach, running her fingers through my hair, tugging softly at its ends as I stroke a soft finger over her belly. I never thought I would be able to have this, to even dream or hope that maybe there was someone else out there for me. But as Lara smiles down at me, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright, I know there is.

Happiness personified indeed.

***

"WHAT ARE YOU THINKING about?" Lara asks.

I don't quite startle awake, but I'm pulled out from the delightful fog as sleep threatens to take me. The mixture of the heat and our exertions have exhausted me, which is making Lara laugh.

She is now lying on top of me, and as she leans her chin on my chest, she smooths her thumb across the crease between my eyebrows.

Opening my eyes, I smile down at her and lean forward to kiss her forehead. "Just how happy I am. Here. With you."

She simply smiles, beaming up at me.

"I never thought I'd be able to move past what happened and allow myself to..." I trail off but she gets what I mean.

"Me too," she nods. "This stupid leg set me back a bit, but for once I feel like," she frowns as she tries to find the right words. "Like I;m able to be normal." She kisses my chest. "So thank you."

"I should be thanking you, Lo. I don't know who, where or what I would be without you these last few years. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve you, or that you're not real, because you just... appeared..." I breathe out a breath as I laugh lightly, "basically of out of nowhere."

"It is funny how life works that way."

It definitely is. And it's funny how my life had turned out the exact opposite to how I'd planned. I thought my fate had been decided as soon as I saw Tessa, with her two missing front teeth and the faces she was making out of peas with Bryony. Yet here I am, lying in bed with a different girl wrapped around me, and with a different future mapped out ahead of me.

"I feel like I would have met you eventually," I joke, even though I'm fairly certain our paths would never have crossed under the different circumstances. "That coffee is too good for me not to find."

She swats my chest, knowing I'm joking. Her coffee is crap.

Although Lara still works at the coffee shop on weekends, I've actually got her working in graphic design for me. I hadn't realised how good of an artist she was until I caught her doodling absentmindedly. So naturally, I put her in touch with the design team at WEH and they offered her a job on the spot, without me having to push. She says she works at the coffee shop to 'keep her grounded', but I can sense her waning on it. Especially when the design team are now designing the main mural for the sports hall at the foundation.

But her working for me, in my office, has worked well so far. When we are there at the same time, which is rarely now that I'm enjoying the summer before classes start again in August, she's on a different floor. In fact I rarely see her. When she first started she was worried that living and working together would be too much, but it's been amazing. More amazing than either of us could have expected. I get home and she's curled up in front of the TV, but never asleep enough to not sit up and allow me to ramble on about my day.

"There's no way you would have met me." Her voice brings me out of my mini daydream. "Tessa is too perfect for you to turn away from... especially under different circumstances."

My eyes soften as I listen out for that sting of jealousy, like any other girl would be, but I don't hear it. She's still smiling up at me, her head now resting in the crook of my shoulder as she plays with the smattering hair on my stomach.

I didn't really know what to say to that, I never do, so I just pull her closer to me and kiss the side of her head, running my fingers through her soft hair.

I think Lara knows that, even though I've said those three little words to her now, I will never be able to mean them in the same way that I love Tessa. It sounds awful to even think, given what we'd just done and what we've both been through, but I think Lara understands that's what true love feels like. And a true love lost like I lost Tessa... it really does stay with you for a lifetime, no matter how much or how hard you try to forget.

"Your eyebrows are creasing again," she says with a laugh, smoothing it again.

"I'm sorry," I shake my head and try to get the thoughts of Tessa away.

"What's going on in that head of yours today?" She asks again.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be so distracted. I'm just..." I try to think of the right word. "I'm just overwhelmed with what's happening. You, WEH, college finishing soon... I can't believe it's come together the way it has. I can't believe I'll be graduating in a few months time."

She smiles. "And all under the age of twenty-two. You'll be in Forbes or something."

"God," I scoff. "Definitely not. I'll leave that for Millie," I chuckle. "She has the prettier face."

Her dazed smile shines back at me again as she leans forward to kiss me. "You're pretty too."

I chuckle. "Thanks," I say as she lays her head back on my chest.

"I can't believe I'm here either," she says, her voice laced slightly with sadness. I know it isn't necessarily sadness at what's just happened, but I'm now wondering what's on her mind. And I don't need to ask because she continues, seemingly answering my thoughts.

"Just with my family." She sighs. "I used to be really close with my dad, and my brother, and now I've barely seen them in two years. I know I handled what happened badly, but I don't know what else to do at this point," she shrugs. "It's been too long."

"Is it the stuff you were telling me about your brother the other day?" I ask. "Is he getting worse?"

She shakes her head slowly, but then it changes to a nod. His temper flares at the click of a button, and he doesn't seem to have control when it happens. Lara's been on the receiving end one too many times.

"He just isn't there anymore. None of the brother I loved is there, and it's heartbreaking. He's been different ever since the accident, I know that, and I get why... I just," she sighs. "There's nothing... there." Wiping her eyes, she looks up at me, her eyes glistening again. "And I miss him."

She moves her gaze off to stare at the wall and I know what she means. In the same boating accident, her brother Billy had suffered a head injury. It was one that was serious enough to keep him in a coma to reduce the swelling on his brain, but when they did finally wake up after nearly three weeks, he wasn't the same. That kind of injury is hard to understand, and even harder to come back from. I had only met him a handful of times before Lara moved in here, but the number of times she had rung me to go and pick her up after he had a bad day was becoming more and more frequent. In the end, I think it was eventually what convinced her that moving in here was the best idea.

It felt strange sometimes, being the rock when usually that was her role. But to be honest, it felt nice to be needed again. I'd needed people for so long that I'd forgotten how good it felt to be the person someone relied on.

"You want to do something fun today?" I ask, changing the subject to get us both out of our seemingly funky moods.

"Always." She wipes her eyes and sits up, throwing her brown hair over her shoulder.

"Well, seeing as the campus is closed today, and no one is around, do you fancy coming to the art building and being my muse for the afternoon?" I wiggle my eyebrows, trying my best at being sexy.

She giggles at my attempt but frowns and sits up on her elbow. "I thought I was already your muse," she says accusingly.

"Today you are," I roll my eyes and joke back. "You fancy it?"

She bites her lip before she narrows her eyes. "You sure no one will be around?"

"I can text my professor to make sure, if you want?" I tuck her fringe back behind her ear.

"Can you?" She smiles wickedly and I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "Because I now have an idea."

I had an idea too... but I decided to go with hers, because the grin that has spread across her face is too beautiful to wipe away by doing what I wanted to do.

I kiss her nose and get up out of bed, not bothering to put my boxers back on. I can feel her eyes on me, checking me out, but I don't care. I put her crutch and her leg near the bed and kiss her forehead again before heading for the bathroom.

Today was going to be a good day, I could tell.