Something About Alice Murphy: BOOK 3

P A R T - T W E N T Y - S E V E N

Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Escape to the Hills.
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Friday, 11th of March

Alice packed up her things after spending a couple hours in the library. She'd finished her last lecture for that week and this semester, and was planning to return home to pack and travel back to Switzerland later that evening.

It was a cool, crisp spring day, where the sun only shone for a couple minutes before shying away behind white fluffy clouds. The breeze was strong, and whipped through Alice's hair as she left the library building, notepads and a textbook clutched to her chest to walk back to her car.

Her mind, although partially focussed on her studies, had been elsewhere entirely for the past week. Jumping between months, maybe a year or so in the future where she'd be pouring over wedding magazines trying to pick a designer for her dress, or to the past where she'd first laid eyes on the Magnus Johnson. There, sitting some metres away from her in the busy cafeteria, a flawless picture of a high school jock with a dark secret she was yet to find out.

She still remembered how the cafeteria smelt when it clicked for her that she liked him. How she'd had the exact thought process that she wouldn't care if he was the worst person in the world as long as some day she was his, and he was hers.

She'd had that feeling then, that maybe she was meant to know him forever, like some part of her knew back then when she was sixteen that Magnus and her would be bound from that moment on. Now that he'd proposed... maybe she'd been right.

Her stomach did carefully practised somersaults as she reminisced. The engagement ring he'd given her tingled against her skin at those precious memories. Their first kiss at the New Years party, the ski trip when they'd first slept together... the way they'd talked even back then, sharing their secrets, sharing their souls. The way he's sleep over almost every night in that house by the woods.

She thought about the last five years in total, then— that final trip. The three months travelling around Europe where they'd talked about a future. A nice house in the country, children, pets. She'd been a teenager, but even then, it had felt so real and right within her grasp it didn't even seem outlandish. Until, the pregnancy. Until, the abortion. Until... everything had fallen apart.

The thoughts made her sad, briefly. She'd missed him so much she'd barely eaten. She'd hidden how sad she was from everyone, but she suspected they'd figured it out.

She loved him so much, she could hardly think.

He'd proposed.

He was a part of her mind, her body, and her soul. She loved him so much that this step they could be taking together scared her. If it went wrong— it would crush her.

She had to think, really think about her answer.

She toyed with the engagement ring he'd given her that was secured on a chain around her neck now, and had been for the past seven days, hidden under the white turtleneck she was currently wearing that was tucked into her high waisted denim skirt.

Mine. All mine.

It was all she could think about. That, and the fear and excitement of what would happen next.

He'd proposed.

And she almost laughed out loud as she briefly compared herself to Gollum from the lord of the rings, whispering 'My precious'. Maybe that creepy creature had made some valid points.