Page 54 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

I force us both to pull back before this gets any more frenzied.

Somehow I’ve ended up sitting on the table again with him pressed against me, and now he leans on the glass surface, gasping for breath, and I rest my forehead against his shoulder and try to remember how to breathe, and we’re both shaky, giggly, and completely unable to take our hands off each other, because this still might be a very, very vivid dream.

‘I come with an investor, by the way,’ he murmurs as his fingers run up and down my arm.

‘The one who pulled out because his son loved the escaped exhibits so much. I reached out, told him what I was going to do, and he wanted to come on board. He loved the idea of a cinematic room. Told me I was a fool in love when I started talking about you.’

I want to ask if he was right, but he answers before I’ve plucked up the courage.

‘He wasn’t wrong. I’ve been head over heels for you for weeks now, months maybe.

I didn’t mean for it to happen, never even entertained the idea that it could happen for me, but then you filled my every thought and I couldn’t wait to get to work to see you, and I had this butterfly-ish feeling and found myself with this daft, soppy smile every time I thought about you, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you so I couldn’t stop smiling, and…

’ He runs out of words and leans down to kiss me again instead.

‘The moment I realised what your secret was and immediately wanted to murder anyone who’d ever said an unkind word to you.

’ I let my fingers brush over his left ear again when the kiss breaks.

‘It made me realise how much of a front you really put on, and how much you’d let me see behind it.

That, and when you admitted you’d started watching Disney movies. ’

He laughs and kisses me again, and this time, a cheer goes up from the castle and the patio doors slide open, and I blink in the darkness to see that our audience has grown since we last saw them, and we’re now joined by all our Ever After Street colleagues and half of Sadie and Witt’s extended families, friends, and people we’ve never met before.

‘I wouldn’t be upset if that was locked for a bit longer, would you?’ Warren whispers into my hair, holding me tight against him.

‘I could happily stay out here all night. It’s not cold at all.’

He’s about to make a joke about ways to stay warm, but Sadie yells from inside. ‘Don’t make me come and get you! I will haul you both in by your ears if I have to! You’ve got plenty of time for smooching later!’

‘Yes, we do, don’t we?’

He rubs his nose against mine. ‘We do.’

Life has started to feel like a fairytale since he came here, and it’s had nothing to do with wishing wells, fairydust, Disney princes, or escaping exhibits, and everything to do with his smile, his hair that defies gravity, and the way I feel when we’re together.

Because falling in love is a dizzying real-life version of a fairytale, and like all good stories, I never want it to end.

* * *

‘Finally! At first I thought we were going to have to come out there and push your lips together like a pair of dolls,’ Witt says.

‘Funny, because just now, I thought we were going to have to come out and dissolve the superglue sticking you together,’ Mickey adds, amidst a round of whooping and cheering when we get back inside with burning red cheeks that are tingling with embarrassment and not just from the chill.

‘Let’s celebrate.’ Sadie clinks a spoon against a champagne flute to make a toast. ‘Tomorrow is for wedding jitters, but tonight is for friendship, found family, and absolutely everyone I love being here and being happy. Congratulations to Liss on fighting her own fight for once and winning, and to Liss and Warren, who despite a rocky start, has potential to become a fully fledged member of the Ever After Street community, because the one thing we all trust is Lissa’s judgement.

Thank you to all of you, everyone in this room, for being a part of our love story, and each other’s. ’

I look around at all my favourite people, who started off as colleagues, who became friends, who became family.

Sadie and Witt, Marnie and Darcy, Cleo and Bram, Franca and Raff, Imogen and Ali, and Mickey, Ren, and Ava.

People who mean the world to me and thoroughly deserve every inch of happiness they’ve found with each other.

Warren squeezes my hand and makes me look over at him with a knowing smile, and leans over to steal another kiss, and it inspires me to raise my glass and make a toast of my own.

‘Congratulations to the first Ever After Street happy couple, and to the rest of us who are all going to get married in this castle one day, because there isn’t a better place in the world than right here, with all of you.

We all bring our own little bit of magic to this beautiful street, and it wouldn’t be the same without any of us. Cheers.’

Everyone clinks their glasses and I feel like my heart might burst with happiness.

I can’t wait to be part of all the stories Ever After Street will get to tell in the future, and to meet all the people who will come here and believe, just for a little while, that the world really can be magical when you’re lucky enough to find the right people to make it so.