Page 120 of Home Grown Talent
Squirming around so he could graze his lips against Owen’s scruffy jaw, Mason murmured, “Well, you were talking about me handling your tomatoes…”
Owen chuckled, shifting them both until Mason was straddling his lap and their lips met in an unhurried kiss. After a while, Owen said, “Apparently, my tomatoes are… recovering nicely.”
“I noticed.” Mason gave a suggestive wiggle, feeling Owen’s growing arousal beneath him. “So how about we go and, er, juice them?”
Owen grimaced, laughing. “Oh my God…”
Mason laughed too, helplessly, collapsing against Owen’s chest, his head on his shoulder as Owen wrapped both arms around him. After the misery of the morning, Mason’s laughter, his sheer happiness, fizzed through him like freshly poured champagne and washed everything else away. He felt dizzy with joy, delirious. Euphoric.
Still chuckling, Owen nuzzled the side of his head, brushing the top of his ear with his lips. “I love you, you nut.”
“I love you, too.” Lifting his head, Mason met Owen’s sunny blue eyes, sparkling in his honest, loving face. It was, without question, Mason’s favourite face in the whole world. “I’ll love you forever,” he said seriously and knew it to be true.
Owen grinned up at him, and, with his heart overspilling, Mason leaned in to kiss that lovely, joyful smile.
EPILOGUE
Owen
6 months later—October
Owen blinked his eyes open. He could tell it was early from the gentle quality of the light that glowed around the edges of the blind—and by the birdsong in the garden.
Yawning contentedly, he turned his head to gaze at the occupant of the neighbouring pillow, his heart squeezing with happiness to see Mason lying curled up on his side facing Owen, his features half-obscured by his rumpled hair, his shoulder gently moving up and down with his deep, quiet breaths. He was still sound asleep.
Mason had spent a lot of nights in this bed over the last six months, but last night was special: his first night sleeping here after officially moving in. The bedroom was littered with bags and boxes still to be unpacked—as was the kitchen and living room—but Owen didn’t care about the mess. Over the next few days, they’d find places for everything. He was looking forward to intermingling their books and music and kitchenware.
For a while, Owen lay there, idly watching Mason sleep as he tried to isolate the different garden birds singing. He’d been listening to their songs online recently and trying to remember them—mostly because it made him feel accomplished when he told Mason new stuff about nature. He was getting addicted to the expression Mason wore when Owen impressed him, which was pretty pathetic, he supposed, even as he grinned at the thought.
There were fewer birds in the autumn than at the height of summer, which should probably have made it easier to identify them. But other than the robin’s song, with its distinctive watery trickles, Owen wasn’t able to hone in on any others in the general song-babble, so he decided to get up.
He rose slowly, careful not to disturb Mason, pulling on a pair of loose flannel PJ bottoms and a long-sleeved t-shirt before tip-toeing out of the room.
He smiled as he wandered through the house and saw all the new signs of Mason’s occupancy. He smiled at Mason’s toothbrush in the bathroom and the pile of cookery books on the coffee table. He smiled at the state-of-the-art espresso machine with its proper steam wand which now sat on the kitchen counter—even though, by force of habit, Owen still made his usual jug of filter coffee in his ancient Morphy Richards coffee maker. He even smiled at the heavy box of crockery on the kitchen floor that he stubbed his toe on.
When the coffee was ready, he took it out into the garden, padding down the winding path in his bare feet to the two-seater swing seat at the far end. The swing seat was a new addition, along with the sturdy pergola frame it hung from. Owen had planted rambling rose and honeysuckle at the base of the pillars, and, in a year or two, the bare timbers of the pergola would be covered in green, not to mention a riot of flowers from early summer right through to autumn.
Owen sighed happily and sipped his coffee as his gaze moved over the garden. The courgettes and runner beans were almost done now, just one last small crop to collect, and there was a myriad of other jobs to do—the raspberry plants to be transplanted to a new location, the beds mulched, the faded sweet peas and perennials cleared out. He had a load of colourful spring bulbs to be planted and plans to put in some more crops for Mason to cook with—and write about, since he now had his own food blog, Ground Up. It had started as a hobby, a way for Mason to record the steps he was taking to simplify his life and resume his passion for cooking. But with encouragement from Aaron and Tag, he’d begun—very cautiously—to cross-post the content on his by-then-quite-neglected social media accounts.
They’d all been surprised at the level of engagement he’d got from his remaining followers. And yeah, okay, those followers had dwindled by about half, some having dramatically unfollowed Mason at the beginning of the #pineapplegate hoo-ha, while others had just lost interest in him when he stopped posting so often. But despite going dark for several months, he had retained a good number of followers, a healthy segment of whom actually seemed to be interested in his new food-related content. Now he was even picking up new followers and, in the last couple of weeks, a few media queries, an approach from a small cookware brand and a tentative email about a possible book deal. It was all very new, but it looked… promising. And as wary as both of them were about Mason going back to social media after everything that had happened, the fact was he was good at it. He understood it, and he knew how to make it work commercially. And this time, he was determined not to make the same mistakes.
“I’m not letting it take over my life again,” he’d said last night as they cuddled on the sofa—their sofa—with a celebratory bottle of champagne. “And as for you and me, our personal life will be just that—personal. Private.”
“Yeah, you best keep me off,” Owen had agreed, grinning. “It’ll fuck with your ratio. I’m probably still public enemy number one on Insta.”
That wasn’t exactly true. In fact, so far as Owen and Mason were concerned, #pineapplegate had blown over remarkably quickly. Once the live exposé of Misty had happened, the social media mob had lost interest in them, the story morphing into the fall of Mistletoe Watson-King, then morphing again when similar complaints surfaced about the host of a popular talk show. By the time the pipeline of stories had finally dried up, Owen and Mason had been pretty much forgotten. Thankfully, Owen’s online trade listings had recovered, thanks to a concerted campaign by a small bunch of hard-core Owson fans who had flooded the sites with enough five-star reviews to balance out the one-star ones. Owen would have preferred that any reviews that were not from people he’d actually done work for could be removed, but he supposed he was grateful. Sort of.
Just then, the glass door onto the garden slid open, and Mason stepped out of the house. He was wearing his favourite tatty grey shorts and one of Owen’s hoodies and carrying his own mug of coffee. He ambled down the path to join Owen.
“Morning,” he said when he reached the swing. “How long have you been up?”
Owen grinned at him, his heart light and happy. “Not long. I didn’t want to wake you. Yesterday was tiring.”
“Too true,” Mason said, his tone heartfelt. “My arms are aching from carrying all those boxes. Here. Budge up.”
Owen shifted to make room for Mason on the swing, stretching his arm out along the back of it, and Mason snuggled in beside him, leaning back against Owen’s shoulder and lifting his feet up onto the seat. He felt warm and relaxed, and when Owen kissed his head, he caught a lingering trace of the tea tree scent of his shampoo. Glancing at Mason’s coffee, he saw it was topped with a fat pillow of milk foam and dark chocolate flakes.
“Still with the cappuccinos?” he said in disbelief.